Silence, Stillness, Observation: Creativity In The Pandemic Era

Yellow and black bee rests on a concrete sidewalk — *Worky work, busy bee.*

Even four or so weeks into Pandemic 2020, memes pushing productivity over peace, especially for artists, persist.

I was talking with my friend Irene, co-owner of the amazing local restaurant Dylan’s Oyster Cellar, after she posted a quote by Toni Morrison on the artist’s role during societal upheaval.

First, the quote from the extraordinary Ms. Morrison:

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I have been struggling with my own creative practice since this began, and I know many others who have struggled as well. It has been hard for me to put into words why I react negatively to the quote above, but talking with Irene helped clarify my thoughts around this particular time and place.

This pandemic reminds me of 9/11. When the planes hit, the U.S. stopped. Planes were grounded, people stayed home. For four days the bones of the U.S. were exposed, flesh laid bare in the sunshine.

And for many years after, there was no art surrounding this event. Writers talked about how hard it was to write anything around that day – the risk of trivializing something so catastrophic was high, and there was a kind of respect that silence afforded that words and dance and painting could not.

Even now, art surrounding 9/11 is mostly commemorative, writing is more reportage than creative. It is missing a “call-to-action” element, though, which seems appropriate and thoughtful. After the boo-yah, racist energy of going to war subsided, the creative work from 9/11 is memorial, not activist or nationalist.

This is not to say that coronavirus-specific work isn’t being done, but for some reason there seems to be a sense of social justice-style urgency surrounding this pandemic. Like all artists have to be productive and write towards what’s happening right now, and if you are not working in that way, you aren’t really worth much as an artist.

What about people whose work was not in that style to begin with? I write about love and nature, and I paint abstract impressionist paintings. I believe that love and nature are inherently healing; I don’t need to manipulate those things in order to micromanage healing or connection. I paint intuitively, as many layers as it needs and for however long it goes until it’s “done.” My work is not oriented towards social justice, and it never has been.

But, if I am honest (which I always try to be), I have not felt much of a creative impulse, or rather, the creative impulse I have felt has been different this past month. I have felt a deep need to be in the woods, by the water, away from people. My fellow humans are weaponized with virus right now, and many of them are not exercising the sense god gave a turnip. Avoiding them makes sense to me.

Meanders in nature, looking for edibles and studying them, writing recipes and experimenting with teas and tinctures: this is where my creativity has rested for the past several weeks, and I am here for it. It’s comforting to provide for myself with what’s available, to watch how nature is responding to this strange weather (no winter to speak of and spring temperatures that fluctuate wildly, with fewer flowers bursting, not like 2019’s ostentatious floral gluttony), and to winnow the wheat of my life and relationships from the chaff.

Of course, no one should sail their ship guided by memes on the Instagram, but in the small sphere of my blog I am here to advocate for silence, stillness, and observation.

If you are an artist struggling to find a voice in this time, listen.

If you are normally running yourself ragged with work and school and kids and art, let the stillness settle into mystery.

If you have felt that the world is spinning too fast and all is a blur, watch.

I give you permission to exist in this state of dormancy, like the slow trickle of water under the frozen stream. It’s ok to not be churning out creative work. It’s ok to feel stuck, blocked, stymied, and frustrated.

Everything passes, including this virus and this life and this time.

Silence, stillness, observation: creativity in the pandemic era can take many forms. Let yourself be ok with whatever form yours takes.

Now a question: how has your creative practice changed, if at all, over the past month?

Take care, be well, wash your hands.

What Happens When Trauma Leaves The Body

Can we talk about how last night I taught yoga online in the granniest of granny panties, and IDGAF?

Like, so granny, the kind hospitals give you after you have a baby and leave the hospital, that go all the way from the place where your ass meets the top of the back of your upper thigh to fully grazing the beginning of your thoracic vertebrae?

Yes, THAT GRANNY.

And when I was changing into yoga clothes to teach how it was a decision I made to not change, not into a thong, not even into something less likely to peek out from the back of my activewear, because I am finally realizing what the feeling the world is experiencing is, and I need comfort wherever I can get it?

It’s grief. We are in mourning.

Whether or not you agree with the way the U.S. culture works, and I can assure you that I do not agree with most of it, it is the water we have been swimming in for a very long time, and the tank has sprung a leak.

Following this revelation (I started this particular post around 8 pm Sunday night), I had a massive anxiety attack, the worst in awhile, way back to the days when I used to black out in the middle of them.

This anxiety attack had an additional feature: uncontrollable shaking. I have been known to shiver as an anxiety attack recedes, but this shaking was like having a seizure, only I was fully aware and able to stop long enough to go throw up.

It was so bad, I had to hold my jaw open to prevent me from smashing my front teeth in as they gnashed together (they have short roots, I am informed, and it will only take the slightest nudge to knock them out).

Triggered, is the term, I think. I am triggered.

This shaking may have been trauma, held in my body for so long, trying to make its way out. The linked article (which I highly, highly suggest you read) explores the idea that our brain responds in a very orderly way to disorderly occurrences (like, oh, say, the death of your husband or the stressful unknowns of a pandemic). The reptilian brain kicks into gear when confronted with a stressor of any kind. This keeps us alive when we need to respond, as in when tigers are chasing us.

But what if the tigers are constant – real or imagined – and the rest of the brain is not able to spring into action to process the emotional response or to allow the brain to understand what occurred (the cognitive processing of an event)?

We are literally unable to “shake off” the trauma and our bodies remain primed for action. Conventionally, this is referred to post-traumatic stress disorder.

I have been collecting trauma in and of my body for an entire lifetime.

Being a learning robot and making an effort over a decade to recover and manage, I have been doing all of the right things – going to nature, eating well, attempting to meditate, (finally) managing my access to news and social media – so it is especially disheartening to have this occur.

I have no answers. I don’t know why.

This is not a blog for that.

We are living through trauma. We are surfing an ocean of grief that may or may not have anything to do with losing the life we have now but may instead be a compendium of a lifetime of damage in the body, damage that comes from just getting by, stuffing things down, insisting we are ok.

I am not ok. I am better than some, but even saying that invalidates the sentence before.

I am not ok.

But I am learning. I am here. I am working towards letting go. I am reaffirming what is important. I am developing tools within myself.

I feel at my weakest. I feel I am the strongest I have ever been.

We are all of us swimming in contradiction, far away from land.

For ourselves and for each other: let us be kind and patient. Let us be compassionate. Let us move slowly and lovingly and remember always to breathe.

I am trying.

Walking

So Maryland is now under a “stay-at-home” order, which doesn’t do much extra except to restrict travel in and out of the state and to make it a crime to linger, loiter, or otherwise hang outside of your house in groups larger than ten, closer than six feet. You can still go get food, and you can still walk around outside. You can be arrested and fined for breaking these rules, and you have to be quarantined when you come into Maryland (and you are urged not to leave).