Earlier this year I went through something that ended up being gently life changing. Part of that process was a renewed sense of creativity, something I’d been searching for ever since becoming so greatly immersed in my Matrescence. I was led to remove a sort of dam which had apparently grown at the mouth of my creativity over the past few years, with all sorts of scary and uncertain thoughts and patterns attached to it. Removing that dam was a moment of clarity, but I hadn’t yet realised how much was really about to change.
This slow drip of walking back to myself started by all of a sudden feeling like I wanted to write more than I ever have before. Not music, just words. Not prose or lyric or poetry, just words. Just stream-of-consciousness words. It led me to start writing here, on substack, knowing that I had an opportunity to prove to myself that I could be disciplined and that I could maybe even start something I was likely to continue, if I shared it with the world. It was the first time I’d felt like I wanted to share something totally unedited, unfiltered and without the thought that goes into almost all of my other creative work. Music, after all, at the point of (other people’s) consumption has already been alive for days, weeks, months and sometimes years. It is not a process I was familiar with, but paired with a rather new found ‘fuck-it’ feeling graciously gifted to me by becoming a mother meant that the fire was easily lit.
I had hoped that by writing here regularly it would keep my motivation high to continue, and I’d have a wonderfully honest and real-time record of this year. That did not happen. But in fact, it seems like setting that intention actually gave me more than I was asking for.
I used to think that I was constantly trying to get back to the 17 year old version of me, who used to write through the typical heart-aching moments of being a teenager, with a feeling of freedom and connectedness to my emotions. In reality, I was free, but I didn’t have any of the awareness of the self or the expansion of the mind that growing up (and having babies) brings you. It is one of those clarifying moments when you hold up a younger version of yourself alongside an older one- I realised how glad I am that my ‘music career’ isn’t what I hoped it would be as a 17 year-old. How grateful I am that I’ve had a slow burn to this current state of creative fulfilment.
I think this has been the most creative year of my life. There have been so many different creative experiences but I think the most astounding thing has been the ease with which I have kept going. All my life I have found it difficult to stick to the creative work I have been a part of, whether that be initiated by myself or by others, for myself or for others. The shift I felt earlier this year has unquestionably moved me further toward a place of freedom and enjoyment, abandon and lightness, basically somewhere with less fear.
I recently saw an incredible film directed by a new friend, Polly Steele. After the showing, Polly spoke about what she had learnt from the process of telling Ed’s story (a rugby player who suffered a life changing injury and his journey to ‘recovery’) and her words really resonated with me. Polly talked about never having met anyone who could ‘Flip the switch’ like Ed, in the sense that he believes fervently that he can adjust his perspective on a situation, to make something better. I think that my experience of this year, being thrown against some difficult decisions and into many creative projects, I have learnt simply to tell myself not to fear what is coming. I have learnt to ‘flip the switch’. Of course this is a hugely reductionist approach and cannot be applied to all things in life, but the mere practice of it sometimes shows us what we can face- even when we think we can’t.