Note: This note is very much a work in progress. The more I understand jiyū shūkyō, the clearer my poetics becomes.
Introduction
My decision to create could only come after my decision to live. This decision is not easy given the circumstances of the setting.
A life is the perfect communication, but within a life is a collection of activities that heighten the desire to communicate. We call this collection, art. The actions I take that make up what I call my life, which includes my acts of creation, all communicate what I have found in my quest.
My poetics is simply an articulation of a framework that I try to follow when I create. I try to articulate it to express the intricate connection between the act of creative production and the life I seek to live. My poetics is heavily influenced by jiyū shūkyō.
In simple terms, jiyū shūkyō is a creative, inquiring, free, and liberative spirituality. Its subject is the mystery that unifies everything that exists in the setting: the self, the neighbor, the nonhuman, and the universal society that they all make up. Its dream is the realization of a universal cooperative society where the sacredness of self, neighbor, and nonhuman are upheld. Its commitment is an active faith to this mysterious unity, a faith that requires deep listening and openness to change.
Principles
My poetics is articulated through the following principles.
Independent
I want to have as much creative freedom as possible. I want to write about topics that I’m deeply interested in. I want to pursue projects that are authentic to who I am. This desire necessitates that I prioritize projects that avoid as much gatekeeping as possible. Therefore, much of the work I produce is self-published material.
Pleasurable
I want to enjoy the creative process. I use curiosity and pleasure as guide to how I choose the next project and the next tasks to take on. This requires that my structures are flexible enough to allow experiencing pleasure when doing work.
Subsistent
My projects require little to no financing. If there is any need for funding, the money comes from my own pocket or from the generous support of my community. The creative artifacts created from the process are also lean and bootstrapped. Most of them will be shared for free and those that shall be sold shall be low cost. Earnings from these projects are used to support new ones making my creative process as self-sustainable as possible.
Communal
While some projects require solitude, the creative artifacts that come from these projects are meant to be shared with a community, for free or supported through low costs. Their design and distribution are meant to build real connections between me and my audience. Some walking projects will also involve groups, giving way to a more direct communal experience.
Existential
I want my creative process to elevate my experience, and I want my creative artifacts to help my audience value their own experiences. I want to elicit emotions that oridinary objects and experiences are deeply meaningful.
Liberative
My work espouses a radical partiality to change. My creative process liberates me from the constraints of culture and the outside world but is also liberative to others. The positions I take on work is inquring, freeing, and ever-changing.
I apply these principles in my creative practice.
A Walking Poetics
Taking these principles together, I would like to call my poetics, “a walking poetics.”
My writing, walking, and photography practices are expressions of a walking poetics articulated as follows:
Human autonomy and its expression are only possible through interconnection with the human and the non-human other, and this interconnection, like a walk, is ever-changing.
My writing practice is inside first, outside second. I prioritize often marginalized genres of writing, such as journaling, trusting that the raw and unedited is often closer to the truth. I see my individual writings, even those that have already been published, as drafts and my body of work as a large evolving archive that is never finished.
All of my writing begins with a walk. Walking is both the metaphor and method of my art.
My photography practice, which leans toward contemplatively looking closer to objects, landscapes, and those that inhabit them, follows this walking poetics.
To do
- Use this to improve my bio.
Related
References
This project was partly inspired by the work of Hundred Rabbits described in the about section of their website. It also draws on the chapter “Protheus” in Ethel Seybold’s book Thoreau: The Quest and the Classics (1951).