Creation Story
Several years ago, I became busy with a simple but profound practice. Make a circle every day. Armed with a stack of three-inch square blank pieces of paper, a single paintbrush, a few colored pencils, and an inexpensive palette of watercolors, I set off following this thread of curiosity, not knowing where it would lead or that this practice would hold me for the better part of three years. The rules were that iI could only make one circle per day. What was made could not be discarded or thrown out at the whims of my liking of disliking it. I could spend as little or as much time as I wanted to on it. If there was a day when the circle-making was skipped, the little white square had to be left blank on one side with the date written on the back. There was no going backward, no return.
From the outside, the task is an effortless thing to do. Yet, as the days passed, I found it surprisingly difficult to maintain, especially in the beginning. I learned that my mind would find many justifications for the streaks of inconsistency. I invented imaginary conditions that had to be met before I could fully immerse myself in the task. This illuminated the feeling that I didn’t have a suitable space or enough time. I navigated this by placing my art supplies beside the kitchen sink. Every morning, when I got up to make my coffee, all I had to do was reach my hand to those objects, and the circle-making could begin.
Once I learned how to navigate my initial struggles, the magic of this practice started to appear, revealing how I am in relation to my creative process and teaching me to trust. I learned that all I had to do was meet the task, and once I began, there was no need for me to strive for creativity. It was already present and built into the design of the practice. I was moving away from the capitalist demand or production, queering it toward my sensation and joy. This freed me. It took away an arbitrary sense of pressure, allowing me to rest in the creation, reviving and inspiring me.
I have come to think of creativity as a tiny flame. There are times when It feels like a far-off whisper in the dark. Turning our attention to the little actions that attend to that flame allows it to breathe and blaze. I have very few circles I didn’t fall in love with from that time. Without intending to create beauty, I was able to be in a new method. Without worrying about the outcome looming, I discovered that the beauty would emerge on its own.