Borrow someone else’s words…
When you have no words of your own, borrow someone else's!
I talk about creative self care a lot, and for me, that's not just about engaging in creative activities as a way of caring for myself, it's also about caretaking my creativity itself - finding ways to surround myself with inspiration, so that when I'm tired, or feeling flat, or have run out of words, or I want to draw my way through a challenging feeling, or go on a quest in my art journal to find answers to a particularly tricky question* that life is throwing at me, there is something there to draw from.
* Current tricky questions: 'Why am I here? What's the meaning of life? Who even am I? What's the purpose of my existence?" - just your regular enormous existential conundrums keeping me up at night.
Other people's words are good for lots of reasons - my favourite thing about them is how they offer a perspective that isn't my own. They make me think thoughts in ways my own brain would never have come up with. They throw me in experiences I'd never have. They show me I'm not alone. They give me wonder and awe. And sometimes they turn my head inside out. Which is useful, if sometimes uncomfortable - it's hard to solve a problem in the mindset that created it, as said by some famous dead guy that I'm not going to google right now.
This week, I'm tired, so I'm leaning on other people's creativity to feed and nurture my own. Creativity is a force kind of like love - it's inexhaustible, but kind of like a house cat, it does what it wants and tends to appreciate you more if you feed it.
Here's a few of my favourite sources of inspiration - I think of these like the equivalent of blankets to wrap around my tired soul and my imagination until it feels better.
Fiction. Particularly, fantasy. I love to read - if it were not for the magic of libraries, I would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. Stories are one of the best ways I know to experience things that I'll never come across in my lifetime. And this is particularly true of fantasy, where you can experience completely new worlds, cultures, magic systems, races, landscapes, weather... it's endless. And if you ever want book recommendations let me know, I have many.
Instagram. Social media is the devil, and it's easy to get sucked into doom scrolling, but I've found that a small amount of scrolling my feed that's heavily curated to consist of incredible artists of all kinds sharing their work is an effective way to receive bite size doses of wonder and awe. People are ingenious and they're making some incredible things.
Oracle cards. I love cards with pictures on them. If you know me, you'll know that I tend to find playing cards in the wild, on the ground in random places. Carparks. Lookouts. City streets. Country parks. There's something so magic about tarot cards, oracle cards, regular playing cards - they're like art that you're permitted to touch. Encouraged to touch. And they never run out of stories to tell because they can be arranged and interpreted in so many different ways. Art + stories + not quite knowing what you'll turn up? Wonderful.
One of my most favourite, most confusing decks of cards is Steve Aylett's 'The Trickster Brick'. Sometimes I need something to turn my brain a little bit inside out and these cards have that in spades.
Here are some suggestions from Steve's Trickster Brick that are making my brain hurt (in a good way) today:
Define 'forever'.
Whisper to someone "You didn't hear it from me" and then say nothing.
Establish stupid limits if you must have any.
Invent an imaginary friend. How does it differ from your real friends?
So that's your mission for the week, should you choose to accept it - find one way to expand your idea of what creative self care means to you, and feed your creativity so that it can continue to feed you. If you feel like it, reply and let me know how you like to do that.
And if you'd like to come along to the next art group, that could be a nice way to feed and use your creativity at the same time. Click here for details on the next one.
I hope your day is weird and whimsical, in the best kind of way.