NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

I’ve been home now for 5 weeks and what a glorious time it has been, with 2 visits to the emergency room, 3 viruses, 1 cut pinky toe, small home improvements by my wonderful friend, delicious dinners, sleeping till 7 and taking care of my plants. I’m still reading the obituaries to see if any of my residents have passed on since I left. It’s also been a time of idleness, where I seem to move from chair to chair and not really getting anything “done” per say. I realize more and more each day just how tired I am, and I wonder to myself how on earth I worked full time while generally adulting and taking care of 3 other human beings.

I was thinking back to a conversation with my Thesis advisor many moons ago about the day to day with my Thesis advisor and I distinctly remember discussing the way in which someone he knew put fruit away. It was as if the fruit was part of the palette that she was painting with and the window sill, the bowl, all canvases. As I rethink what Creativity means to me, it seems important that these things are all recognized as a part of it; the way we make our beds, the way the blanket is folded on the couch, the careful game of Tetris I play trying to get the fruit on the tray. The question is, can it be enough some days to just let those things be just that? When my first child was born, I experienced this creative transference because I stopped preforming. But there were forces in me looking for ways to be creative and it came out in the way I prepared food. I taught myself how to can, make jams, bake cakes. At the time, I didn’t realize what was happening. I needed to feel like I was creating something, and it came out by the things I fed my family.

For a long time now, I have believed in how we placed things in our house as a representation of who we were as people. As I came home from work each day, the house was looking as worn down as I felt. Holes where the wallpaper is peeled off by the 5 year old, stained grout from the tweenager’s make-up explorations, dents in the walls, caulking come undone in the shower, the paint as ashen and grey as the dark clouds that hang over us. As my dear friend and houseguest repairs, refreshes and updates the house, it seems as though it is also a repair of my soul, my innermost workings being represented in the space that holds us as a family. I love this house, and it is starting to show.

It seems timely that this is happening during the early stages of Spring, my most favourite season, when things are just about to begin again. I think about the creative spark in the earth, the burgeoning that is taking place under the soil and the things that are about to take place above ground. Can we let this be part of our creative lives as artists? Can we honour the creative forces that it takes to run a household, raise children and carve out our passions without apologizing for our lack of productivity? I’m waiting to see what my idleness brings.

xx