Finding the Key
Dear Friend,
Every creative project has a key that unlocks it. For me, the distinction between the true key – the one that means you are unlocking the right door and not circling some endless hallway – is the feeling.
It’s not euphoric. Euphoria means drifting away on the possibilities of the artwork and never finding a way to translate the internal world to the outer world. The high is too pure, too exquisite.
By contrast, the real key feels matter of fact. When you see it, you know that it has been there all the time, waiting to be picked up.
The key to my current project was glinting in the half-light. Caught in the brambles.
I know the book is ready to be written when the colour of the atmosphere stains my fingertips.
When there is a shimmer in the air.
🜁🜃🜂🜄
I have been nervous to go towards this shimmer because it is so deep and personal.
I need to go into my own internal atmosphere to write this book. To the place where reality begins to break down.
The key came from a memory of creating my own atmosphere as a child. Of being taken from a bed in a room that smelled of cigarettes and hairspray; my aunts’ room in my nan’s house. A place where I watched them tease their hair high and try on glittering dresses.
I remembered being taken from the bed and put into my dark blue dress, brought to the otherworld of a party. From one dream to another.
I was an ice planet. Curious, interested – finding objects to take back to my fantasy world. Those parties were magical. Pink velvet sofas. Sips of brandy. The adults playing cards. Reggae and rock music, tomatoes cut like flowers, a fish stew that took days to simmer.
But there was also a rich text of warnings that I could not decipher. A mystery that I couldn’t unlock then and a key waiting for me now; gleaming and solid in my hand.
What key might you find if you let yourself move towards the shimmer?
🜁🜃🜂🜄
🍄 Fruit (things that are ready to share)
I have been thinking about how to support writers who are sensitive and who want to feel into their own shimmer. If you would like help in unlocking your book, I would love to support you through Slow Practice.
Slow Practice is a year of individual mentorship where we will sink into a project together and hold it up to the light. We will work with slowness, and curiosity, to allow your book to emerge in its most authentic and radical form.
I would love to mentor you to create a lasting artwork, and to share your singular creative world with an audience.
I wrote a piece on Sensitivity + Art about the artists Yushi Li, Yasmin El Yassini, and Kali Malone.
Yushi Li, Dwelling I’ve been thinking, too, about the qualities that are necessary for being an artist, and I keep returning to sensitivity.
Sensitivity is needed to feel into the frequencies that initiate a project.
Sensitivity allows an artist to reject what isn’t working and move towards what is.
Sensitivity is required to process, share, or perform an artwork.
Sensitivity is a resource to protect at all costs.
🦠 Spores (tiny ideas)
I have been listening to this otherworldly mix of music and storytelling from Devi Mambouka a.k.a. Masma Dream World on repeat. If you live in London, you can see her at Cafe Oto on June 26th.
Masma Dream World I feel like I want to fill my body with the taste and colours of spring so I am looking for the greenest, tastiest things I can find. This vegan green goddess salad dressing is extremely forgiving and lets you add as many herbs as you like. My favourite so far is a mixture of tarragon, dill, chives, mint, and parsley. It tastes so good added to new potatoes.
I was also captivated by the discovery of OLO, an impossible colour that is deeper green than anything human perception has been able to capture before, just in time for spring.
𓍊𓍊𓍊 Mycelium (relational networks)
Magical person, and internet philosopher, Kening Zhu has created a class on creative systems that is really a poem. I was lucky enough to experience it with a group of beautiful souls this spring – it changed my view of sensitivity as a resource – and now you can access it as a self-paced course.
I met the ceramicist and photographer Jamie Griffin in the Creative Systems group and her insights on sensitivity inspired some of the thinking behind this letter. I spent four weeks gazing at her green ceramics collection and feeling into the frequency of spring. You can buy her gorgeous pieces if you are in the US.
Jamie Griffin, Spring Ceramics Collection In Ceremony news, Denise Critchley, a writer who I have worked with for a number of years, has published her debut novel Bringing Down the Flowers about the radical potential of herbalism in a near-future authoritarian state. You will never think of Birmingham in the same way once you read this book!
I wish you a week of parsley and dill, vivid greens, and finding the key.
Love, Laura
🐚 this is microdosing ceremony, a weekly-ish letter from my artist’s cocoon to yours.
🌺 find out more about rituals and writing on the ceremony podcast.
🐇 explore creative rabbit holes on my website.