Making Art at the End of the World

My peace lily returned from the dead last week.?

She was a gift from my partner’s mum for my birthday last year. She was touted as being somewhat unkillable, which was particularly appealing for someone like me who had never really kept house plants before. Peace lilies are also somewhat renowned for their ability to take negative energies and convert them into something positive. And so, I diligently watered her and moved her into indirectly sunny spots and cared for her for almost a full year.

Then, a few weeks ago, she collapsed in her pot. Green leaves drooping out and over the edge. A shell of her former self. Something in me wondered if the negative energy had simply become too much for her. I moved her into palliative care in my bathroom, almost ready to give up on her survival.?

I've felt a kinship with that peace lily. Drooping but trooping on. I like to think of June and July as Burnout Season. It’s about the time my students go from chipper young learners to sullen messes. And, as of this pandemic, it’s about the time of year when my mental health seems to take a dip. Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s the stress. I’m inclined to think that this year it’s being fuelled by injustice and geopolitical madness seeping into me. Whatever it is, I’ve been in it. What frustrates me most in times like this is the way my creativity seems to evaporate. To disappear, leaving me to droop- alive, but aimless.?

I can only speak to my own experience, but for me, creativity is a force that seems to overwhelm and desert me in equal measure. And don't get me wrong- this lapse is not being caused by unhappiness with my lot in life. In fact, my career is finally flourishing after two years of uncertainty. I have fabulous things on the horizon. It just seems that a few too many fabulous things are crowding me.

But even in the nadir of creation, when I can muster up less than nothing, and when my mind is too full of other things to allow the light from that fire to be cast onto anything else, something always seems to break through.

A few days ago, walking home from the train station, it was this.?

I have probably taken hundreds of images like this one over the years. I am not suggesting that I can write a play about this. No one would. It is a useless image of a useless thing. Taking up storage and nothing more. Another pretty sunset to add to my digital collection.

But I took this photo because the orangey pinkness of the clouds is the same colour as the sign hanging in the window of the train station- a strange and unintentional echo that can only happen for a few minutes at twilight. I took this photo because the train tracks look like they are glowing, like a river of silver water, but perfectly straight, stretching into nothing, flanked by razor thin powerlines. I took this photo because of the plane, so small and still against that expanse of sky, but so loud as it passed overhead a few seconds later.?

So how do you make art when nothing is inspiring you? I would argue that, rather than a void of inspiration, we may instead be choosing to ignore inspiration that appears to not serve us. But the world does not owe us inspiration- in my experience, it comes instead from the chaos in our minds that glows in that pure, uncomplicated way. Perhaps I should try not to make art, but to document inspiration. Maybe it is the vaguest shadow of aesthetic wholeness, or a moment of quiet in a loud life. Maybe a smudge of pink in a blue sky that I have seen a hundred times before is the key I need to unlock that feeling again.?

Good, whole, perfectly formed and well-timed ideas for plays and books and paintings don’t throw themselves at us very often. If they did, everyone would be able to make them.?

I watered my peace lily every week, even though I knew she was a lost cause. I take the same photos of the setting sun day after day, even though I know I will never make art from them. And you know what? The smallest amount of effort I could muster to maintain that positive energy eventually paid off. Like Lazarus herself, she returned.?

Now, I wait patiently for my creativity to do the same. I have a feeling that day is not too far off.?