dear friends,
after I came back to Istanbul, for over a week all I could do was binge read mystery books on the couch. it seemed that sinking into fictional worlds was so much easier than trying to hold the tangled threads of places and past selves my body had reinhabited, and left behind.
reality felt like a strange, fluid, rupturing tapestry, and I had slipped and fallen into its folds. after these months of feverish creative momentum, what I was experiencing, now, was a feeling of amnesia — the inability to remember who I was, what I was doing, or what my job was. what is my work? what is my art? or, as Wendell Berry wrote, in an excerpted prelude to one of my favorite poems, “the world is full of places. why is it that I am here?”
I sat down to try and plan my new course — sharing space camp — and felt a flickering static in my head. my brain was completely offline, but I had things I needed to do; emails to answer, newsletters to write, client projects to manage. I felt sloth-y and melancholic, disturbed and existential.
my mind was as blank as arctic snow, and with each passing day at home, reading on the couch, disappearing inside imaginary worlds, I could hear the old voices in my head, whispering at me — get up, hurry up, be responsible, push through it, do something.
if I hadn’t just recently, deeply grappled with the question of rest and inner rhythms this past spring, while teaching creative systems, I’d be feeling more guilty than I do now.
but instead, I found myself thinking about how it takes skill, effort, and deliberate practice to truly rest without guilt, or shame. it feels like protecting a calm, cool pool inside a barren desert — from being drained by the vortex of scarcity, or the possibility of impending failure and doom.
I said that “rest is embodied de-programming practice” — deprogramming from productivity culture, and the ways we’ve been taught, from childhood, to value our self-worth and our right to exist (or receive good things) — as directly proportional to our effortful striving.
but there is nothing to prove to anyone, and most of all, to myself. the most important work of my life will not be completed through pressuring myself at gunpoint. the most important work, too, could feel restful.
of course, this isn’t something that comes naturally. I have to tell myself that everyday, like whispering reassurances to a child, who is used to overperforming as a survival tactic. she is anxious, and then she sighs and says, okay then. so I take her hand, and with tenderness, we walk on.
***
🚀 sharing space camp — early bird until monday 6/30
a new course/adventure about the work of sharing your work — beyond all social platforms.
due to my delayed brain connectivity this last week, I’m extending early bird until this Sunday, and will be running the live session one week later, from July 14th to August 8th.
this class is a guided journey on training for creative courage in the digital void — how to share your work as a practice of generosity, ease, and play.
due to time zone & scheduling challenges, I’ve changed the live session format to make it more asynchronous — while still being very much an intimate, guided experience.
FORMAT & ASYNCHRONOUS CHANGES
asynchronous course videos — (instead of weekly Zoom calls). I’ll be uploading recorded course videos and assignments directly to Notion, every week, for 4 weeks.
weekly live discussion calls — we will have drop-in group calls every week, to be scheduled. (you don’t have to make all of them!)
community group chat — there will still be a WhatsApp group chat, which I’ll monitor daily for the duration of this course.
community Notion journal & 1:1 feedback — you’re welcome to submit all homework for group accountability — and request my feedback — to your Notion journals.
pricing: early bird is still $330 until Monday 6/30, normal registration is now $380.
the last day to sign up for the live session is Friday, July 11th. class starts Monday July 14th.
make art in the void
share your work like no one cares
make art in the void — kening zhu
share your work like no one cares.
sharing your work as creative release
share your work so that you can breathe better
sharing your work as creative release — kening zhu
transforming your relationship to sharing your work
lonely work is swimming in the ocean alone
my story of the loneliness & turmoil of working for myself
lonely work is swimming in the ocean alone — kening zhu
the joys & perils of working for yourself
do you want anything from afghanistan?
an animation I made in February 2021, while enchanted, from deep inside what became a terrorizing romance.
do you want anything from afghanistan? — kening zhu
do you want anything from afghanistan , he asks me — my friends are coming back from there soon. and i thought — do i want anything from afghanistan (?) for him, it’s simply that mother/home/land, the home he escaped, left behind, for me it’s a place i only know from radio and television noise of
variation on the word sleep, by margaret atwood
the last animation I made in December 2021, the month I first moved to Istanbul, as a wedding gift for my dear friend Amelia Hruby.
variation on the word sleep by margaret atwood - animated poem — kening zhu
this is a labor of love / wedding gift for my friend amelia - an animated love poem
🌻 recent books in my life
currently reading: the goldfinch by donna tartt. I’m only halfway through — it’s gripping, but I’m not sure yet.
the secret history by donna tartt — this book was recommended to me twice when I was seventeen (“beauty is terror…” was quoted in the first break-up letter I’ve ever received, then the book was recommended to me again by a teacher). for other reasons (too pretentious, elitist, hyped, whatever) I resisted reading it for over a decade.
the plot is about a group of classics students in a remote Vermont college who, through a series of entirely believable events and circumstances, commit a murder against one of their own. it reminded me of crime and punishment.
but actually, I think it’s about beauty, terror, and truth - and what it means to choose the extraordinary and transcendental above the mundane, even to horrible consequences.
I was shocked at how much it pulled me in, like a vortex, like watching a train crash in slow motion, or standing over a cliff and feeling the great longing to jump. I was devastated for days afterwards.case histories by kate atkinson — I appreciated the puzzle box structure of this book, and admired the skill and deftness of her prose, but I felt whiplash in jumping from character to character, and much more turned off by the way in which it made the circumstances of life feel mundane and ugly, pitiful and meaningless, varnished with a dry, detached sense of humor.
what alice forgot by liane moriarty — I couldn’t stop turning pages, yet I felt cheated and manipulated by the end, and resentful of its cheap plot devices. it tries way too hard to be too many things all at once — mystery/thriller, romance, existential crisis, family/social drama. for it, it failed at everything except the last.
I’m currently working on an animated trailer for sharing space camp — which will also serve as a rough narrative journey / curriculum for the course.
here’s a preview:
the thing is, you are already in outer space…
I’ve also been feeling the urge to return to animation — and I have some ambitiously crazy idea for a 28 day creative challenge, in which I make and share 1 short film a day (this may or may not happen this year), but if it does, I’ll invite anyone who wants to join me in this challenge to come, too.
~~~
🪷
writing this letter felt restful, and for that, I feel wildly successful.
thank you for being here.
until soon,
🍃 listen to my podcast: botanical studies of internet magic
🏔️ explore my courses: house on the webs | creative systems
🪷 inquire about advising sessions
🌔 visit otherworldly - a web alchemy studio
💧 send me a gift: water my world