When Powerless, Make Art.
On the insanely desperate pain of caring about something so much, you grasp.
This is a reader-supported publication. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! If you’d like to become a paid subscriber and support this work financially, I’d really appreciate it!
Listen to the audio version here.
There I go, I’ve gone and ruined it.
You’d think you can’t ruin a piece of writing by taking it in the wrong direction, because there’s a backspace bar. I can’t tell you the days and ways for which I wish there was a backspace bar. Getting the words down is like holding onto the tail of a wisp. If you go too far, if you hesitate, if you go stumbling down a fox hole, it slips out of your hand.
And the page goes cold.
Sure, you can resuscitate art. Give it heart to heart. Mouth to mouth. Blow the unseen into a shape that satisfies at least one of your aches. Make a prayer out of it. A plea. Exorcise the anxieties that exert control. I don’t want to control my children, I just want to control everything around them so they’re safe and free and by my children I mean everything I love and by everything I love I mean my children and by my children I mean my wildest dreams and by my wildest dreams I mean my children.
When powerless, make art. When afraid, make art. When in love, make art. When desperate, make art. When lonely, make art. When angry and terrified and bewildered, make art. When making art, make art.
Make half-formed art, like contorted limbs reaching for a stretch, like ferns flirting with spring. Make art that’s pedantic and cliché. Make art that makes your skin crawl with embarrassment. The kind that’s not quite right and not quite it, that’s not quite you and doesn’t do justice to the talent you hope you have. The kind that taunts you with the limits of your skill or imagination, that explodes your interior with exasperation while you wrestle and wrestle and wrestle with form.
Make art that reveals the breadth and limits of your faith.
Make art that your mom hangs on her fridge.
It’s 3 am and I’m on my knees. I wish this was the beginning of a slutty story, sloppy and free.
This kind of surrender is a plea. A purge. Plunging prayer hands, temple of doom style penetration into the desperation that lives in my body, and I’m begging the god of anyone’s understanding to pull it from me. Get. It. Out. Like those teen years spent head bowed in the toilet praying to be thin, food like demons, a thought loop on repeat, get out, get out, get out. Learned rejection of nourishment, expelling what holds me up as though my will, as though control, as though grasping has ever been what got me through.
My octopus arms reach in every direction for what to blame, for something to soothe. I am to blame and unsoothable as I flail and fail to hold onto the vows I made when I became a mother. Grasping, gripping the wisps so tightly they slip away.
When powerless, make art. Make art when you’re drowning, make art until you’re free. Make art as a prayer, as a beggar, as a plea.
Want to make art together? Come in close. The Creative Cauldron, spring season, is open, bubbling, warm and welcoming. If you can’t make it for the whole season, but want to join for a one-day virtual Creative Retreat, check out all the details here.
P.S. If your financial world feels shaky or tender right now, my dear friend Kate Northrup is hosting a free 3-day workshop called Good with Money, and it starts this morning (April 17th at 12pm ET). She’s teaching how to weave together emotional safety and practical systems so that money can become something steadier, kinder—even nourishing. You can join here.
❤️❤️❤️
oh Che I LOVED this - I felt moved and inspired - especially listening to you read it - thank you