What Am I Looking For
Notes on struggling with a lack of imagination and seeking ways to reignite my creativity this winter.
Dear friends,
Here's my fear – that my imagination has taken a hiatus. That it has decided, for want of a better house, to uproot and go elsewhere. I feel so bland. So blasé. I wear a beige coat in a khaki factory. I am wan limp french fries, dried out flower stems.
And yes, I know I write this in winter. Or rather, in what we are calling winter though this (January) day is one of the first truly cold days this season. There are no icy spears (icicles) or frosted windows. And we have passed the merriment of December— the glow of Christmas lights, candles in the window. Our town holds onto these lights all the way into February, but now they have that sort of sad-forgotten-about-feel, neglected. The plastic Santa Claus tilted against the dark edge of the house, leftover.
Is my imagination gone because of the weight of the incoming president? Is it because when I get to speculate or fantasize I imagine the horrible things that are going to happen? This toxicity has poisoned my thoughts. I imagine horrors and it deadens me. My language, my whimsy, my courage to push forward. We have to watch out for this dragon of barrenness, who burns all thoughts or something like that.
Artists are supposed to create the future we want and I try to think like that, I feel hollow.
So I am not sure if it’s writer’s block, depression, perimenopause, JANUARY, the howl of the wind around our house, but I can’t imagine color. I want to bolster the good, network, FIND A JOB, and to do that, I need energy. Which like the color, I am sadly lacking.
In my mania last night, in which my brain decided at 1 a.m. to think about all the things I could possibly do, and when I thought about imagination as a central theme to life, I did begin to think about ways that I could begin to seed my thoughts, collect facts, unusual words, headlines. Collect and stew. I hope that in a few weeks, I will be able to close my eyes and let my mind run free.
Right now, I will indulge in this slow time to rest and hopefully I will find a direction forward soon.
*
Here are some good things happening right now:
I used a tape-to-mp3 converter to collect old gems from Bella Circus, Steve Maing, Shelterbelt, and my college band Algernon.
Old photographs of my family, the earliest from circa 1899.
Talking about books with Olivia. Going to bookstores with Olivia.
Organizing and clearing out the debris I have carried with me for years.
The full 2025 calendar for The Notebooks Collective. Please join us for our first Community Hour next Tuesday at 8 pm. It’s for artists, organizers, academics, etc… for anyone, really.
Speaking of artists, I had adventures in art-buying, in which I purchased a pet rock named Rainfire from artist Meagan Hepp.
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Here’s a zine excerpt from 1998:
When you wake up and there is a tiredness on your tongue, then you know that the night did not feed you right. You are groggy and messy and forced into a day you are not ready for.
And then all the stillness that is around you has become a blanket or a shield or a pansy something beautifully barrier-like. And when you sit on the T with your bag on your shoulder looking like youth ready to go, with your coffee cradled just so, you fog off against the window, watching low buildings with dried smokestacks and empty parking lots go by. You feel that sort of blinding movement where it doesn't matter if you are at that parking lot or the next one, that you are on the go, and going doesn't mean actually going and getting there but going and just not being back home.
Because at home, there is a you, listless, bothered more by dreams than by something that really happened. But you know, that dreams are in fact your life turned inside out and spit at you so that you can really see it right. That could make you nervous, because the way it was spit at you — you wonder what its goal was. To make you feel this foggy, this unwanted, this restless? Or to tell you that the somewhere you are going to is nowhere but the place you just left.
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Please send me the myriad ways you jumpstart your own imagination or just a good recipe or a book you like.
Looking forward to the light!
xo