This is the third and final instalment for da:ze our monthly resident artist, it have been wonderful findout out about how they work and how they used this residency in their practice.

alchemy of shards

over the past two issues we have trained our attention to expect discovery and revelation wherever we are. we learned to treat our archives with reverence for they possess infinite possibilities for synthesis.

now it’s time to talk about said synthesis.

i came to believe after years in an unsatisfying career and teaching myself to be an artist that we don’t really consciously choose who to be. we are revealed to ourselves through our actions and how the fruits of these actions are received by others. the only conscious choice we are offered is to either accept this as our vocation or try to fight against this pull. how successful such a fight is destined to be i’ll leave for you to decide for yourselves. 

so here you are surrounded by all the shards collected through a variety of conscious and unconscious tactics. they orbit your mind waiting for a shared body to find rest in. what do you do? 

first, you listen. and listen very patiently for shards rarely yell. they whisper. let their whispers resonate in your soul without forcing them into a particular shape. 

find minds you trust. share the whispers with them. chances are their shards have whispered them in a similar direction. this act is akin to showing your box of trinkets to a childhood friend. be generous in your exchange. 

in the process of communication you translate the whispers into your own voice making shards sing in your key. time to put this song to work. 

let me share an example of how i found a thread that led me down the poetry route. 

i didn’t know i was a poet. i didn’t believe i could be one. i barely understood what poetry actually was. one night a couple years ago i was coked out with a friend. as it often happened in such situations we started reading poems we knew by heart to each other. in the middle of this sweet bohemian nightmare, with my confidence artificially boosted, i read her a text i had scribbled in my notes app a few weeks prior, something i typed out to live through an intense bout of overwhelming anxiety. she called it a poem. recognition. revelation. 

fast forward to present time. i have learned to use my words as a vehicle to shape my experiences and got confident enough to call these shaped movements of soul poetry. inspired by a variety of spoken word works (in particular “violet bent backwards over the grass” by Lana Del Rey) i decided to try out a similar approach. thankfully i have a friend whose skills are perfectly suited for such endeavors. we tried it out one day and decided to perform together. in preparation we brought more musicians on board.  to saturate the performance i created live visuals to accompany the sound. last week we performed again to an adoring audience. collaboration. synthesis. release. 

creative process is never linear. it relies heavily on tapping into the intertwined nature of glimpses, whispers and revelations. you have to learn to listen, to create space in your life for revelation to enter. it takes discipline and practice and honing your skills for the song of your soul to shine through. it is magic. and it is right here at your fingertips. 

Through our voices, we bring out sounds from the mountain beneath the soul. These sounds are words. The world is full of words. There are so many talking all the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on TV, on radio, in the paper, in books. The noise of words keeps what we call the world there for us. We take each other's sounds and make patterns, predictions, benedictions and blasphemies. Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call the 'world' together. Yet the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates. Everyone is an artist. Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.

John O’Donohue “Anam Ċara”