THE MAP > MUSE : TRUTH IN CONNECTION
The Art Of Removing Things
PART 2: TRUTH IN CONNECTION
This Muse has been very different to the first, a very quiet and soft opening.
I remember to trust truth and remove each barrier to creation as I construct it.
I let go.
I enter a liminal space.
And then I enter a physical liminal space.
I am isolating in my van on the South coast in Seaford, storms and sun passing each day, the sea, a constant outside the window.
And so, like the waves falling in and out of force and flow.
Here we go.
“These days, it’s easy to feel that we’ve fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love.
I mean: we have.
But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection.”
George Saunders
truth
/truːθ/ the quality or state of being true
A constant, a certainty
it has only itself to refer to
Truth
The tide | the phases of the moon | the phase of the sun | day | night | the turning of the planet | wind | rain | snow | weather | Gravity
Sight | hearing | smell | touch | the senses
The tracing of the start to the same place in the sky each year
Trees growing | Birth
Truth serves as the anchor points for the ascent up the creative curve
Steps in connection
Steps to decide what is true
What is it, the truth you are seeking to describe?
Quality?
Beauty?
“Quality...you know what it is, yet you don’t know what it is.
But that’s self-contradictory. But some things are better than others, that is, they have more quality. But when you try to say what the quality is, apart from the things that have it, it all goes poof! There’s nothing to talk about.
But if you can’t say what Quality is, how do you know what it is, or how do you know that it even exists? If no one knows what it is, then for all practical purposes it doesn’t exist at all. But for all practical purposes it really does exist.”
Robert M Pirsig - The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Truth recognises truth and everything else falls away.
At that point we find Connection
With a place
With nature
With a person
With an idea
With our senses
With creativity
With play
With a frequency
What do I really want to say?
Truth is found in connection, when you connect with a word or a deed or a piece of art, a person a place a vibration this is truth.
As an artist when you create a piece of work and it resonates with another, this is truth.
A layer of force is removed, ease opens up the space and connection occurs.
When we find or create connection we create quality and beauty in our lives.
It takes time, it requires shedding, removing, allowing.
I heard on a radio show the following:
When ‘settlers’ use the word “ours” they are expressing that which is possessed or owned
When indigenous people use the word “ours’ they are expressing that which is shared
“It belongs to me”
becomes
“It belongs to us”
Be [longing]
CONNECTION
I am more than the history or circumstance given to me at birth
I belong to my life and my own self
To remove the longing for other and to work with what is
Truth
Connection in artistic collaboration
What does it take to collaborate, to connect?
To offer yourself.
To walk at the same pace, to push forward when necessary to help the other to access the points of connection required to create.
Respect. Trust. Fluid. Open. Adaptable.
The ability to let go, to turn mine into ours.
To match the heartbeat. To join in unison.
When we create with others when we are in connection with others.
In mutual delight
In shared grief
In unknown outcomes
The joining of voices, movement, visual, melodic, theoretical.
Someone to work through the resistance with. Others. The other.
The magic of joining minds.
Working on the Muse for the last 2 years has been a collaboration with each author as well as the collective.
Each chapter an expression of truth.
I cast my mind back to the 2 tapestries we have made as a community.
I consider the part I have played in collaborating with Naomi and The Collective Energies that I have been performing a certain task to animate to illustrate, to hold content in a digital space, this has been my contribution and it has taken my time in Called and in writing these Muse chapters that I re-see, I re-read, I re-listen I connect.
The point at which we connect is the truth of the matter, but that it is always changing, Just as we are.
And you’re there
Creating it and you don’t even know what
You don’t even know how
Just that you are involved
Just that you are connected
To revisit the text
To revisit the practices
To revisit the words again and again
There are new layers
I have changed and therefore the text has changed
I am in constant collaboration with the sensations that I am in contact with
I have been creating the muse the collective energies site in connection and collaboration for two years
And only now as I struggle to write about truth about creativity and explore the content and other muses with new eyes that I see.
I see the teacher
I see the connections
I see you
Thank you
Everything that is expressed on this platform is connection and a testament to truth as we know it and at that time.
We are all in collaboration
Each time we read move see hear sense comment post
It is evolving
Through us
Connected
A Collective
When colours come together the individuals are removed and only the one remains.
Through a prism, spectrum synchronises to white light.
Through mixing, pigment colours synchronise to the colour of earth.
Where have you felt connection this week?
With yourself
With another
With a place
With a sensation or feeling
In order to connect, less is more we need to feel truth in pure form, a single note.
Thank you as before for this process, for this permission to write and be witnessed in my expression.
With each volume I write I realise that this is a vehicle I am using to process the grief that is to come as my father enters his last days.
It’s the upward stretch that requires the work, the digging in, persistence, the galvanisation of the what, the why that makes the when that it happens in.
The way to climb the creative curve, the part where all the work is done, the part that grips and won’t let go, the persistence, the birthing is achieved by connecting with truth.
The commitment, the crystallisation the state change the realisation and just when you think you can’t go on, can’t give anymore to the process the clouds clear and everything finds its place, this is connection.
Remember that connection will always come, trust the curve.
We can use these points of truth as anchors to remove things and create clarity, simplicity, truth and connection.
A climbing anchor is a system made up of individual anchor points that are linked together to create a master point that the rope and/or climbers clip into to be securely attached to the rock face they are climbing.
Each time we arrive at a point of truth we connect to the state of truth.
This can be amplified by creating similar conditions to previous truthful encounters.
The same music, the same smell, the same sensation
this is flow
SEE
Photos of moments I have stood in true connection.
I wanted to choose a few and look at them through the eyes of another. Threw your eyes and ask myself what are these images to me?
and they are
a state of enquiry
an open question
a study
What do I need to remove to stay in connection?
distraction
force
judgement
How do we know when something is right?
AND THIS IS WHAT THIS MUSE HAS BEEN A MOMENT OF ENQUIRY AND CONNECTION IT HAS FELT JUST RIGHT
READ
This exploration has brought me to to read a text I always intended to make time for and wanted to share.
Great is the quality of truth in man,
The quality of truth in man supports itself through all changes,
It is inevitably in the man . . . . He and it are in love, and never leave each other.
The truth in man is no dictum . . . . it is vital as eyesight,
If there be any soul there is truth . . . . if there be man or woman there is truth . . . . If there be physical or moral there is truth,
If there be equilibrium or volition there is truth . . . . if there be things at all upon the earth there is truth.
O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press the whole way toward you,
Sound your voice! I scale mountains or dive in the sea after you.
My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate reality;
The panorama of the sea . . . . but the sea itself?
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
If there be any soul there is truth . . . . if there be man or woman there is truth . . . . If there be physical or moral there is truth,
If there be equilibrium or volition there is truth . . . . if there be things at all upon the earth there is truth.
O truth of the earth! O truth of things! I am determined to press the whole way toward you,
Sound your voice! I scale mountains or dive in the sea after you.
This is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance . . . one part does not need to be thrust above another.
Walt Whitman - extracts from Leaves of Green
WATCH
LISTEN
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Heart Cave | Get Creative
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Daily Meds | Reestablishing A Tender Connection To Self
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Heart Cave | The Truth Of It
When you express the thing that is within you, that is when you connect.
-Naomi Absalom
This Creative Muse was curated and penned by Sarah Jeffs.
TCE Dreaming Team, artist, illustrator, photographer, Brightfeather Studio web maker.
