Igniting Imagination
Rekindling the fire of wild mind and creative play 🔥
The following is only one piece of the puzzle of this age1. But it is an oft-overlooked one, so I’m inspired to speak to it…
What place do play and imagination have in times of unraveling … and the fall of empire? Are we just fucking off, evading or escaping life when we explore the creative impulses of our bodies and voices, play with art, and listen to our dreams?
I think you know what my answer will be. But I’ll say it anyway, in case you need the reminder, or if I have any new perspectives you may not have thought of.
So why do we do these things, even while the world is burning?
It’s not that any one specific practice – dream-tending, movement, artmaking – holds some magic key that is the answer to the world’s ills. Sure, sometimes they can offer inspiration and messages to the people – arts have uplifted many a revolution. But in this moment, what I want to talk about is that in times of unraveling, even for those of us not making commentary art, or who may not consider ourselves “artists,” arts are powerful gateways to keeping imagination alive.
Why is this even important? Because I’m pretty sure one of the fundamental issues humanity has right now (among many) is a crisis of imagination.
Last year, I was in the midst of my own little crisis of imagination, feeling horridly stuck and unsure how to move forward. One little (big!) shift happened thanks to a prompt in an actual dream (and an uncanny flow of circumstances right after): I started painting. Mind you, I have never been what one would call a “painter,” and [with one notable exception] had barely picked up a paintbrush since college.
But I started painting last year just out of curiosity – what was this thing I was being drawn to? I had no aims to get great at it, and it held no specific meaning or purpose – it actually made no ‘sense.’ But I’ve learned (have I said this before? It’s a theme…) that I’d best follow the impulses of my soul, even when they don’t make sense. (Please note that I did say the impulses of soul. The urges of ego and even heart can be a little shiftier.) So I followed the strange breadcrumbs that were being laid before me…
I found myself studying Chinese brush painting in the Po Mo tradition, mostly via Zoom. It was hard and frustrating at first (I swore a lot – thank goodness for the mute button!), but I also know that’s just the way of any new thing, so I made sure to keep studying until I could actually start enjoying the process. (That’s the point to reevaluate, lol – fortunately, by then I was hooked.)
From the onset, painting captured my attention, and before I knew it, even resurrected lost joy. (Oh friends, last year was a hard, dark-soul winter – I needed that!2) Ahhh, there was something so enlivening about tearing art back from the pixels and onto the texture of the page – playing with pigments and water and strange brushes and the awkward movements of my own body… I realized quickly that this was another pathway to wonder – what could suddenly emerge from a few placed strokes, how even ‘mistakes’ had a sort of beauty to them… Being a somewhat messy, spontaneous practice, it’s also been good exercise for my perfectionist tendencies.
But most of all, it brought my thinking mind back to the world, back into flow, and back to the primordial, potential-filled place of soul.
It helped me remember that the arts are gateways – I like to call them portals of possibility. Whether creatively moving our bodies, putting brush to a page, opening our throats and letting out a strange sound – these keep us enlivened, unfrozen3, and they keep our imagination alive – something so desperately needed in these times.
For with so much destruction, and the veils of corruption lifting before our very eyes, I see how poignantly we yearn to meet these times with open and caring hearts, and possibly even find ways to be of service. Often, we jump first into response (which is understandable, and at times essential). But what might happen if we also give ourselves moments to practice and listen from a different place? To step outside of the field of what is occurring, outside of even our best-intended responses … and into the mysterious void – the original birthplace of possibility? Off of the puzzle board and into the wider, wilder web…
Not as an escape – I’m not talking about a bubble bath and a glass of wine4 – but as a different way to engage.
I get it though – in times of unraveling, we crave the safety we’ve lost and long to dive headfirst into the work of repair. We would rather work fast to return to some semblance of stasis than unravel even deeper into the unknown. Perhaps the prospect of creatively playing feels reckless, irresponsible.
But let us remember what dear Albert said,
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” — Einstein
In times of intensity, I too struggle to feel courageous enough to release my grip – so often I hold on tight and keep tangling with whatever problem I’m trying to figure out. (Guess I’m human 😉)
I forget that there is wisdom – a [practical] magic even – in releasing my grasp.
For the epiphanies I seek usually can’t come from the thinking, efforting mind. So they wake me in the middle of the night – not just from dreams, but with liminal thought, a spark of clarity or anxiety between sleep and waking – or they float in from nowhere while I’m dancing or doodling5… or right up from the ground while walking…
For some, opening to this space might happen in meditation, while in nature, or from enough time off the news or social media to finally be bored… (😱) Often that is enough for me. But – and I’m sure there are scientific reasons for this – I’m going to dare say that so-called “artistic” practices sometimes reach into this area of the mind even better.
I once met a scientist who only hired other scientists for his team who also played music 🤔
Dancing, sounding, scribbling – these all ask us to do something tangible, with our bodies or our hands. However skillfully or imperfectly we do any of these things, they do remind us that we are physical beings with actual agency.
They also ask us to take mental leaps, and even risks – with each step, with each paint stroke, we don’t actually know what’s going to happen next. In this way, we open up – however subtly – new pathways to something wider, wilder than what we thought we knew, our mind tracing tendrils and carving new pathways into the wild void of possibility…
Beginner’s mind … unravels so it has the space to re-weave something new.
Methinks we leave this kind of thinking too much to the artists, don’t practice it enough as a humanity. Did you know there was a study of the minds of professional poets that showed that they had adapted an unusual fluidity to toggle between the spontaneous, generative part of the mind (the kind of thinking I’m mostly speaking to here) and the deliberate, editorial part?6
Perhaps we can all take a few steps closer to becoming poets of life, our wild minds more open, adaptable, creative, and capable of interplay with our logical minds.
We certainly see the unraveling in the world as well. But perhaps this is at least partially good news7 – a place of fertile possibility, of new vision.
I don’t live under the illusion that this idea is an easy proposition, or that more than a small handful of us will pick up the challenge – but you and I are here, I think, because we long for these things: to mend, to love, to protect and make more beauty, to care for each other, to be a point of sanctuary in a mad, mad world.
So yes, I propose that those of us who can: let us court this process of both unraveling and re-weaving. Let us remember that life – like art – requires both. Death and birth. Compost and renewal. Perhaps in doing so, we help lay the groundwork for these times to be filled with potential, not just disaster.
At the very least, it’ll probably keep us more awake, curious, and maybe even a bit mischievous. Who knows, maybe from a bit of whimsy will arise some wisdom.
With love, Ariana
p.s. The obligatory invitations to my locals:
We’ve started LAND LISTENING CIRCLES again, monthly (weather depending). You’re welcome to sign up to make sure you get notified, as they generally get announced about 10 days prior, sometimes less.
THE MOVING SOUL starts again this week! To tend the slow emergence from the dreamy, amorphous winter chrysalis time (that we may or may not have gotten to honor), our first session will involve a bit of Authentic Movement – i.e., moving in silence, with the eyes closed, with a witness.
Other pieces might include connection, community collaboration, city- or neighborhood-based systems of resilience, reconnection with the land…
About a year ago, I published ‘Dissolving’ as a post and a podcast. It always sounds so poetic in retrospect, but I can assure you, it’s never easy
I’ve said it before, but Fuck !¢€!
Shout out here to Tressie McMillan Cottom for the reminder that often our exhaustion points to needing less ‘self-care’ and more action. Check out a small clip of her thoughts on this principle here, and follow her kick-ass wisdom on the ‘gram if you’re there. Again, just a piece of the puzzle – we all have to find our own balancing act 🤹🏻♀️
Whole sections of this piece – some of the better ones, lol – came to me while doodling
Love or hate him, this principle just might be worthy of consideration: “Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.” — Trungpa Rinpoche