What I know to be true

a short check in

Looking at the snow, typing, snow, typing… that’s the rhythm today. The plan was to send the first letter of the year in February with updates and inspiration and a big dose of possibility, so much is happening behind-the-scenes… I also want to give some updates on the research study on creativity and arts education. Getting to know so many of you through these interviews has been extremely meaningful.

All of that’s for another day. I’ve just missed writing this newsletter and am feeling eager to get back to it. How are you faring? Please don’t hesitate to drop a comment or reply directly to this email.

Today, a short video sharing what’s on my heart, inspired by conversations with clients and friends over these last few weeks. I hope you'll give it a watch.

(Just a heads up, the text below is a rough transcript of the video and pretty stream-of-thought with run-on sentences since I wrote it as a outline. I’m leaving it as-is for anyone who’d rather read than watch)

One of the greatest lies that we’ve been sold about creativity is that it’s frivolous. It might happen after the real work is done, the work of cash and succeeding at life, the work of optimizing yourself into someone more productive, more disciplined, more confident. It might happen if you’ve magically fallen into the camp of being “actually creative” (not someone who “isn’t creative” or maybe worse someone who thinks they’re creative but “actually” isn’t).

And if you do get around to prioritizing it, if you fight for it, if you sneak it in, if you dare to say no to someone else, if you’re such a fool to try again: you can bet that there’s going to be a fog of doubt around you reminding you there are bills to pay, there are texts to answer, laundry to fold, so many pills to swallow and no one really cares about what you’re doing and that it doesn’t really count. Even if they did and even if it does, you’ll never be disciplined enough to keep it up anyway.

This is the narrative so many people take to their grave. And it’s been fed and reinforced from all different directions over years and decades. It’s hard to unlearn (part of me doesn’t want to say this and instead say that it can take a long time, but if feels most honest to name and normalize the difficulty of reclaiming the creative self).

And what I always find astounding is that the flame of creative longing endures. It gets buried under these misunderstandings and then pressure and then fear of failing and then exhaustion and grief… but it stays.

This insidious lie that creativity is frivolous, or that’s it for some people and not for others, that it’s a waste of time or only counts if you make money from it or that it’s naive…fuels self-abandonment. Not only that, but it cuts us off from connection that is so much larger than the self. This lie cuts us off from intimacy with life. It cuts us off from being part of a lineage, from really feeling a soul-level belonging in who you are and what you have to bring.

As much as I’ve worked to look at less news (or really, less compulsively check it), my eyes have been set on the state-sanctioned violence we are seeing in the US… and also… the force of humanity resisting it, especially in MN. When we look at the current movement, we can see so clearly what is also evident across history: creativity is never separate from resistance and resistance is never separate from creativity.

As always, when I talk about creativity I’m speaking to both capital-C Creativity (singing, dancing, drawing, etc.) but importantly I’m also speaking to the everyday creativity that is required to respond to complex, changing conditions (the creativity of parenthood, the creativity of communication and organizing resources and rapid response, etc.)

If you haven’t seen the videos of the vigil on Saturday for Alex Pretti, people singing in Spanish, “You’re never alone, you’re never alone, together we’re building liberation!”, it’s beyond moving (written by people who were detained alongside the Peace Poets) - another video here, too.. We know that song especially is fundamental in movements: I think of Bella ciao…I think of spirituals like at the marches from Selma to Montgomery… I think of the teachers teaching kids to harmonize with drones in Palestine and keep their voices expressing.

When I see neighbors flooding the streets and singing in unison (another song here), I see a moment hundreds of people will remember for the rest of their life, including the people who are in hiding and looking out their windows. I see a moment where someone who has always judged their singing voice, and maybe always wanted to sing, hears their voice unify with friends and strangers.

I was talking with a friend who is in the thick of it, showing up in remarkable ways, and I told her how grateful I am that she, over all of the years of her life, devoted herself to singing for the love it. And for all of the people who are in the Singing Resistance, the Sound of Blackness Ensemble, Brass Solidarity… to singing teachers and choir members and parents and elders, everyone involved in organizing in this way nurtured that inner flame that told them to sing and make music. I imagine through all of the initiations, the intense bouts of doubt and feelings of failure and loneliness that are bound to come up when we nurture our gifts in a culture that does not prioritize them as such, they stayed stubborn in their love for it. And because of that, a lifetime of practice makes it possible for them to show up in this moment and offer these gifts and invite others to participate in solidarity. And then for us all to see the unquestionable necessity of creativity.

I try not to talk about current events that much because I want my work to feel like refuge, not a reminder of the horror. I want it to be something that you can revisit whenever you need it… and so having it without time-based indicators helps with that. While at the same time, I’m always firm about embodying my values and contributing actively to the kind of world that I want to live in, and sometimes that means that I feel compelled to speak mindfully and hopefully usefully… to be another voice that says I am suffering with you in what Joanna Macy calls a colossal anguish and that I believe we can move through this as a people.

I don’t want this to be too long I just want to urge you to listen to that creative desire inside, even if it’s wrapped up in grief and failed attempts and even if you’re not very good at it or you don’t know the point or where it’s going, it realllllly deserves to be trusted. It gets to be a source of comfort and power and connection. And if that feels tending to that flame feels confronting and freeing, then I think you’re on the right track.

xx
Maggy

PS: I find that writing a ‘what I know to be true’ list as a way of resourcing from the part of myself that is deeper than fear and overwhelm and disorientation is an extremely useful practice. Name the deeper truth and then live it right now with small and steady might.

“Anytime we do the work of love, we are doing the work of ending domination.” bell hooks