Angry, powerless, and creating anyway

On the necessary act of making art

Nov 23, 2024

It’s almost Black Friday. Is your inbox being pummelled with never-to-be-repeated offers that look suspiciously like last year’s?

Mine too. Yesterday, I was almost seduced into buying an electric foot-pumicing gadget to smooth my hooves.

[Yes - my heel skin is impossibly hard. Whilst lounging at home my teenage children have been known to poke my feet with semi-sharp objects whilst asking “Can you feel that?... What about now?”]

But in the end I let go of the ideal of silky smooth soles. Feet are for walking aren’t they? Hard skin is an inevitable consequence of living – as are wrinkles on foreheads, lines around eyes, stretchmarks on bellies and breasts.

The sad truth is that even if I did choose to buy the gadget, it would likely break within a few years of use because – well – planned obsolescence.

Can you tell I’ve been watching the new Netflix documentary, Buy Now!? Cheesy CGI aside, it hit home – showing how our craving for MORE is manufactured in all kinds of insidious ways. It left me angry and powerless.

Have you seen images of the clothes mountains in Ghana? I’m almost certain my old wardrobe is rotting on a beach somewhere on the other side of the world – rather than being worn by a happy charity-shop shopper somewhere in the UK.

Yes – angry and powerless just about sums up how I feel about a lot of things right now.

How the hell has it come to this? How the hell will we get ourselves out of it? What is the point of me recycling this yogurt pot when in 2022 five billion (yes - billion) cell phones were thrown away, because the Silicon Valley designed it that way.

Shouldn’t I be doing something? Beyond buying less. But what? The problem is so big. So overwhelming. I am caught up in it. I am part of it. It is everywhere.

I feel it as a gnawing, restless frustration. A sense of flailing against something insurmountable. My chest tightens; I stare at my recycling bin, my cluttered wardrobe, my bank statement, and feel paralysed.

I can’t shrink the clothes mountains.

But I can write this.

No matter how messy it feels. No matter how pointless. No matter how much I fear that people may roll their eyes or ignore it.

I can choose to remember that all of us - every single one of us – including me, can make our world a little more beautiful. Not with surface prettiness, but with the kind of beauty that heals and connects.

I can choose to remember the power of following what’s in our heart each day – following our own ideas – tending to the unique thread right in front of us, that’s ours to weave.

Like the people that featured in that documentary are doing…

Like the woman on TikTok who hunts the streets for black bin bags full of perfectly usable merchandise that companies toss. Or the guy who plants trackers in household waste so that we can see the illusion of the recycling system. Or the content creator who teaches people that most recycling labeling is utter bullsh*t. All of them tending to their threads, each one vital to the tapestry.

But what if your heart is telling you to make art?

Those inspiring examples from the documentary are practical things. Directly linked to preventing the demise of our planet. These are honourable actions that make a tangible, direct difference. They are somehow playful, but they are also serious. Credible. They mean business.

Does art count? Does it matter in the same way?

My worst fears say ‘no,’ it doesn’t.

‘The planet is burning, and you’re writing poems?’ it says. ‘You are ridiculous for even considering that it matters one bit.’

Recently, on a day when I felt particularly irrelevant, I spoke to two wise friends. I told them I was so close to finishing the book I’ve poured so much into, but couldn’t shake the question: what’s the point? In reaching out to them, it was like some small part of me knew better than the fear, but couldn’t get there on her own.

They urged me to remember that art is productive. That it is not second best to other activities. Art for art’s sake is necessary. Perhaps never more so.

They reminded me that art connects with the heart – and the heart is the back door to changing people’s minds.

We need the logic – the science – people proving why our planet needs saving. And we need art that reminds us of the beauty and wonder of what it is we’re trying to save.

Their words didn’t make the fear disappear, but the next day it was quieter. It stopped telling me I needed to do something Greta Thunberg-esque, and instead let me get on with my own business.

Which that day included scribbling in my journal, and somewhere in those scribbles, a poem began to emerge. And as I allowed myself to tinker, and shape it, and play with it some more, it occurred to me that the more time we spend honouring our creativity, making what our hearts feel called to make – including things that will never be seen by another living soul – the less crap we buy that we don’t really need.

It reminded me of Brenda Ueland’s words:

“Why should we use our creative power…? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.”

To me, that seems as good a reason as any.

Wherever you are in the world, whatever you’re making, keep going.

Keep weaving your weird, unique, glorious thread into the tapestry. Especially when it feels scary and/or pointless. I’m right beside you.

Glitter and Biscuits

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