Lately, sitting down at my desk to do any writing feels impossible. I walk up to my desk, pull out my chair, sit down in front of the monitor, and my body has an instantaneous impulse to flee. I catch myself picking up my phone, in the hope that someone wants to connect with me, saving me from the discomfort of writing. I set the phone back down again. Pick it up. No one is texting. Obviously, they are all much more diligent and focused than I am. I go get a fresh glass of water. Check my phone. Get some lemonade. Walk around the house aimlessly. Decide to water the garden, which is parched. Check my phone. Finally, I call a friend to co-work with me on zoom, just to keep me in my chair. Every ounce of my body wants to move somewhere else, somewhere that requires less focus and concentration, where I don’t need to make the words, where I can just enjoy someone else’s writing… preferably in the form of Netflix dialogue. But even with a friend on video nearby, the words are hard to find. If I manage to sit still, it seems unlikely that I have anything helpful to write, I tell myself. I mean, the world is so hard, endlessly heavy. A nap would help, I hear a voice on my shoulder say, and I weigh the pros and cons of abandoning my day to sleep.
I encourage us all to nap.
I also wonder, though, how you are finding new energy for your regular studio practice, for your creative work, and all the support work that your practice requires. Do you think of this work in seasons? Perhaps this summer is a quiet season and you’ll return to your regular studio time in the fall. Sometimes, I tell myself that it is more than enough to get through a day, without also doing any writing. And I believe this (and am empathetic if you also have days that don’t always allow you the time and focus to do your creative work). There are other ways of being in the world that also require our attention: joy, rest, grief, collective gatherings, paid working hours, and caretaking, among others. Perhaps some of these need to take priority for a while.
Alternatively, when these moments of resistance to your practice strike you, is it perhaps a sign that the work you are doing also needs to change? Maybe old forms aren’t holding you as well as they used to, or your ideas need a different kind of attention. (I am writing this as much to myself as to you…) What would it look like if you changed the form within which you were exploring your ideas? (The little voice on my shoulder suggests that dreaming is also a wonderful format for working through ideas, and she is also correct.) But I mean: if you’ve been doing one kind of thing for a while, how would it feel to change that? Instead of painting in oil, trying out gouache; instead of wheel-throwing, doing some slab work; instead of writing essays, muddling around in poetry; instead of performance art, doing some shared meditations. The experiment might be enough to make you wistful for your previous format, eager to get back to it. Or it might guide you into a new medium that you’ve always wanted to explore. Maybe instead of painting, you start doing performance art!
I was talking recently with a painter who has been making herculean efforts to go out into the world and see exhibitions, to meet people, and to share her work with curators and gallerists. This aspect of her practice is important, even though it’s the last thing she wants to be doing. She told me that she was tired of this hustle, eager to just be alone in her studio for the summer. Periods of connection can be as draining, if not more so, than actually making new work. As we spoke, we talked about the rhythms of the connecting part of the work and how they might ebb and flow, leaving space for quiet studio time, while also becoming a more regular part of her working life. In some ways, what we were talking about was allowing these periods of resistance to be moments in which we turn to another aspect of what we do. Instead of writing, what about the support work that nourishes writing? (Again, this very likely includes napping.) This might also include meeting colleagues for a casual conversation, going to a library for some focused reading and research time, updating our websites, or visiting another artist in their studio to see how they are approaching their work this summer.
Another friend who has just finished graduate school and is searching for her first post-grad job, said she was desperate for her creative work to offer her new forms of lightness, playfulness, and silliness, to counteract the daily chore of job-seeking. She began to imagine ways to give herself permission to play in her creative time, something she hadn’t been considering in her work for several years.
What is it that I’m actually saying? (Apart from: we all probably could use a good long nap)? I’m saying that the best way to break down my resistance to writing is to give myself permission to let that resistance become part of my practice, too. When it’s hard to write, that’s also part of the writing and its support systems; the same is true for studio practice. And look, I’ve just written 900 words about how hard it is to write, just by describing the resistance itself!
Sending you warm wishes and hoping your creative work is sustaining you & your communities are embracing you with healthy and caring support,
LA
Also, a book for you:
Looking for a summer novel? I just finished Ruth Ozeki’s newest, The Book of Form and Emptiness. (N.B. In this novel, Ozeki is tackling the question of grief in family, and I want to mention that in case it is not the right time for you to engage with a novel about grief.) In the book, a teenage boy and his mother are both struggling with their mental health, as it appears non-normative and is misunderstood by the people around them. The mother fills the house with piles of things: bags of newspaper clippings, thrift store finds, Ebay purchases, teapots, snow globes, clothes. The objects build a wall between her and the world. But her son is also on his own journey, and he is sensitive to the ways in which things speak to him. The voices of objects pursue him throughout his days: scissors want to cut, a bat wants to bash in a window, words want to be allowed to run free off the page. In particular, the book becomes a dialogue between the boy and the book itself. The book speaks to him as it tells his story, and he responds to its way of writing (and reading) him. Thinking about our creative work as a living and vocal thing in our lives, Ozeki describes the sensitivities we require in order to hear it. It’s a beautiful book, full of gentleness and the radiant aliveness of every thing. Ozeki reads her novels aloud on Audible, if the spoken word fits better into your life. You can also hear an interview with Ozeki on the Ezra Klein show, here (and the transcript of the show is also available online).
Laura August, PhD makes essays and exhibitions, lumpy pots and wild gardens. She has curated more than 20 exhibitions as an independent curator working between the U.S. and Central America. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Mellon Arts + Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, and her writing about contemporary art in Guatemala City has been recognized with an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Alongside her consulting practice for artists and writers, she teaches a process, practice, and professional strategies class for artists at the Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She currently makes her home on the edge of the Chihuahua Desert, and she is the first full-time Curator at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso.