God bless the child, that's got its own

The skill of intimacy

Aug 06, 2024

I might have a thing with hands…big sketch of mine for teaching a hand drawing class.

I have often written about creativity. Or tried to. Every single time I get stuck in the devilish details. After half a century of me trying to figure out what it is, and how it works, I am still not sure. I have the distinct feeling it is larger than I can behold. Sure, lots of folk are happy to explain it to you, basically everyone knows what creativity is. Often seeing creativity as important, but only after dealing with the really important, the actual serious stuff. Like politics, economics, computing and income taxes.

Placing creativity central

What I want to share is the very basics of my belief that the creative is number one. Yes, a belief. I could be wrong, I could even be way off, but it is a relative simple way to look at creativity, and it has had a profound impact on my cosmology.

Here we go.

Creativity is the ability to see how ‘it’ is connected, to see the relationships of whatever ‘it’ you are dealing with, and --here is the important bit-- to also recognise potential relationships, to find the possible connections and make them happen with a tiny nudge. Relationships at all levels. Big, small, impactful or redundant. Relationships between sizes, colours, functions, tones, forces, numbers, ideas, humans, countries, policies, scenes, tools, trees and on and on. And all their interrelations too, the meta-relationships. And how you fit in, what your role is. Your relationship to those relationships. How are you connected, part of that, related to, interacting with, influenced by that.

So a shift from things, to relationships and the interaction with those relationships. Because they are not static threads, the relationships are not another class of things. They are energy exchanges, processes.

See? In language it becomes total gibberish. When you try to draw a hand though it is clear. When gardening, knitting, building or a thousand other activities and you start seeing relationships….then the magic starts to happen.

That is one.

The other part of my belief is that it matters how close that registering, that observation, that experiencing is. Your proximity to the ‘it’ happening. The closeness. The intimacy. With touch an entanglement takes place. With getting in you are changed. You know, getting your hands dirty, diving in deep. It is sticky. The smell lingers. The splinters travel your skin. The memory of the water accompanies you. The feel of the fabric starts popping up in other places. You begin to see the painting in the landscape. The whatever you do has to be a whole body action. Seeing with all of your senses. Remembering with the totality of you. New is not all new. Familiar is not all familiar. When you get up close the distance decreases. What seemed far apart, no longer is. Learning, getting to know only happens when you remove the protective layers. When you get naked with and up close. It is pure intimacy with the world, with the other. The unknown. The new.

But what do closeness and relationships have to do with creativity?

Because causing something and being witness to that happening are also entangled. A cause never is a cause. It is a result as well as a cause. A whole bundle of results and causes. Creation is not from scratch. Is not you making new out of nothing. Not you making a thing. The crossroads of determination and freedom of choice is right there. Not in charge, not a slave. What moves you closer to a thing, also takes you away from all other options and choices. You make and are made by your relationships. The choice is a result. Not a precondition. Creativity is stepping into an existing process and altering it by interaction. True choice is a direct response. Not preplanned at a distance. Of course the consequences alter you back.

And before the level of abstraction puts you into a snoring sleep, let's tie this back to you and me, and all other sentient beings with the ability to participate in this magnificent cascade.

You are not creative, the place you are part of is.

You move through the place by tiny choices. Tiny choices are tiny responses to what or who you are intimate with. You do not have total freedom. You are limited by the body, by the substance you are in, by all that surrounds you. You do have wiggle room. But you are also wiggled by wherever you are. You can swim, you cannot get out of the river. Yes you move the water, you can't help but. You can move in the water. But it is the river that drowns you if you do not learn to swim. If you do not learn to wiggle your arms and legs, to hold your breath at the right time, to gasp for air at given moments.

But the soup you are suspended in is not a finished dish. It is not contained by a bowl. It has no outer edge. The sphere bubbles, foams, boils, freezes. At the edges something weird is happening. Things unremembered take place. Creation is at that outer edge.

Is it out there? Is it in the core? At the centre or the fringe? I don't think that matters. Your awareness of that creation happening does.

And the proximity to that fuming edge, the how-close-you-are to that raging force-field just ahead of the real, just beyond the deep now, is essential. How close are you? What is your level of participation? How intimate are you with creation?

Access to the source.

Creatives are sorcerers. They are also birds taken care of by their God. Foragers of fruit fallen from the wonder-tree. The tree of life. The source of all.

Many of us, at some point, lose that connection, that intimate proximity. Becoming conscious we discover we have a choice. And we interact at close proximity in full joy. Until we are kicked out, shamed, bullied, frightened by others. Until we stumble, sprain an ankle, cut ourselves, fall, get hit by, bitten or broken. And we have to find our way back to the closeness lost. Not everyone does. I think most of us do no longer have the skills to restore proximity. To re-find it. It is restored by default when you give up. When you stop trying. When a burn-out forces you to just float, to surrender to the river.

Hungry ghosts

Some are closer than others. Some are more lost than others. Some are so far removed from the fountain they are in danger of withering. Losing access to the well makes them look for other ways to quench their overwhelming thirst. Some find ways to compensate. To pretend, to exhibit proof of access to shield the lack, the inability. They organise their lives around two rules, two objectives:

I want what you have, because I don't have that.
I don't want you to have what I can't have.

The lens of winners and losers, of haves and have nots.

And before you divide the world into you and them as the easy option, and blame, I must remind you, almost all of us lack proximity by now, think in terms of competition, are dependent on many external energy inputs. We all consume more life than we create, despite little moments of return. Despite the few days off. Despite the organic groceries we buy. Despite the meditative breaks. Despite the shrooms and plant medicine.

When we lose the connection to the source, we lose our soul. We become a ghost, a shell, a mimic, an echo of what we were. We become hungry ghosts. Insatiable entities that no longer contribute, participate in creation, but consume, absorbing the energy of others. Depleting the source by not putting back in the tiny responses.

Our world is ruled by those driven hardest by the need. By their distance to the authentic entity that they are. They require other entities to give them the energy to sustain their life. The balance of give and take leans to one extreme. And I do not just mean calories, labour, resources. Which are all forms of energy. I mean spirit energy. Life force. This includes nutrition, because the two are entangled, but also creativity as the core way to support their being. Creation as the central principle of this unfolding reality.

This they and them might include you.

They need other people's ideas, other people's beauty, enthusiasm, paintings, dresses, designs, technologies, music, voices, words, entourage, landscapes, countries, planets. They try to get close by using others. They look for the creative energy, the source of being, and of doing, as if it were unavailable in their sphere. They need the other. Not to be intimate with, and I mean this the broadest possible sense, but to devour, to beat, to kill, to end, to rape, abuse. While intimacy in the creative sense has the opposite effect of bringing more into being. Children, diversity, life.

But you cannot buy your own painting. You cannot become the other. Or own them. Or create them. It doesn't help to eat them, extract their essence, or remove their inferior presence, or train them, or re-educate them. No currency will buy love except the one. You cannot get close through things, objects. Closeness is not out there. Closeness is uncomfortably close. Especially closeness to the unknown feels so very uncomfortable. Approaching that feels counterintuitive. Until you learn to surrender. Surrender can be practiced at a very small scale. Until the new touches you back. Until you recognise the gift. The offering.

The currency that flows free of charge if you approach the source. A straight plugging in would kill you. You cannot overhaul reality. You cannot get ahead of time. Or plan the creative. And I believe it is the single skill that embraces all other skills.

I think this is what the Dao tries to get across, I think this is what is meant by the philosopher’s stone so desperately sought by the Alchemists. I think this is why art therapy works its miracles through the cracks of our mental health system. I think this is why finding back the body in yourself helps you find the body of your surroundings.

I think it also works the other way around. Complications arise with the loss of proximity. The cognitive gets lost when we lose touch. See, how literal losing touch is? Disembodied language is a monster. Disembodied tools develop a capacity for destruction, damage and suffering we cannot even imagine.

The creative is my god. Feeding me, healing me, carrying me forward, keeping me close. As long as I wiggle and trust the flow. As long as I do not break the relationship.

Creation is flow

You can go the other way, stop moving with. Not wiggle. Resist. Forget. Hide, run, freeze, be overcome by fear, get distracted. The edge will move away from you. Or so it appears from your perspective. But it is you that has stopped moving with. The distance grows. And needs arise.

We are all traumatised. All of us have fear. But fear is local. It is just to warn you. But fear of the unknown, dreading the void, is a misunderstanding of grace. Of the constant invite. The constant offering.

The moment we start moving, the moment we find back our wiggle room, we are there. Can you see? There is right here. Here is where the proximity to the big creative storm is at its most optimal. The garden is here. The kingdom is here. No need to conquer, to win, defeat, progress, or starve.

All you have to do is find the wiggle. In your fingers, in your straight jacket, in your thinking. Find that space that is yours, find that slight movement only you can make, find that little phrase, that stroke, that hairline crack, that tiny step.

Am I saying you will have no needs if you had better access to the creative? Well, I think collectively we are a long way from paradise. But I do think it is time you and I start moving with, and develop the skill.

If you read this, you probably have to a certain degree developed that skill. You probably recognise the described blessing that is the creative. But there is a twist to this that might surprise you. Lately I have started asking myself if the needy Moloch, the machine, Wetiko, the cancer that threatens to kill the larger body we call earth is being fed by all the naive creatives. I have seen so many great ideas, initiatives, people get sucked up by the monster.

Who pays you to hand over that energy? Or are you just giving it away?

I think it might be an act of grace to refuse the price offered by the ones in dire need. Be conscious of who you give the gift. That idea is yours to nurture, to plant as you see fit. Don't sell it to the highest bidder, don't squander it for a bubble of promises.

I think here the proximity rule is applicable too. Invest nearby. Invest in what can touch you back. Invest in who invests in you, directly, intimately. And even more true, share the how. Teach the skill, do not sell the product. Learn, don't buy. Art is not a commodity, it is a teaching and a learning in one.

Both skill, and proximity are not a yes-or-no matter. There is no arrival, no solution, no answer, no comparison. No hierarchy of better and worse. I suspect it is an infinite approach. Able to bring us closer and closer. It is also the reverse, you cannot be fully severed and live. No matter how far you wander off, you can return to intimacy. Because this god creates a new earth and a new heaven every instant. Chance after chance after chance. Response after response. Each note is the first of the melody to come. Nothing is fixed. Nothing will ever be fixed.

A return to intimacy

Getting back in touch with the creative doesn't ask for long journeys, big changes, large investments, or ten thousand hours, it is done with the simplest of means in little time. Anything will do. Find something (or someone) nearby, that sparks interest and remove distance. This can be done several ways. By stepping closer. By allowing it to come closer (and you not backing away, or turn away. By removing what is in between. Layers of fabric, varnish, bark, methods, language, assumptions. By optimising conditions like lighting, temperature, moisture level. By involving a wider beam of attention, including all senses, observing inner responses, registering change, to not focus on aspects, to not exclude anything. Then allow the response. Don't choose. Wait for it to happen. It is not just up to you.

See how the seesaw can reverse the flow several times before the flow is in both directions simultaneously. That exchange is creation.

No dominance or submission. No steering, no execution of plans. No, this is how it is supposed to be done. They can all be in there. But the exchange leads. And in fact it is yin added to yang, swirling, one in the other. A participation of everything.

Nice and small and close

Reverse the flow.

Maybe it is time to hide the fruit from the thieves. Maybe we are asked to extend the invitation. To stop fulfilling the needs of others. And especially the ones insisting so violently, the ones using their bankaccounts to replenish their souls. The ones devouring soul to extend their lives. Maybe that is the rebellion asked for. Maybe it is about holding back. Maybe we must refrain for a bit. Make space to get intimate again. To get close to where you are, with whom, with what, with now.

A reversal of direction is due. But it is not in the politics. Not in governing. Not in the law. Not in the accomplishments. It is also not in the passive navel gazing we have placed at the other end of participation. Each of us must find how we are related to whatever we encounter, with wherever you find yourself, and move with that. Nobody can tell you how. That wiggle is yours. That is where the knot starts to unwind. It is not too late, because there is no time ahead. The time is now.

That's the gift.

God bless the child....

Please let me know your thoughts on the skill of intimacy and how it works in your creative endeavours.