Jumping off the cliff
A new year, a new start. Zainab Sumu, Julia Shepley, Jamaal Eversley, Adria Arch, and Matt Brackett share how they begin to create.
This morning, befogged after a wild December, long nights, and holiday frenzy, I sat with a stuffed animal and spoke aloud.
Once, there was a young courier on a mission traversing an enchanted forest, I told my stuffie. My eyes were closed. My cat snoozed on my lap. And the courier, after long travail through the dark forest, came upon a deep bed of moss, soft and calling. Sleep overcame her, and she found herself grounded and cozy upon the earth and at the same time untethered, floating among the stars.
The stars, swirling in great clusters, sang deep, intricate stories full of heroes and beasts, dread and possibility. The courier felt these stories tingling in her fingers and toes, swelling under her ribs, rushing in bursts up and down her spine, but she could not comprehend them. She sensed their enormity. She sensed that she stirred within the stories as much as the stories stirred within her. But it was too big for one person’s small, focused mind to parse. Rather, the courier felt like an ingredient in a vast recipe, tossed within the bowl of the stories, among the starlight and the galaxies, not yet cooked.
I followed the thread of the tale as it unspooled, and in my fog, I felt comforted. The story has not ended. We can’t push clarity. We don’t know what’s next.
That’s why, for New Year’s, I invite artists to explain how they begin, how they move from nothing to something, how art and meaning coalesces from fog. This year, as the world whirls faster than ever and we find ourselves on the cusp of great societal shifts, it seemed important to also ask them how to begin when everything feels complicated and chaotic. Each of these artists honors an aspect of life (and art) that supports awakening. Matt Brackett is a beacon for story and its frictions, Zainab Sumu for weaving in the wisdom of ancestors, Julia Shepley for the potency of shadow, Adria Arch for embodiment and spirit, and Jamaal Eversley for collaboration and community.
Here’s what they wrote.
