Emergence room
“It’s an emergent process,” I said with my hands theatrically emphasizing a fluid movement from toe to head.
“Yes, yes, you know your words…,” my partner said characteristically playful with, I imagine, a hint of uncertainty.
Admittedly, I felt kind of proud of what was transforming between us and this emotional intensity filled the space in between our bodies. Proudness can be an overcompensation for the contractions that build up in my stomach area. A release.
Our interaction might have stopped the buzzing connection right away, triggering anxiety and a sense of separation on both ends.
We are doing relational research into these dynamics and are exploring different ways of being together (also inspired by the training in existential development I mentioned yesterday, https://lavantgarde.be/training/ ). All vulnerabilities considered; we are learning to trust the process.
We entertained the idea to connect his musical and visual creations with my existential journey. That feels synergetic and like a newborn sequence to our previous collaborations (such as the podcasts we’ve made, for example, in Dutch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYv78PrMMcA ).
I don’t feel that this co-creative process needs to be structured on forehand nor do I feel a - demanding - need to push things towards a certain direction. Rather, I notice the attention-grabbing quality of the need and take it to be less ego-threathening than I often experienced. Work in progress.
It's always work 'to be' in the process.
To me, this time, the process is very much about openly discovering what is there. Limitlessly, not following the conditioned tendency to fully frame the how and what of the project to be sure we are like-minded. There is a why and that is ‘we,’ the entity we call our relationship or even our family. An open exploration of the dialogue that will and might flourish between his and my artistic life, within our family’s life, between his musical muses and my writings.
For the upcoming time, I am writing these diary fragments, sharing them online. A search for a calling, and a process of cutting through authenticity-undermining-attachments. He feels the impetus to create music. There is no strict framework to adhere to, it will be a potential encounter and a dialogue, but none of it comes with a fixed result in mind. Or at least, I am not fixating on the imagery in my mind .
Instead of trying to see whether his or mine projections resonate, I feel we are now working on a different kind of collaboration. A form that might suit us both, feels artistically free and includes the emotional growth of our family as part of it (he he, okay, at the end of this sentence my voice starts to become louder indeed, the echo of a calling). Instead of talking interminably and irritated about the precise definitions of whatever we are doing and how we should be doing this, something we can find ourselves intensly enmeshed in, there is the light promise of ‘just being authentically ourselves’ and seeing what emerges from that co-created space.
Oh dear, letting go of control! All the while embodying the full intensity of being alive and creativity driven.
‘Feel into what works for you,’ I hear myself say a couple of times.
Ha, that good-old tendency to name and tame, to emphasize, take care of, make sure that…. A loved expression of intensity that might undermine the others autonomy. I breathe and let go of the sentences.
Silence. The birthplace of creation.
Stay tuned, this diary might sound very vivid along the way. We will see how reality's melody will unfold.