There is a crack, a crack in everything. 

That’s how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Welcome to the second letter in this Sunday series. I am so enjoying the process of writing these each week. I notice that when I have something I'm working on, I seem to put invisible glasses on that allows me to see the world through the lens of the work. Last week everything was observed through a gossamer ray and this week through a diaphanous veil. Much like our perception, these weekly light movements don't create light, they receive light and it is from that reception that the movements begin. 

 

When this letter lands in your inbox, I will have officially entered into a new decade of life. I could look at this through the veil of ‘I’m getting old' and life would offer up a platter of evidence to support my aging state. Or, I could choose another set of eyes, maybe ‘I’ve learned and created so much in forty years, I can't wait to see what I'll learn and create in the next forty'. 

 

Diaphanous finds its roots in the Greek diaphanēs, “transparent” or “showing through”: dia (“through”) + phainein (“to show, bring to light, make appear”).

 

Gossamer was about noticing the nearly invisible threads. 

Diaphanous is more about allowing light through.

 

What might happen if we allowed ourselves to be a little less opaque, less defended, and less determined to know exactly what we're making.

 

I wonder if there are seasons in our creative lives when our job is less to produce and more to allow ourselves to be permeated by everything around us.

 

For me at least, so much of making begins with a demand for clarity.

 

 

 

 

 

Once in a while, inspiration arrives like a spotlight - clear and crisp. 

Other times, it arrives like a shadow on a wall - unfilled and soft.

 

When I think back to making the Garden, so many of the things that eventually became central to the work began this way…not as fully formed ideas, but more as attractions and allowances.

 

It all began with a dream, a wall shadow of sorts, and I took that dream and slowly colored it in. The coloring was informed by a mix of elements ~ an emotion I wanted to evoke, a poem I couldn't stop turning over in my mind, something I'd seen on a walk, an unnamable longing.

 

These things would tug at me long before I understood why. 

 

There is something wonderfully backwards about this.

We tend to think understanding should precede action:

But so often my creative life has asked the opposite of me:

~

There is an important difference between something being opaque and something being translucent.

An opaque surface tells us: there is nothing beyond what I can see.

A translucent one whispers: there is something here though it is not yet clear.

 

Perhaps this is another way of looking at the creative void.

Maybe the void is not a big empty room waiting impatiently for us to fill it…maybe it's a room behind a sheer curtain.

We see movement, subtle forms, changes in light.

We don't know exactly what is in there,

 

An idea. A project. A question. A transition. Something you're making. Something you're becoming.

 

Choose one and loosen your grip on the outcome.

 

If a color calls to you, follow the color.

If a sentence arrives, write beyond it.

If you want to cut something apart, cut it apart.

If you want to rearrange the furniture, rearrange it.

If you find yourself wandering somewhere you hadn't intended to go, wander.

 

And when those familiar questions arrive—

—see if you can replace it with something gentler:

 

 

Perhaps the creative void doesn't always need to be illuminated.

Perhaps sometimes we are the ones standing in the way of the light.