In the listening

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

‘Underwater’ diptych, paper collage, 2023

I’ve been quiet lately. My intention is to send emails weekly, but sometimes life asks for listening. Sometimes I’m working through something and - more important than filling your inbox and checking off a “to do” - I want to be intentional and honest with this space and with what I create.

I feel honored to be here. Thank you for letting me be here.

And here, in the listening, you have to really tune in. At times it sounds like nothing is there. You look around and it’s dark. But you have to just keep listening. Maybe that’s the trick. Don’t let the silence or the darkness fool you into thinking nothing is there.

Something is always there.

And whatever is there — get it down. Write down the bones, as Natalie Goldberg said. Just get it down. A bullet point, a mark, a shitty sketch. Move your hand and keep it moving. Just get something on paper.

It’s not that serious and it has things to tell you.

The other day ‘Our Real Work’ by Wendell Berry jumped to mind:

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Those last two lines - read them again.

It’s hard to be in the listening. It’s wildly uncomfortable to wait and work through a thing and not have an answer for a thing. But certainty is more of a stopping point than anything and there is a baffling aliveness in not-knowing.

And the stream, the stream is also alive and it doesn’t stop. When it hits a rock, it finds its way over or around. It makes a new song.

It can’t make a new song without the impediment and so, as uncomfortable as it is, when we’re working through a thing if we can sit with it, stick with it, stick with the flow, if we can flow with it, let go into it, listen to it, say thank you to it, then maybe - no, then definitely - at some point, we will make our way beyond it and we will be a new thing with a new song to sing.

So just get it down. Get anything down. A word, a sketch, a note, a bad idea. Use verbs, use crayons, use your body, use whatever is there. Create and make and scream and surrender and you will be led. Down the stream, into a new thing.

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Do you have a copy of my love-letter-mini-zine, Dear Creative yet? It’s free and I want you to have one. Take a look.

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If you’re in and around Ojai this weekend, come hang with me at Mary’s studio. DM me for details or find the map to her house.

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Jump + Pray,

Joce

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