The Well

Dear reader,

It was ambitious of me to think I could keep this up once a week. I started a few different topics over past month and always ended up tapering off for one reason or another, either because there wasn’t much meat there or that it was too big a subject for a couple of paragraphs in a silly little email. Perhaps I’m thinking about it too hard. I decided to just write what’s on my mind this time and see what comes out.

What I’m thinking about today is the time between making things. It used to be easy for me to mistake these lulls for a lack of ideas, which of course would send me into a flurry of worrying that I’d never make anything ever again. Now I tend to recognise them more for what they really are–times of rest and reflection, some breathing space to consider things and plant my little seeds. Rest gets a bad wrap, I think. It's often conflated with laziness, for if nobody can see what you are doing then you must be doing nothing and doing nothing is bad! I suppose it can be bad, depending on the context, but in the case of work and life, I think doing nothing can be glorious. A luxury, to be sure–I know not everyone can afford to do nothing. I try to do it as much as possible and not feel guilty about it. But to lounge around in bed, reading or watching tv or looking out the window, I truly can’t think of anything better.

The Artist’s Way, which I did for a little while, has this section that really resonated with me (and believe me, not all of it did). It was the bit about filling the well, some of you might be familiar with the concept. What she means by filling the well is that you have to consume things from outside of yourself to create your art. It doesn’t just appear out of thin air, you feed yourself the things that inspire you and then you live with them and draw from them when the time is right. It can be going to look as some flowers in the park or visiting a gallery or watching a movie, anything really, whatever you want to do. All those things that you put into the well will help your creative process, they help the ideas germinate into something you can use. I like the idea because it gives some meaning to the in-between times.

My plan for today was to fill the well. I wanted to go into the city to see the Bernd and Hiller Becher show and the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, North Carolina at the Met, and then I was going to see Bernie Kaminski’s marvellous paper maché sculptures at Turn Gallery. But alas, I didn’t realise the Met was closed on Wednesdays. Instead, I went for a run in the park and ate a sandwich and watched some tv in bed. For me, both types of days fill the well.

I hope you will find some time to fill the well this week, to have a rest and look at something nice–not because you deserve it for working so hard, but because it is a necessary part of life.

Until next time.

xoxo

Emilie