getting knotty!!!

The night of the "happening" was such an amazing experience that I, like I think many others, had a creative hangover. I've said it before, having such a burst of creative energy go through you at such an extensive period of time really can take it's toll on you. On Sunday I found myself laying in bed for hours not wanting to process, think, move even. I needed to recoup!!!

This of course got in the way of my final crit that was happening on Tuesday. I had an idea in my head, but execution was no where to be found. The idea was to map my lovely little "pain-in-the-ass" blackberry for a week. Recording every email and text message going in and out of that silly contraption was easy. Developing the monotonous entanglement that it represents was something else.

So in my state of procrastinated pressure I realized I wanted a way to express the week in a linear form. Thanks to all the hemp rope I bought a year ago for a previous project and never touched, I decided to use that. I tied knots along the rope to represent each text and email I received in a day so that there was space represented between each knot as there is time between each email/text. Then I took colored hemp and tied it in between the knots to represent my responses throughout each day with the time/space idea included as well.

When I was finished I felt a breathe of fresh air, like after a deep meditation. Something was lit within. My class response was great and has me excited to take it to the next level. The weird thing is that my creative hangover from Saturday only lasted a day or so. This is new for me. It encourages me tremendously. I feel like I am acting as this container that is capable of holding the creativity. Like the alchemical vessel that holds the prima materia to cook, I too am cooking. I'm not afraid that the creativity will evaporate and I'll have to start over again. Rather, it's just sitting there, cooking, waiting to be included in the next concept. The beauty of this is that to keep the prima materia cooking one must keep the fire lit. To keep the fire lit one must become fully engulfed in the fire and just let it burn. In other words, staying present to the "heat of the moment" and staying authentic within that allows us to begin transformation.

Intermedia helped this process a lot with all of our projects that encouraged the exploration of different media. I'm so thankful for the process and the witnesses that have made the experience so much more rich.

Here's to the next!

Tina