Tuning in to Objects, Essays, and Ideas
“Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you’re not. But going below the surface too, it’s an active process. It’s not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that sound waves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you’re tuned out, then you’re not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.”
Pauline Oliveros
Dear Reader,
I am starting to believe I have compiled enough ideas, materials, and objects for my next projects, essays, books, and workshops. I feel filled to the brim, having gathered all Summer and finding myself moving into Fall with my ingredients indexed, my thoughts simmering like soup, my bookshelves overflowing with texts.
It is no mystery to me that I love to accumulate. A bookstore feels like a place where I find my kin and my ancestors, wanting to take them home with me. I love fashion and dressing a certain way so I love to thrift and shop at vintage stores and find treasures. I love to read and listen to podcasts to bring in new knowledge. I am a hungry ghost, looking to fill the spiritual hole that lives inside of me - and in this time of life I am parsing out which parts of this process are beautiful and which fall into addictive spending and consumption.
I feel full right now, meandering through life knowing that to bring in more books I would need another bookshelf. To bring in more clothes I would need another closet. To bring in more ideas I would need another brain.
What if the work now isn’t to gather more, but to tend to what has already been gathered. To alter the clothes, gift the books I have read or will never open, bring things to the Women’s Resource Center to donate. Perhaps it is time for a clothing swap or a tiny garage sale. I feel the projects that already exist - like my 366 day prayer book Look About You - want to be recorded as an audio book. Some of my favorite essays want to be rearranged into workshops. My old sheets turned into quilts.
The archive holds so much, yet I can only hold what is in front of me. Instead of hunting for new material, I feel called to weave together the existing fragments. World building not as bringing in new possibility, but as working with the fractured pieces that have been waiting for me. I want to let things settle, digest, and integrate.
I turn not to composting but to pollination. I am not asking what wants to be turned over back into soil, I feel like I am swift to this action. Instead I ask - what projects want to inform new ones. An example I keep coming back to is a poem I wrote in grad school last semester, The Quilt As Archive. This became the title of my solo art show and I self published the poem in the catalogue with the show. I didn’t need to come up with new material for the catalogue or the show, it was already right in front of me. The series of quilts I finished were ones I had worked on at the Gee’s Bend Quilt Retreat a year before, courting me to be finished.
I always have something waiting in the wings, ready to be changed, or to become new again. Within and without. Projects not as separate entities, but as opportunities to cross feed each other. The poem feeds the quilt, the class feeds the essay. Everything I’ve collected, already in conversation with each other.
Papers all over my desk, scraps of fabric on the floor, podcast episode ideas in my notes app — the soft shuffle of things asking to be chosen. They all start to hum together as one, everything living simultaneously.
This same abundance shows up in my material life, and I begin to be more skeptical of how I am advertised to, what my values are in fighting against it, and how to be in greater alignment with my spending. The same discipline that guides my creative practice — to finish, to revise, to listen — might also guide how I consume. What are the objects telling me — the quality, the source, the way they came into my home. The way they exit the home.
I consider the great stillness, a spending interlude, of not acquiring new things and to see what the offerings in front of me have to say. I want to spend November in observation, not accumulation — studying the objects that already hold my attention.
It all comes back to metabolizing, and the older I get, the slower this process becomes in body, mind, and spirit.
What if every unfinished idea was already enough?
What if attention itself was the practice?
For now I will invest in the deep listening of what is already here.
→ Donate to Land Back in Detroit : Noojimo’waning- A Place for Healing
→ This episode of The Money with Katie Show with Tressie McMillan Cottom
→ Early Bird Registration is open for Pollinating Through Projects Nov 1 + 2 : Use code POLLINATING for 20% off for the next 48 hrs
→ Thank you to everyone’s support on the announcement of buying my books back from my former publisher to trigger a reprint without my dead name on the cover
I’d love to invite you to check out the fundraising workshop on Nov 9 and contribute or share with your communities. Over $1200 has already come in to meet my $8820 goal to buy back 980 books and print stickers for the covers.
→ For the month of November I am hosting OBJECT STUDY for paid subscribers of this newsletter. More information on this experiment soon but if you want to think more deeply about the objects you acquire, purchase, and get rid of : this is for you
We’ll have a Discord group to track our progress each day, a spreadsheet template, videos guiding you through how to set up a spending pause, and more!
→ I got an early copy of next book Making Art and Making a Living and I already dug in and am loving it. Mason’s book Daily Rituals totally changed my life a decade ago and is a huge reason why I try to do certain things every day. PRE ORDER his new book! HIS NEWSLETTER IS ALSO VERY GOOD :
→ 2025 Parole Prep Holiday Raffle : (from the website) This fundraiser will support Parole Prep’s mission of providing community, care, and advocacy for people rebuilding their lives after decades in prison. From weekend getaways to signed collections of books, we hope you find something special to share with a loved one this holiday season.
Parole Preparation Project works to bring incarcerated people home, reunite families, and strengthen communities. To learn more about the work, visit Parole Prep.
The newest episode of Common Shapes is about how I decided to end one of my favorite places to be : my writing group Landscapes
I also announce yet ANOTHER NEW PROJECT - listen to find out what it is!
A Class Traitor’s Guide to Solidarity Under Fascism 11/6, 7-8:30 ET For any young person who has more than they need ($, housing) and wants to share it but doesn’t yet know how. Find community, make a plan!
Stop procrastinating. Focused Space is an online co-working app & community for writers, artists, entrepreneurs & anyone who is sick of working alone.
Fog Chaser: A new original instrumental song sent to you monthly, skipping algorithms entirely. For creatives seeking calm focus (+ free download)
Meditate & Create Open House, Sun Oct 26, 10am ET. Bring a journal, a sketchbook, some knitting, and let’s meditate, make stuff, & connect! Free, ticketed event online. ALL welcome!
Sex and the City fans rejoice: Night of 1000 Boyfriends brings 14 drag artists together for a show celebrating (and roasting) the series’ most iconic boyfriends. 11/6 in NYC
Expressive Unshaming: Work with body symptoms, emotions, and patterns to move toward ease, self-trust, and authentic expression
Want to include a classified ad for next week? Click here to read more
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