Reclaiming Our Creative Minds
Meanderings on Quiet, What André 3000 Said, Social Media & Reclaiming Our Creative Minds
by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
Photo credit: Dominique Sindayiganza
I.)
This is not an ode to a mountain cabin in the woods or praise for organizations that whisk you away from your daily obligations to immerse you in soundlessness. I’m not talking about the quiet that comes from isolation. I might not even be talking about loudness. I’m talking about volume: the amount of noise we need to sift through in order to be more intentional people. The quiet I’m talking about is something we need to learn to access even in the whirlwind. Our minds depend on it.
I don’t have to identify the noises for you. You know what they are in your own life. In mine they are social media, cascades of emails, and meetings about nothing. But the noise is also in my own head when I worry too much, go too fast or let ego talk over the “still small voice” that somehow knows the way.
I love making things: teas, collages, poems, stories, bath salts, videos. Whether there are eyes on me or not, I make things. But when eyes turn in my direction I think, ‘I need to be more productive.’ And if there are no eyes on me, I think I’m doing something wrong. If I’m not productive am I worth anything? Am I wasting time? Where did these thoughts come from?
II.)
“...You’re only funky as your last cut
You focus on the past your ass'll be a has but…”
- André 3000
These lyrics haunt me when it feels like there is too long of a pause between a new piece of work and the last. That’s when social media seems like the place to go. I can still make some noise with a post. Folks say that social media is part of our work as artists. One way or another we have to stay relevant. Right?
What about the next line in the Outkast song? “That's one to live by or either that's one to die to.” What does Andre 3000 mean by that? I’ve got four interpretations:
1) We believe the machine that tells us to hurry up and make stuff. Whether it’s art or daily social media posts or both. We do it and our public lives as artists goes on. (“One to live by”)
2) We don’t hurry up and make stuff. We sometimes go quiet. Our public lives as artists become ashes. (“One to die to”)
3) We hurry up and make our stuff and something dims. Maybe our inner voice, our authentic pace, our compass. Maybe even the thing that led us to create in the first place because..
4) We work ourselves to death by trying to get or stay “relevant.”
Who defines relevance? What would happen if we relished the pauses? Quiet as a path can mean many things. I hear you, André.
III.)
Time, attention, love and intention make creativity nuanced and complex. Quiet gives us: space to reflect. Noise tells us to rush. Noise tells us we have to be seen. Noise says we have to react. Noise says “post a picture.” Noise is a bowl of sugar. Things distract me so sweetly I don’t even recognize that they’re stealing my minutes and dictating the direction of my thoughts.
IV.)
My friend playwright Lucas Baisch asked me why the language of capitalism was all up in our creativity. Why do we have to be productive? Are we machines? That got me thinking. Not only do we have to produce, we have to broadcast our productivity over social media. I’ve started wondering: What about embracing the process? What if my real quick social media post was actually meant as seed for something deeper? What if that thing needed more time in the dark? As it was my posts were scattered seeds consumed quickly but a seed must be tended through the seasons, it interacts with the elements, and yields something nourishing. I’m not a machine. I believe in allowing things to gestate. The pace of technology and the rules of capitalism don’t allow for quiet or gestation. When I get quiet, I am the earth in winter. I just am. Isn’t that enough?
My quiet can be prayer, meditation, a walk, dancing, placing flowers on my ancestral altar, journaling, painting, staring at the sky. I exit the quiet and I can be present for my family and friends, sit with my work, or consider the purpose of a potential social media post. My quiet allows me to move with intention.
I advise friends in the whirlwind to take 15 minutes a day. Allow all things to fall away. Begin again to touch your dream, relearn the textures of who you are and who you love. Quiet has the capacity to hand us a new life. We’re tuning out the noise. We’re reclaiming our minds.
Quiet will tell you everything. Listen long enough and see.
*****
Notes and Resources from Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie:
These thoughts have been brewing for four years. Shoutouts to everything that has come across my path to deepen and stretch these ideas. In order of encounter:
OutKast “Rosa Parks”
Conversation with Lucas Baisch
Kevin Quashie’s The Sovereignty of Quiet (scholarly work that puts pressure on the idea of analyzing Black cultural production through the lens of expressiveness and proposes a framework of Quiet)
Andre Lepecki Singularities
The Nap Ministry (Brilliant work by Tricia Heresy on rest as a form of resistance for Black people.)
Daniel Black’s spiritual hour on rest
BIO:
Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie is the author of the award-winning children’s book Layla’s Happiness (Enchanted Lion Books). Her work for adults includes Strut (Agape Editions), Dear Continuum: Letters to a Poet Crafting Liberation (Grand Concourse Press), and Karma’s Footsteps (Flipped Eye Publishing). Tallie is the subject of the short film “I Leave My Colors Everywhere.”
Ekere creates cinepoems with her husband and self-care posters and healing herbal potions with her daughters. She has a long-quiet blog The Sage Honey that she looks forward to updating soon. Ekere is a (very) proud New Yorker currently living in the lovely state of Rhode Island where she is a Ph.D. student at Brown University.
Photo credit: Dominique Sindayiganza
