🗺️ 39 | art is making a world to live in
dear kindred friends,
next week I'll probably be writing you from an airport, en route to my hometown / motherland (hangzhou, china) where I'll be for three weeks to visit family. I haven't been back in 6 years.
in confronting my anxiety about this, I've decided to use travel as an opportunity to deepen my writing & visual practices -- even while in motion, even with family who mostly only know me as a child, even in a chaotic environment where I'm very likely to regress and feel lots of feelings I don't want to feel.
because: isn't this exactly what art-making is for? creativity is a practice of presence - of paying rapt attention, no matter where you are.
~
🍊 this week: I write about the "Version 0.1" as a mindset for iterative creativity. I draw an 8 min sketch of a cat chasing a crow. I share a few notes / half-digested thoughts on offering, launching, and "selling."
🪺 make a version 0.1 to say "hello, world"
since my constant state is having 10,000 more ideas than I have time to do, this mindset of the Version 0.1 (as opposed to Version 1.0) has helped me find so much freedom and un-clogging power. aka, a guide to how to give birth, fast.
make a version 0.1 to say "hello, world" — kening zhu
the bare ingredients for a newborn creative baby
🐦⬛ tree cat chases crow
yesterday I saw a cat chase a crow while on top of a tree - and it was thrilling. as soon as I got home, I set a timer for 8 minutes and drew this sketch. this is my warmup for a daily sketchbook practice while traveling.
tree cat chases crow — kening zhu
a moment I watched unfold
🕰️ time capsule
1 year ago: simple shadow work for psychic declutering
as a super scorpio, shadow work is like my nightcap. I usually do it before bed, with a cup of tea, a journal, and maybe some otherworldly music (like this album: Sleep by Max Richter). here's a process I outlined:
simple shadow work: a practice for psychic decluttering — kening zhu
a simple journaling practice for clearing space
1 year ago: the guiding question to building wealth as an artist
as I'm reimagining with what it means to "sell" as an artist, I return to this series I wrote last year, which was a massive breakthrough in my own journey.
the guiding question to build wealth as an artist — kening zhu
how to give your wealth in order to receive wealth in return.
3 years ago: the feeling of being safe
a visual mood diary I drew after 2 months of being with my current partner, and it still feels very, very true - even though my inner landscape is a lot brighter these days.
the feeling of being safe — kening zhu
the feeling of being with someone who makes you feel safe
4 years ago: do whatever you want
I wrote this during a phase of radical deconstruction, and was just beginning to learn how to live attuned to my desires, wants, and needs -- rather than from the programmed voices of "shoulds" inside of me.
do whatever you want — kening zhu
trusting in the resonance of wants / needs / highest good
📝 notes (what's rolling around my head)
launching is not the only way to sell something: there are many ways; ways that are less tiring, less getting-it-out-there, less of a phallic thursting to create a sense of (sometimes false) urgency. offering something for money can, instead, feel like an invitation into a labyrinth, a cave, a secret tree house, a guided adventure into the wilderness. an offering can say: "sure, you can go alone. I'm happy to point you the way. or, we can go together."
reimagining marketing & sales: the way to win the war between ART vs. MONEY is to, first, stop believing that there's a fight. instead of A) succumbing to the pressure of how you're supposed to do marketing/sales, or B) avoiding it completely, maybe instead, the job is to completely, radically reimagine these processes from its foundational core. to find new language for those practices. how about:
marketing = sharing your truth in ways that feel expansive and empowering (for me, it's via digital world-building).
sales = offering your creativity in a journey of energetically-aligned service.process > product: maybe, "product" is an illusion. "done" is a state when someone decides to stop. any outcome (money, fame, validation) is just a side effect (a "byproduct") of process. maybe all end results should be renamed: byproducts. let process rule as our queen.
🍄 inspiration log
reading: Meditations on the Tarot - an anonymously published, dense philosophical-spiritual text about the Major Arcana organized as letters to an unknown friend. today I actually found a handwritten version of it that I'm super excited to read. what a labor of love. it makes me ask: what book do I love enough to write hundreds of pages all out, by hand?!?
listening to: Nilay Patel in his Decoder Podcast - interviewing the CEO of Figma, and in "will AI break the internet" episode with Ezra Klein, and about the future of websites. it was interesting to listen to these critiques of the internet and its platforms -- critiques I'm well aware of, but grappling from a different perspective. (what is that perspective? instead of masculine, tech, thinky, industry-level -- my perspective is: feminine, artist, intuitive, individual-personal-level). my work is about offering radical alternatives, and opening creative possibilities - rather than fixating on what we all know is shitty, already.
listening to: this song. 75 beats per minute by Romain Axisa
marinating on: this quote by Anäis Nin
I think THIS is worth writing out by hand, and putting it in my website."I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living.
That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. The artist is the only one who knows the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements. It is a materialization, an incarnation of his inner world. Then he hopes to attract others into it, he hopes to impose this particular vision and share it with others. When the second stage is not reached, the brave artist continues nevertheless. The few moments of communion with the world are worth the pain, for it is a world for others, an inheritance for others, a gift to others, in the end. When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others."
*
🌸 goodbye with a question:
the question I'm asking myself in this last week ...
how can traveling back to a place of origin - in facing the fears, foreignness, and inevitable feelings of grief - be an expansive practice of love?
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thank you for reading.
🪼 kening
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PS. I've been behind on my podcast, but hopefully will resume in a biweekly pacing while traveling, as I'm opening a new series on ethos & philosophies.
🗺️ this is guide.notes 39, a weekly letter on creative alchemy & growing digital worlds.
🍃 find me on my podcast: botanical studies of internet magic.
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