a Postcard from the Basque coast
Hello friend,
I’m cycling down the coast of Basque Country this week, downing a cortado and cheese tortilla at a bar each morning (second breakfast!) and coaxing a few more kilometers out of a rented bike that’s seen better days. Car traffic is minimal. Road conditions are decent. Going downhill feels like flying, racing the sun to the next beach enclave tucked against a cliff. An occasional cyclist sends the universal hand gesture for a moment of mutual recognition. We are the lucky ones.
This is a Postcard about creative partnerships.
I’ve always been blessed with the people I meet through work, who see me and share generously. In the last few years, my creative partnerships have become more fluid in how they evolve, with longer-term perspectives. Not all of them of course, but some. What holds my curiosity is the increased potential for such partnerships to deepen our respective practices, not to mention the joy that it can bring to our wellbeing.
This shift has come in part with age. We’ve learned that much of what we used to take for granted as important — the status, the recognition, the success of this and that project — simply doesn’t matter as much as we believed. That’s a a game we play and the trick is to know it.
The beginning of a creative partnership may necessitate a careful transition out of the particular context where we met, which is often a group or transitionary setting. Perhaps we wound up on a project together, shared a co-working space or took the same course. When that external boundary expires for one or both parties, someone needs to act on the inkling of a potential personal connection, so that it has a chance to stand on its own. Find the courage, make the effort.
Practitioners wiser than I, particularly from the artistic fields, have helped me accept that it takes years for a creative partnership to mature. When both sides see a richer future ahead, a collaboration is assessed not only by what‘s being accomplished project-wise but by a shared appreciation of how the relationship is experienced in the context of life-long practice. Don’t optimize for the project.
With that, and an off-saddle view of the flysch cliffs near Zumaia, I leave you to a wonderful weekend. As always, do shoot back a photo or some thoughts if it strikes your fancy!
Tomomi
