If You Tell

“How stationary life has become, & the hours impossibly elongated… & in the end all that we can do is to sit at the table over which our hands cross, listening to tunes from the Wurlitzer, with love huge & simple between us, & nothing more to be said.”

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down & Wept – Elizabeth Smart

These days, I’m finding it quite difficult to get into the right space to write. It is near impossible to write well when one does not have time to read, time to sit in the nook of comfort & silence & soak in time, sublime. Now that the end of the year is approaching, I look back at the resolutions I made at the beginning of 2017 & as usual, feel despondent at how many I’ve let slip between my fingers. Write three new songs. Read at least 20 books. Learn to sketch properly. Take better photographs.

These unmet resolutions far outweigh those I’ve managed to complete. It’s a little disappointing. For some reason, being creative has always been extremely important to me; an act of worship unto God, like how someone else would connect by singing a praise song or reading the bible. It’s just the way I’m wired & without the luxury of time, I end up being restless, uneasy, frustrated, which is why this year feels so long & so challenging.

At work, I’m surrounded by the most passionate, driven & highest-functioning people that I’ve ever met, which are basic traits since we work in a competitive industry with near impossible deadlines. I love my work & the people I do it with but it’s no doubt that the nature of the job is changing the way & speed at which I process things, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Sure, one might become more efficient but there’s a great cost. Even after I clock off, I leave the workplace with my mind still ticking, ruminating on a deadline to meet, a schedule to plan, the next task to check off on a very long list of things to do, up till the time I fall asleep. Sometimes, work even invades my dreams. Every minute where I do slow down seems like a minute wasted. It is as if this increased efficiency has robbed me of my ability to look at the world with wonder. Some days, I just exist.

It’s worrying what can happen when you let your sense of awe slip away. Creativity, or rather, the want to create, comes first from wonderment at a world that is filled with beautiful things, created by a beautiful being. & because we are made in His likeness, we then seek to create similar things of loveliness, things that help us interrogate & reinforce truth, celebrate momentous and minute events, encapsulate the feelings that ebb beneath our very skin.

Have you ever seen the wonder
In the air of second life
Having come out of the waters
With the old one left behind
If you have so say

I see the world in light
I see the world in wonder
I see the world in life
Bursting in living colour
I see the world Your way
And I’m walking in the light

(Wonder – Hillsong United)

A wise friend of mine once said that we each have our own “non-negotiables” & it’s up to us to figure out what they are & how to protect them. It took me a long time to recognise that being creative was my non-negotiable & an even longer time to realise that it wasn’t secondary to other people’s, whether their’s might seem more noble (taking care of family, doing church work) or more socially-appropriate (having a relationship or an active social life). For me, being creative equates to basic self-care, the bare bones of your humanity. & time should be carved out for the things that make you human, no?

I feel like it’s been such a long time since I’ve written something good, but as the year draws to a close, I feel like it doesn’t really matter as long as I try. Begin again, as they say. So I’m starting with lists to rekindle a sense of wonder, to remind myself that things of beauty do exist, if only you’d look hard enough.

An apricot danish, warmed in the oven for thirty seconds, the fruit cradled in a little bubbling pool of custard, puff pastry & a ring of icing sugar.

Hearing a French accent in the middle of the day, soft & delicious, jolting me back to streets of a certain city.

The company of a friend, two coffee cups between us & unabashed laughter at a shared memory.

A church spire extending above a green horizon of trees, its tip like an arrow, pointing to answers in the blinding sky.

A solitary bus ride with my mind pleasantly blank – oh, it has been so long – marvelling at a huge life shared with the rest of the universe, who leans in & says: Darling, I’m listening if you tell…

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