Knives

what the COCOONele Artist Retreat taught me about wildness and bravery

Can’t believe I’m creeping up on a year since Nebunele Theatre granted me its inaugural COCOONele Artist Retreat and Development Award. I am still discovering ways in which that time shifted my perspective about who I am as a maker, thinker and writer. I am still learning what it feels like to let spirit lead. I am still, and forever will be, grateful to be a member of this gorgeous coven of creatives.

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I attended a foraging class in the North Georgia mountains not long ago. Our guide had a knife. She used it to cut a thick switch off a bush and then strip it of bark to reveal a medicinal sap. Later, as we chomped bagged lunches by a little stream, she unsheathed the blade, casually, to assist in slicing an apple. I don’t remember much about the plants we foraged but the knife captured my imagination. It was handsome in the ways I imagine a knife should be: a handle of smooth red wood darkened by use,  a sharp blade maybe four or so inches long. Our guide wielded it with confident familiarity and my longing quickened. The knife summoned near archetypal associations for me of practiced skill, readiness, of the ability to anticipate and deal with…contingencies. Some wild, unlived part of my own life awoke from slumber and stared in groggy recognition. I decided then to give my own Girl with a Knife more sunlight.

Camano Island, part of Island County Washington, spoons with its more outgoing big sister Whidbey where the Salish Sea thins into straights and pools into sounds. Rock, wind, water. Sun, moon, tide. There was a thick sense of place and a web of connection here, shocking in its viscerality. Its entangled aliveness. Entranced and wide-eyed, I walked willingly into the island's silvery, sticky threads. Crab, crow, spider. Moonsnail, seal, starfish. Eagle. Red cedar. Human. It was in no way clear who or what would be protagonist any given moment here. Being able to retreat into this landscape animated my dreams and work.

A guidebook to the area boasted of one of its featured vistas that the viewer might enjoy an unhindered sightline to Asia. And for sure, to be deposited on this Camano shore at the end of a long journey—in my case, out of the pine and oak studded suburbs of Atlanta and across the entire width of continent—is to find yourself at one of the world’s edges. Creative work always requires to some extent acknowledgment of its shadow twin, destruction/loss. I think for me, the knife’s two-sided blade represents those paired impulses. A space of wild liminality like Camano is perfect for contemplating and then pushing one’s own boundaries, or for shadow work, or process work. Or for honing one’s own sharp edges. For sitting with grief.

My project is about grief. I was here, wrapped in the cocoon of trust and care provided by Nebunele, to hone the project by bringing my creative processes—and all the shadowy and flinty forces that mold them—into consciousness. To lay my tools out on the table like knives. Hunter, surgeon, priestess, murderer. I became reacquainted with the turns of my circular process, the way it pulled in and panned out like the Salish.  I became reacquainted with the panic each turn activated. “What am I doing?” was the haunting and predictable refrain. I likened the tools I became conscious of over the course of my retreat to knives because they help me cut through bullshit, brain fog, panic, and fear. They unblock airways and cut away the crust of thoughts and habits that choke expression.

Some of the knives I learned to wield:

Write Out Ground Rules, Core Beliefs, and Non-Negotiables

Even if it feels like you are moving toward the speculative, describe the state of things as they should be. As they must be. And then live by these statements—at least for the life of your project. Because I was in the process of repairing a broken attitude about my creative self, mine were very basic:

• I am an artist. I am a writer. I make connections that are useful and fruitful.

• All (!) of this time is for me.

• There is no wrong way. Nothing produced here is “bad” or “evil” or “wrong.”

• The practice is patience, compassion, love, bravery, and most importantly, belief.

• It doesn’t much matter if you think it’s obvious or has been done before. Nothing is new.

• It will not be new but if you write honestly, it will be yours.

• Everything you do here is on behalf of The Project, which is healing.

• This includes sleeping, day dreaming, rock hunting, dancing and stretching, crying, screaming into your pillow, and so forth.

Change Orientation

I committed to the space I was to inhabit for two weeks, the tiny house on the grey shore, nestled between silver cottonwoods that protected me like giant sentinels. I backed into the painting. I switched my orientation from portrait to landscape. I became—barely taking the time  to wave to those I left in the foregrounded enclosure—embedded in background. I trust fell, eyes closed, faint smile on lips, into the arms of a million spiders, crabs, and starfish. Into the open wings of crows. I let them tell me what to write.

Access the Liminal

Existing in the transitional space where land meets sea, surrendering to the constant tug of lunar rhythms and searching for treasures in the sand and shallows, gave occasion to ponder the nature of spaces-in-between. There are borderlands, cracks, soft, dark corners between layers of un/consciousness where the urgencies of competency and fears of not enough cannot reach. My “mother” and “teacher” and Virgo voices don’t carry as well there. Ideas and images bubble up when I am very tired, just falling asleep or just upon waking (but only briefly!), they flit up through cracks like butterflies when I daydream. I spent many productive hours staring in soft focus at a particular bunch of California poppies that grew the color of sunshine in the patch of grass by the water. Whole phrases, sentences, paragraphs, sometimes ideas for entire essays would come up unbidden. The important thing here is not so much to capture the butterflies or pocket the beach stones as it is to recognize that they are always already there.

Stay greedy.

I read voraciously on Camano. I had tried to predict what would be most useful and had brought a short stack of books along with me. But I had a small library on my kindle. Once the sun had its time to warm the air, I moved to the table by the water and read. I took notes—as marginalia and in notebooks. I tried to capture ideas and phrase that vibrated—whether they seemed “about” my project or not. If I found myself taking too many notes, I interpreted it as anxious defense creeping in and I’d lay the pen down. I took it as an invitation to practice trusting my brain and heart to take in what was needed.

Mind your Words

I keep a running list of words associated with the project. I do this for several reasons. It helps me keep track of the through line in those moments of panic felt along unlit stretches of my path.  For Thirteen Cakes, these are basics like cake (lol), hospitality, grief, ritual, aliveness, cycle, entanglement and so on. I also add to the list words that help me track and stay connected with intuition and ideas as they evolve. These are the words that vibrate for me; they are evocative and seem to track my “thinking” in that they speak to the processes and potential I am trying to describe. Threshold, capaciousness/capacity, ancestor, solace, enchantment, behold/beholden. Sometimes these are words or phrases associated with other thinkers and creators I admire —they help me stay conscious of the creative genealogies I wish to connect with and extend. Re-memory (Morrison), Care (after Audre Lorde) kin-making (as Haraway means it), I add or strike through here as the project moves forward. If it doesn’t hold its magic for the life of the project, I don’t want it. Finally, there Is a feeling tone I hope for each essay, each cake, and the project as a whole to communicate. I pay attention to connotation and affect and mouthfeel at the level of adjectives and synonyms, “Moss” or “lichen” might suite the project better than green, and “sweet” might gesture back towards the theme in a way that “pleasant” doesn’t.

Sit with your grief.

When you softened your vision and saw through to color and pattern and your ear went out toward the quiet racket of life beyond human concerns and you lay on the ground waiting for your breath to synchronize with the earth’s, and you wanted to translate that into music, who told you that was not worthwhile? Not productive? Wasn’t valuable? When did you take in those voices as your own?  What are you carrying of your mother’s (and her mother’s) that you are afraid of setting down (in spite of the weight and the way it chafes up the skin on your shoulders) because its something left of her, something you can hold? Or, when did simply being yourself start to feel transgressive? When did the girl with the knife start to seem unsafe to let out?

My goal is to pull water up from deep down in the well. My goal is to tend wounds. To acknowledge losses and let the rituals that worked inform my project. I sit with my sadnesses. I cry with them. I cook for them: roast chicken thighs and chick peas, and tomatoes slathered with a lavender-scented chèvre. I play Debussy and Bossa nova for them. I go stone and shell larking on the beach with them for hours. As they are ready, I thank them, lay them on the altar, and pick up a knife. With confident familiarity.

Post script

I’ve been back in the noisy village a while now. I lost the spidery thread as I transitioned back into portrait mode. I’ve been fighting bare-knuckled with low-humming depression and distraction. I’ve been ordering  too much takeout and watching too many Icelandic murder mysteries. I’ve been letting a job steal too much of my energy.  I’m a Girl with a Knife trapped in an office sitcom. But I’m in touch with the wildness and bravery I met on sabbatical and they light tiny fires that keep me warm and keep me going.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to hear what’s keeping you sharp, brave (and maybe a little bit wild) these days. xx