Fallow Period

I’m looking forward to not making things for a period of time, especially after a crazy first half which included creating two new shows for children and a monologue (that literally took the wind out of me.)

When I was younger, I never knew how to stop working. It would excite me to have long days of rehearsals, jumping from thing to thing. It felt good to constantly be on my feet and working non-stop as a young actor wanting to make it in the business. Afterall, working weeks and weeks of 14 hour days meant that I was doing good right?

As my priorities and purpose shifted though, and I began to find my place in the world…it just was not possible to function like that. I realised I had pressing things I wanted to say, and it needed deliberate thought, deliberate practice…time. Time to work at it, and sometimes, time of NOT DOING ANYTHING.

It felt really hard at first to do that, because there is so much guilt. Like I should be making full use of all the time I have, rather than wasting away watching videos, or having a walk or looking at pinterest. Having a life outside of work, basically. But it is precisely life outside of work that fuels the work, and the more I see the connections between the two, the easier it was to disengage from work to enjoy life.

Life is the source of my work, and I cannot let that dry out. So enjoy life I must, now, in the quiet moments, before those creative urges compel me to give of myself again.

“Artistic self-expression necessitates periods of quietude in which it appears that nothing is happening. Like a tree in winter whose roots are doing important work deep inside the dark earth, the creative process needs fallow time. We have to incubate inspiration. We need empty spaces for musing and preparing, experimenting and reflecting. Society does not value its artists, partly because of the apparent lack of productivity that comes with the creative life. This societal emphasis on goods and services is an artifact of the male drive to erect and protect, to engineer and execute, to produce and control. Art begins with receptivity. Every artist, in a way, is feminine, just as every artist is a mystic. And a political creature. Making art can be a subversive act, an act of resistance against the deadening lure of consumption, an act of unbridled peacemaking disguised as a poem or a song or an abstract rendering of an aspen leaf swirling in a stream.”