This might be the most honest thing I ever posted to the internet/social media.
A few days ago, after attending a virtual art showcase I was madly writing at 1 am about art and Covid19 and the Earth, expecting it would become an Instagram post. Instagram's caption limit made it so I couldn't quite post everything I'd written and was forced to edit to shorten even though I'd wanted to post it raw, and to make up for it I decided to post my raw writing here with some additional reflections
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The truth
is, I haven’t been writing very much poetry lately. I’ve been more prolific as
an artist than ever before in my life, spending hours and hours on my novel
daily, but the poetry doesn’t come and neither does the photography. I don’t
remember the last time my camera roll went so long without new pictures. And
that’s not by random chance.
It’s hard to
find beauty in the day to day of the world, when the world doesn’t feel very
beautiful right now. Even when you put aside the racism and xenophobia, and add
in the beautiful care and generosity people are showing each other, you can’t
get around the fact that so many people are dying and suffering in a way that
can’t be ignored, and that’s not beautiful. (There’s a whole other conversation
about selective empathy but that’s for another time.) So it feels out of place
to look for beauty in the face of this reality and it certainly isn’t my place
to try to find beauty and meaning in other people’s suffering.
At their
heart, these art forms are how I process emotion. I write a lot of poetry about
pain, and that is where Wuhan is More than the Coronavirus (Breaking out of
the Outbreak) came from; here or there it is the same grief for me and
through processing I was able to move past it. And after processing that, the
poetry seemed to dry up because mostly, my poetry is about beauty, my
appreciation for the beauty in the world. I transmit these feelings to ink and
image to share with you how I feel, how I see things, to make a connection –
there’s a reason that my brand is “See the way Maggie Cees” see the way I see,
because that is what I do; and though, truly, I am grateful for so many things
right now, for the time returned to me, for the art I can create, I also want
to acknowledge that one of us are coming out of this unaffected. It shows in
art in both the quietest and most telling ways.
But that’s
okay. And I truly believe that. Because at the end of this, we will learn and
have learned new ways to be, more at peace with who we are, our place, and the
world. We must not return to normal, but fight to build better – to circular
economy, donut economics, and refusing to let people and planet become
externalities.
This is an
#EarthDay / #EarthDayathome Post because we can use this disruption of the
status quo, however painful it may be now, to dream, dream radically and build
a world that is safe and sustainable for all.
This is a
#Covid19 post, I haven’t shaed much on the topic, because I didn’t quite know,
hadn’t quite found what I wanted to say that felt real and genuine and
meaningful. But I’ve found it now, this is it. And as I am writing this at 1 am
I would like to name a promise that has always been my goal: what I do, the
content I put out is from the heart, real, honest and unapologetically me.
Some powerful addendums both from me and others in the comments, planned and unplanned:
real. I love the comments that follow arguments. It seems like
some of the poet's job is to argue with herself until
she's satisfied with the truth of what she says. Or is that just
obvious? I don't know.
Seethewaymaggiecees: @littleneocreative no I think
that's really insightful and true. Poetry and writing do help
me process, and I've used these tools many times to try to
reach conclusions to questions that felt right to me. To
continue with keeping the "real" "elevated", part of the
reason I wrote that was to make myself feel better about
feeling like I was being fake and trying to understand why
these were things that I was not willing to give up - it was
because I do value online privacy and I didn't want to
pour out my heart and have no one see it, because having
people see it and hopefully helping people was why I did
it in the first place. I also think a lot about the pressures to
be a perfect artist or activist and the harm that does
because that isn't accessible and that it's important to me
to create more space for imperfection. Maybe the biggest
reason I wrote that, though, was because I wanted to call
out Instagram a little in a subversive art-critiques-power
way haha.
Some powerful addendums both from me and others in the comments, planned and unplanned:
Seethewaymaggiecees: wrote this at 1 am because the best writing happens at 1 am 😉 and I was very inspired by an art showcase I’d been a part of the night before. I was particularly influenced by what @littleneocreative said about the impacts of COVID19 on their art, and @annacyanstudio about how art captures powerful moments and emotion.
(It was really so powerful to see the way the colour had literally leached out of the art by @littleneocreative)
Seethewaymaggiecees: But let’s
kick the realness up a notch. This is Instagram, even when you aim to “get
real” here, there are still aspects that are curated. I didn’t just take a
picture to share I took 8 and chose the one I liked best. I pair this content
with a photo of me, to connect, because it’s coming from me, but I also know
Instagram likes faces and showing my face is an excellent way to get likes, get
my feed in front of new people. I spent all this time thinking up 30 relevant
hashtags, again to reach more people. I am being real, but these are the
aspects I am choosing that are also disingenuous and I want to acknowledge that
too. In the end, I don’t have to be completely vulnerable with the internet, I
get to value privacy and keep some things for me and people I am close
with. I’m being, choosing to be genuine
imperfectly, imperfectly genuine.
littleneocreative: @seethewaymaggiecees Oooh. See, that's real. I love the comments that follow arguments. It seems like
some of the poet's job is to argue with herself until
she's satisfied with the truth of what she says. Or is that just
obvious? I don't know.
Seethewaymaggiecees: @littleneocreative no I think
that's really insightful and true. Poetry and writing do help
me process, and I've used these tools many times to try to
reach conclusions to questions that felt right to me. To
continue with keeping the "real" "elevated", part of the
reason I wrote that was to make myself feel better about
feeling like I was being fake and trying to understand why
these were things that I was not willing to give up - it was
because I do value online privacy and I didn't want to
pour out my heart and have no one see it, because having
people see it and hopefully helping people was why I did
it in the first place. I also think a lot about the pressures to
be a perfect artist or activist and the harm that does
because that isn't accessible and that it's important to me
to create more space for imperfection. Maybe the biggest
reason I wrote that, though, was because I wanted to call
out Instagram a little in a subversive art-critiques-power
way haha.
---
I think the reason why it's so easy to work on my novel when other art is hard is because it's an escape - my characters can still touch each other, breathe together, be together.
Interestingly enough, even before all this happened I explored the importance of touch in my work, in this novel, my characters live in a world where they can be killed if a being called a Soul Stealer touches them and that is subversive to life, in a poem I wrote called Skin Colour I call for looking at the appreciation of what skin does, how it is part of the sense of feeling to heal from insecurities about skin colour. Touch is so important to human beings - last night I dreamed about hugging my friends - and it really breaks my heart, that during this time of virus we are unable to comfort each other with touch - hugs, and hand holding, and even a supportive pat on the shoulder.
Until we can all come together again, I leave you with my words and the promise that I would love to give you a hug when this is all over.
I think the reason why it's so easy to work on my novel when other art is hard is because it's an escape - my characters can still touch each other, breathe together, be together.
Interestingly enough, even before all this happened I explored the importance of touch in my work, in this novel, my characters live in a world where they can be killed if a being called a Soul Stealer touches them and that is subversive to life, in a poem I wrote called Skin Colour I call for looking at the appreciation of what skin does, how it is part of the sense of feeling to heal from insecurities about skin colour. Touch is so important to human beings - last night I dreamed about hugging my friends - and it really breaks my heart, that during this time of virus we are unable to comfort each other with touch - hugs, and hand holding, and even a supportive pat on the shoulder.
Until we can all come together again, I leave you with my words and the promise that I would love to give you a hug when this is all over.
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And here is the original Instagram post for you to peruse:
And here is the original Instagram post for you to peruse:
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