creativity

A Deep Attachment To This World

| Sheree

“The most sublime act is to set another before you.” William Blake, Proverbs of Hell

Let me honour you. Hold you up to the light. Explore, examine and praise your simple beauty, your blessed grace.

Shiny, hard nut. Chestnut. Conker. Like my heart, you will soften and give under the right conditions, under the right love.

Who do you belong to? Where do you belong? I ask you, but really I ask myself.

It’s rude to stare, to touch but I’m attached to you whether I want to be or not. We are both citizens of the Earth. This Earth.

I’m not alone in this world I’m connected to you. Chestnut to brown. Brown to chestnut. Skin to skin. We are kin.

And I feel your hurt too.

In the Earth of her Voice is the Remnants of Fire

| Sheree

If I allowed curiosity and love to seep through the wounds, I wouldn’t be here now at the page trying to make sense of it.

A black girl walks through the meadow, enters the dark woods and forfeits her life. And I can’t but think if she was white …

Trust. Always difficult for me to hold, like light on burnt leaves. Like the coming of winter any day now.

The race talk, an accumulation of cautionary tales told through time, she, with earth in her voice, filled the void of rage with what was right for her soul. Joy.

My Mother was the Moon, the Earth, the Song

| Sheree

As I pull into the roadside drenched in memory, I practice breathing. Cycle through the minutes trying to gain ground.

She was silence behind her smiles. Behind her ample flesh. I burnt down our bonds because she dropped before her time.

I’ve too much fire to ever accept her truth. Too much sense to feel the moon held her fullness.

Late into the night standing by the window, she waited for my return. Without fail. I took her love and joy without a backward glance.

I am dark. Too dark. But meaning comes with the light. My own light, learning to shine from the inside out.

I wish she had her chance. I take her picture sitting in the grass amongst the trees and seal it into memory.

The earth she could not give me. She didn’t know how as she laughed her soul into existence.

I am red. All of it. And not at all. But with eyes wide open, body claiming space daily, I listen to her song and bathe in the moonlight.

In the dark with my own sacredness

| Sheree

So I close my eyes. Allow the dark to fill. Feel flaky dust around my ankles and know they are ashes.

Everything has burnt down. To leave fertile ground from which to stand. To rise. But when?

I am indigo. I am not indigo. The stars are not enough. And yet they draw my eyes and heart.

I came close to love reaching from the shadows of a mountainside where women of my family fell.

Memories and pain etched on the skin of my bones, I know what I need and want but I don’t know how or who.

Raw, I cannot dream enough colour to hold me. And yet ripe full of longing, I walk the landscape holding my power with an open heart and listen to the blood rain blooming.

if Only I Was Creative

| Sheree

“A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life”

Elizabeth Gilbert

I do believe that we’re all creative at our core. It comes down to just some of us listening to our core, providing space and time for our creativity to makes itself known and seen.

So when I think how I’m expressing my creativity these days, straightway I think I’m not creative at the moment. Coming off the back of the BALTIC commission, I’m tired and exhausted. And I really don’t have an external deadline or event to be working towards. So the outward facing, showing some of creativity is not present. That is if I’m falling into the comparison trap or looking at what at the end product and not being satisfied with the result or allowing fear to creep in and ask, what am I doing?

At this point, I have to check myself, as this script I’m running is not necessarily true. I’m {BEING} creative everyday when I turn up to the page to write in my visual journal. I’m pushing around feelings, thoughts, ideas and inspiration within these pages that at some point morph into something else. I’m facing my fears on the page. I’m living a creative life through the conversations I have with strangers while walking a dog, to the food I put into a soup, to the choices I make around how I adorn my body each day.

All of these practices, ways of being, are nourishment for my soul, are creative endeavours to keep me honest with myself. make be vulnerable at the same time as empowering.