One must create the meaning one seeks
I create art to | honor the sacred feminine | to move in flow | to attune to authentic resonance | to allow my soul to sing | to appreciate the value of curiosity | to appreciate the value of change | to remove the politic and return to organicity | to live within pleasure | to be moved by desire | to experience bliss | to live my responsibility | of seeing | of feeling | of translation.
As an artist, desire is my primary resource. Desire, as I have known it since childhood, is the drive to create. Simply that. It’s the feeling within my heart and my body to move along the path of intuition, of knowing, of goodness. As I’ve lived life, I’ve learned that desire is a ‘use it or let it be dimmed’ resource, like our other innate faculties. When not cultivated, the sensation of desire can be distracted away from — at least this is what I have experienced. There were some years in my artistry when I was aimless in my creation. Constantly doodling on everything, taking sporadic art workshops and classes, but my desire wasn’t there.
For context, when I was a child, I was an art practitioner. I had portfolios and sketchbooks and was creating all the time everywhere. As a teenager, it was all about designing and making clothing. I had a makeshift online boutique where I’d dress mannequins and design my store to match my aesthetic as a designer. Then I went to college, for fashion, but for business as opposed to design. Then I started working in the corporate workforce (for fashion) and distraction set in. Desire had become a fire within that wouldn’t easily light. And I don’t know that I was trying to light it specifically, my mind so focused on trying to conform; trying to manage expectations and appeal to others’ definitions of safety.
The main reason I’d traveled to Morocco is to be immersed in the desire of my artistry.
In life, one must know themselves. That is number one. I know I love color and warmth and the mishmash of tapestry like culture is creating itself on a canvas. I love a souk like the soul of a city, and I love to get lost so I can find different parts of myself. I love the strength of my intuition when I’m in a country where I don’t speak the language and I don’t know anyone. I love feeling like I can fly. This is what desire feels like to me.
With this desire, I know that everything I create is made with passion. The passion of being alive and aware and with a healthy spirit. I won’t lie, being in the USA has made me often conflate passion with profit, thus diluting my passion. Traveling anywhere opens my heart right up again. And I realize that it’s not because of any particular place – it’s because of me. Sure, each country, city, region has its own energy field that I attune to when I settle in, but at this point in my evolution, I’m realizing that I have the choice to create my own energy field. It isn’t always easy, and this is why discernment is key.
Art as an adult seems more complicated than it was as a child. Why is that? Why can’t it just feel free?
I suppose for all the same reasons why we evolve as humans – to reclaim inherent freedom; to return to the initial Soul Blueprint, using all the cues and clues life gives us to find our true selves again. Loss of desire along my life path had led me to dark corners searching for love and meaning outside of myself. Searching for love and meaning outside of myself led me to experiencing, sometimes traumatizing, resistance in the forms of misaligned relationships, toxic habits, and drama. Resistance ultimately led me back to what actually brings me inner peace.
And it’s simple. It’s art.
Art is an experience. It is a perception and a perspective. It is a quality of presence. I don’t find art to be a specific output, because so many outputs of effort can be artistic or imbued with special artistry.
I myself am an artist of life by the unique and unconventional way I live. I am also an artist by interest, passion, training, and practice. Drawing, painting, ceramics, writing, poetry, photography, design, textile art, collage art, curation. The vastness of my interests and artistic endeavors shows me that art is about how one shows up to life rather than what one creates. When you show up to life with the intention of beauty, craft, resourcefulness, learning, being fully present and engaged in sensation, you are in the realm of art.
And being in the realm of art is being in bliss, as I have found it. For me, art is mystical, apolitical, simple, profound, complex when it wants to be, but not complicated. Art uses me, and anytime I try to manipulate art to be something, I fall into the trap of distorted bliss – a superficial gratification instead of a deep satisfaction. Superficial gratification has me distracted and searching outside of myself for the love that contains me when I am in the realm of art.
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Later in my trip one morning, I woke up passionate, intense, desirous. Interestingly, though, the sensation of desire itself wasn’t enough to satisfy me that morning. It wasn’t enough to move my mind into the body and enter the day with full clarity.
There was a “why” echoing deeper in my belly.
As I sat in morning meditation, practicing my KMRT (Kundalini Magnetic Resonance Therapy) kriyas, I entered another dreamlike state outside of my sleep state. A state where I could feel myself from another perspective. This was a state of choice, optionality, potential, neutrality. I observed that my intensity was ripe; my sensation of want, of yearning, was ripe.
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The previous week, I serendipitously met Ibrahim, an art curator who lives his passion of making sure the artworks he curates are made with purpose — connected to the Divine and a symbol of the beauty that the Divine offers to artists to bring into the material world; and the artists and artisans he works with are honored by their vision and craftspersonship.
That conversation had fired me up! It felt like the singular conversation I was destined to have traveling to Morocco with the intention I’d set for myself. But really, what is destiny but a series of decisions, — internal and external — a series of events, and a certain clarity of mind to recognize the profound in a given circumstance? I think destiny is more about one’s consciousness that can make space for and hold the energy of miracle than the event itself.
That said, I suppose a series of events and decisions on my part led me to this conversation with Ibrahim. After all, it wasn’t a lecture — I shared with him my passions and ideas as well.
Days after that conversation, I could feel the rumblings within. Sometimes I call these rumblings tectonic shifts. Sometimes I call it a maturing. After that conversation with Ibrahim, my innate childlike eagerness was high in curiosity and wishing to see what was already emerging from these deeper shifts. However, my more mature self understands that my curiosity represents questions that require living in order to obtain the answers. There is wanting, then there is living, then there is experiencing, and all of this is “having”. There is no wanting something so meaningful and then immediately having. One must create the meaning one seeks. This is the art of life.
Later that week, I visited the famous Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech, and despite it being a highly touristic experience, I was still taken by the rare beauty of the garden. My camera got her work in!
When I sat in the apartment after my visit to the garden, cooling down from the heat and editing my captures, I felt that some of my innate curiosity was being satisfied. It was interesting. I’d gone into the garden with my inner rumblings of change, my childlike curiosity, my yearning for emergence and expansion. And when I was in the garden, snapping away, it was silence around me – it was bliss. It was just me and the flowers, or cacti, or trees. It was me and the garden, despite the dozens of other tourists around me. I was in the realm of art as I was capturing the beauty of nature. I was taken by the bliss that is art itself.
Sitting to edit the photos, I was witnessing the change in my perception of life, my perception of beauty. The art. It was showing me the emergence of my heart through trustful immersion in sensation and present-moment experience.
It was simple. Desire. Presence. Integration. Reflection. It’s not exactly an equation, but these seem to be the parts of my current “art body”, if I may.
It’s exciting to be here, learning, growing, and in presence with all that emerges.
I create art to | honor the sacred feminine | to move in flow | to attune to authentic resonance | to allow my soul to sing | to appreciate the value of curiosity | to appreciate the value of change | to remove the politic and return to organicity | to live within pleasure | to be moved by desire | to experience bliss | to live my responsibility | of seeing |of feeling | of translation.
