Stasis in the Plague Time
/You may have noticed that I didn’t blog on Monday as is my wont. I had one of those Brain-in-Captivity days where nothing would come out of said brain. It was rough.
What I wanted to write about was a comment from a Lichtenbergian who follows me on Twitter. I had posted a quote from the chapter on RITUAL,
and she replied that she needed to reread that chapter, because getting into that space was hard now. Indeed it is hard, and I thought, you know what, I need to reread that chapter as well, just to see if I can figure out how to make getting into my own creative space these days easier, or at least less of a struggle.
So yesterday morning I printed out the 15 pages of the chapter on RITUAL and headed out to the labyrinth to read and make notes. Here are some random thoughts.
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A reminder of the shape of RITUAL:
Invocation
Drawing the circle
Taking the path
Numen/Connection
Breaking the circle
Benediction
Two of the phases of RITUAL seemed important to me in thinking about why we are stuck in this gray neverland.
INVOCATION
“We need some kind of call to our brains to get to work.” [p. 75]
In normal times, the main thing stopping us from making that call is the fear of failure, that we won’t be able to MAKE THE THING THAT IS NOT perfect. I don’t think that it’s the fear of failure that is stopping most of us these days, though.
The fact is that we’re all affected by the pandemic and our Captivity: fear of the disease, either for ourselves or our loved ones; boredom, with its mind-numbing tentacles; frustration at not having access to all the things we’re used to doing or had planned to do or would like to do.
I’ve written before that for me it’s been a combination of not having an audience (not that I had much of one before) and a bizarre fear of Doing All The Things and having nothing left, which is ridiculous on the face of it.
But my paralysis is real: I think about getting to work on the fence art project or the lizard decoration project, and my brain just stops. It’s all part of that existential dread that is the result of a society’s being thrown into chaos and uncertainty.
If life is on hold/in stasis, why would our art not be as well?
NUMEN/CONNECTION
If there’s no AUDIENCE, is there art? I know this has been critical for our performing artists, and there have been valiant efforts at maintaining theatre/opera/dance/music performances — but we all know it’s not the same.
Even for non-performers, though, we’re missing our scenius, if not our very jobs and careers. We are lacking connection to others.
Recently I proposed to the burners who attend Alchemy Burn that I would create a placement map for our burn, a fantasy/fiction, co-created by everyone who registered a theme camp or art project for this AlterAlchemy. None of it had to be real or even practical; just make up a fun thing and submit it.
I saw it as opportunity to connect with our AUDIENCE as an expression of hope for connection, hope for return to a world where our art is more than a transfer of electrons from one screen to another. But the hippies have largely ignored the idea, and some have said that they can’t bear to participate because it reminds them too much of what we have lost.
We are starved for connection.
AND SO…
What is to be done? I have a couple of suggestions.
In the book I talk about my three main RITUAL spaces for creating: my study, my comfy chair in the living room, and outside in the labyrinth by the fire pit. As I was reading through the chapter, it dawned on me that I was following my own RITUAL, entering into my creative space just as I had described it to the world in my book.
So take another look at your RITUALS. What did you do in the Before Times when you wanted to work? Can you take just the first step to start the process? For me, the solution was to revert to an old work pattern: print out the text and retreat to the labyrinth, and lo! the circle was drawn.
Or has what worked for you Before become unavailable or impractical? Can you acknowledge that, and then — Marie Kondo-like — let it go? Can you find a new INVOCATION, one that allows you work while in suspension, as it were?
Or maybe you need a new way to DRAW THE CIRCLE, if your regular time and space have been disrupted by working/schooling from home?
It may not be possible, any of it. We live in a world where very few of the old rules apply, at least for the time being, and so you can be forgiven if what you were doing before, the THING you had been MAKING, no longer seems to fit.
It’s okay if you stop. It’s okay if you wait. It’s okay if you don’t want to make anything different for this new reality. You don’t have to.
Kanban
One final thought: if your brain won’t enter the liminal space because it keeps nagging you that “you haven’t finished XXX,” “you need to XXX,” or “remember to XXX,” then it’s time to kanban all that.
I’m not going to rehash all that here. You can read about it here and my most recent brain hack here.
