I’m building a daily art-making practice, starting with oil pastel on paper. Yesterday, I made a mark that created a new situation, and when I responded to that situation, I felt something shift inside of me.
It felt like the frequency I’d been tuning into the days prior wasn’t quite right. Maybe I’d almost got it and it was simply too noisy, or maybe it was the wrong station altogether. The wrong music.
That’s what making art (or anything) can feel like though: tuning a radio until you find what it is that you need in that moment (for whatever reason you need it). Something to dance to, or maybe to cry to.
When you find the right station, it doesn’t mean that the next song is going to last forever, nor that they’ll keep playing this kind of music (or even stay on air)—but for now, in this moment, it can be right.
One of my more spiritual/cosmic thoughts is that there’s always some figurative music being played for you specifically, and you can choose to listen to it or not. You can respond to it or not.
The only way that you know if it’s right though, I think, is by actually responding. Trying to dance. Squeezing out a tear. Stepping away from the metaphor briefly, that means actually making something.
If you keep tuning, and you keep making, I think that you’ll find some frequency where things just feel right, and where the thing you’re making feels like the exact thing you should be in that moment.