What year is it in your imagination?
Helping Friendly Newsletter, 03.19.21
This week: past/future/present, mind maps, creative output, and more…
I am reading Lynda Barry’s wonderful collage book What It Is, and I cannot stop thinking about her opening question: What year is it in your imagination? This strikes me as particularly apt following 2020, the year that only an apocalyptic novelist would dream up.
We have done so much searching of late, both forward and backward. There have been healing and hurting, nostalgia for happy times, hopes for better days, and many fears. A deeper reckoning with history and white supremacy is, I hope, seeding new forms of good trouble. In response to COVID, we have re-conceived everything from work to politics to art to religion to school to leisure and beyond. And we continue to make our peace with uncertainty.
It has been a rip-roarin’ adventure for the imagination, to say the least.
Inspired by all of this and by Barry’s style of art-writing, I drew a mind map to explore her question. The piece I created reflects how the imagination oscillates between past and future, but takes root and finds rest in the present. Visually, it reminds me of the Family Circus cartoons that tracked Billy, Jeffy, and Dolly all over house and neighborhood (a.k.a. Bill Keane’s dotted lines). ↓
Field Notes
I love the energy of play that permeates intentional creativity. Along those lines, this project☝🏼reminded me that creativity is not an end, but a generative process. It can be:
therapeutic and generative of healing
inspiring and generative of ideas
generative in the traditional sense of making things
all of these and beyond
If this intrigues you, I encourage you to move towards it. Here are some resources to support that:
A Word
One of many pearls in the recent New York Times interactive, “7 Questions. 75 Artists. 1 Very Bad Year.”:
I think if I could go back in time and give myself a message, it would be to reiterate that my value as an artist doesn’t come from how much I create. I think that mind-set is yoked to capitalism. Being an artist is about how and why you touch people’s lives, even if it’s one person. Even if that’s yourself, in the process of art-making.
- Amanda Gorman, poet.
Book Notes
Thank you to folks who expressed interest in a discussion of Cal Newport’s A World Without Email. There weren’t enough yes votes to manifest an event, but I can still support you. Use this link to set up a private discussion. There will be a form to indicate the number of participants (up to 50, or 1-on-1), tell me about your group, and confirm your intentions around reading. If you don’t have time to read the book first, no problem—I’ll incorporate some teaching into your session.
Treasure Chest
I bet you find a gem! ➔ June Jordan, “Calling on All Silent Minorities” | the Head and the Heart, “Let’s Be Still” | the history of Black management | maps of the most googled artists1 | how to declutter your files | a remote experience generator2 | the use of animals in propaganda | 125 years of the New York Times Book Review | 25 women shaping climate action + congrats to Deb Haaland
Have a great weekend! I’ll see you again soon.
Jenny
Via Azeem Ahkar, Exponential View
Via The Ready, Brave New Work Weekly