A Cuddly Approach to Reality
Today’s Prompt: V - Valley
TEN MINUTE ARTIST PROMPT
V - Valley:
"They saw a valley far below. They could hear the voice of hurrying water in a rocky bed at the bottom; the scent of trees was in the air; and there was a light on the valley-side across the water."
I picked up from where I left off reading Meditations for Mortals.
In the Chapter titled ‘A good time, or a good story’, Oliver Burkeman (of 4000 weeks fame) speaks about how when we engage with the world, we either get a good time or a good story. It’s a spirit of adventure, antithetical to a spirit of control that comes with embracing unpredictability.
I’ve seen a pattern from my experience in startups where overtime investors who once valued the creative potential of an endeavour, eventually tried to exert more and more control over situations.
Quarterly board meetings, became monthly and eventually weekly. The result is so much of each employees job was creating reports rather than results, slowing progress and innovation.
As artist, we also risk trying to exert too much control over our creative practices.
If the point of creating something is to post it on social media, I think we might really be missing something. What then is the point? The point is to walk and allow the way to appear.
To play.
To go down rabbit holes and see where they lead us.
To engage with your creative work, not so much to wrestle a preconceive outcome, rather to explore what outcomes might be possible with your particular contribution of time, energy and experience.
Oliver goes on to say;
“In short, the more we try to render the world controllable, the more it eludes us; and the more daily life loses it’s… resonance, it’s ability to touch, move and absorb us.”
Oliver is quoting the German social theorist, Hartmut Rosa here. Rosa talks about a precise feeling evoked with this kind of relationship with reality — boldly, yet never knowing how it would respond, he reaches for the perfect term and chooses; anschmiegsamen which translates to, cuddly.
When you do your drawing today, would you try this cuddly approach? What could you do to approach your work more cuddly, leave a comment?
