3 Ways to Engage with the Rigor of Ease in Creative Practice
For the Worldbuilders Ep. 073
Dear Worldbuilder,
Rigor doesn’t equal hard work and ease doesn’t equal work that is easy. Asking for help, refusing to resent our capacity, honoring the needs of our body and moving at the speed of creative flow is rigorous work that might require practice if our learned impulse is to habitually bring ourselves to the edge of our capacity in order to feel worthy of the ease of our creative expression. Our art flows out of us like our breath, sometimes the most challenging work is to let it and protect it.
I have been thinking about themes of black feminist labor for the majority of my years inside creative practice. Many of my early writings, research, sketches and photographs can be found inside Your Satisfaction Is Our Future, a book I self-published one personal copy of in 2017 and it has somewhat acted as a sacred source text inside my practice ever since.
The title, “Your Satisfaction Is Our Future” was taken from my mechanic’s business card. It still rings true to this day. I know many of us have passed around the meme reading, “I don’t have a dream job, because I don’t dream of labor”.
But what if we started dreaming of labor worthy of our breath? It serves us to began imagining dream jobs we can collectively hold inside work that wants us well.
The question we explore in today’s episode: How might we start to welcome the rigor of ease inside creative practices that sustain us for a lifetime and might also sustain generations we’ll never meet?
Our satisfaction is their future.
Tune into the 73rd episode to learn “3 Ways to Engage with the Rigor of Ease in Creative Practice” on the podcast For the Worldbuilders via Spotify or Apple Podcast. Let me know what you think by replying to this email. 💌
So be it, see to it, breathe through it,
Ayana