OF MY CREATIVE ECOSYSTEM
How We Live Now with Katherine May on Season 5, Episode 5, “Amy Jeffs on ancient stories and new understandings”
Something I found interesting was Amy Jeff’s distinction between myth and folklore. She describes myth as political and cosmological and folklore as personal.
Her book looks lovely (she did the woodcuts herself) and I’ll be keeping an eye out in bookshops while I’m in London.
I started reading How We Might Live by Suzanne Cooper on my retreat. It’s a biography of Jane & William Morris exploring how Jane was entwined in William’s creative process.
Right now I’m fascinated by the clues that they were both neurodivergent.
Check out this quote about what sounds like shifting hyperfixations,
“When I first knew Morris nothing would content him but being a monk, and then he must be an architect, but when I came to London and began to paint, he threw it all up and must paint too, and then he must give it up and make poems, and then he must give it up and make window hangings and pretty things, and when he had achieved that he must be poet again, and then he must learn dyeing and lived in a vat and learned weaving and knew all about looms, and then made more books and learned tapestry, and then wanted to smash everything up and begin the world anew, and now it is printing he cares for and to make wonderful rich-looking books: and all things he does splendidly: and if he lives the printing will have an end, and he will do, I do't know what, but every minute will be alive?” Edward Burne-Jones (p. 6)
Also signs of hyperlexia (early self taught reading),
“He claimed that he learnt to read when he was little more than a toddler, and to have worked his way through Walter Scott’s novels by the time he was seven.” (p. 11)
Davy & I are both hyperlexic and seemingly Robert Jordan as well.
He’s also referred to as fidgety, struggling with spelling, and having outbursts that sound very much like meltdowns,
“boisterous mad outbursts and freaks, his uncontrolled body breaking the spell.'“ p. 33
“He was over-active, loud and bustling.” p. 91
I’ve also become fascinated by brass rubbing - a process of doing wax rubbings of engravings in churches. William Morris (WM) decorated his lodgings with these as he was fascinated by the medieval period. This knight is from a church in Oxford and likely part of Morris’ collection.
Here’s a video of how the process works.
Some churches now have replica’s available for rubbing. I’ll be looking into brass rubbing at St. Martin in the Fields when I visit London later this month. (Thanks to Richelle for pointing this out!)
You can see brass rubbings tacked to the wall in this sketch by Edmund Jones who lived with WM.
What originally started as a “chronofile” morphed to an “artist log” and then a digital garden or “compost heap.”
Here’s how that process evolved.
First, I wrote about my note taking practice and idea to start a microblog called a chronofile here.
This experiment is a effort in developing my own note taking process. I wrote a bit about it here. Since I’ve started using Obsidian I’ve been creating daily notes. What I’m experimenting with is starting each week with re-reading those notes and curating the bits I want to keep and share in a forward facing commonplace book.
I’ve been documenting and sharing in some form or another for almost 10 years. What I want is to find a sustainable way to do this that lives on my own website and doesn’t rely on a third party (like Substack, Patreon, Tumblr, or IG.)
Some weeks may be lengthy and others may be short.
I’m attempting to recenter my creative practice.
If this feels cyclical that’s because it is.
My creative orbit spiralling closer and closer to something that’s right for me.
When throwing pottery on the wheel you have to center it first.
The pot builds around the center of mass and if that isn’t the center of the wheel you get a wonky pot. I’m actually not very good at centering clay, but we won’t dwell on this. I haven’t been able to throw pottery since Davy was born due to chronic pain.
That’s the last time I tried to throw a pot. My hands should be controlling the clay not the other way around. I also have a connective tissue disorder that makes this extremely difficult. (I really need one of these.)
The same thing can happen when artists share our work online.
Something still feels “off” about creating for Substack. Over the last 10-15 years I’ve seen platforms come and go. The places that we gather and connect online change and immigrate. The more I think about this the more I want an archive of my writing on my own website.
At the same time, I value the community and comments I find on platforms like Substack. With that in mind I am experimenting with writing for my own blog and cross posting to Substack. (For technical reasons it works MUCH better this way than the other way around. But it’s also a nice reframe about who I’m writing for and why.)
Right now I’m experimenting with a second Substack publication where I can cross post entries in my “Artist’s Log.”
Like a Captain’s Log, but for art.
This is an outgrowth of moving my hybrid note taking practice into Obsidian. I’ve been using it for a month now and it works brilliantly with my particular magpie brain.
So here we are.
I’m essentially turning my blogging process inside out. I’m recentering on my own creative practice. Then cross posting that to Substack. It’s a subtle difference, but it feels like a powerful one.
I’m also rooting more deeply into what I find interesting rather than guessing what you want to read.
Eclectic weirdos are invited to hang out and chat in comments here or subscribe for weekly emails.
