Surrender to Spaciousness
Silence, and learning from the dove calls
In the morning, a single mourning dove calls from the branch by the window. Its calls is low, slow, steady, a song that sounds like a gray day with flecks of gold. I’m immersed in ink when I notice it first in the early hours of the gray day, trying to encourage some step forward in my thinking. This lone bird: how its call is measured, a low tone, a slow timing, a draw into the now, a song existing in momentary vibrancy, a call for connecting expressing its way from internal ecologies out into the atmosphere of this slow day.
Here is the practice: I show up not knowing what to write. I have entered the unknown space, feeling density embodied, noticing stories that show up as constricting, hooking myself willingly into the space of “I don’t know”. Then I pause, stepping back.
The tools that I have are time, quiet, candle, daylight, electric, a day that’s already abundant. The desire to write. That’s a good start. Computer, paper, pen. I notice that by taking an inventory of what’s present seems to be a good starting place — that’s step one step one. Presence and slowness and trusting the process — that’s step two. It takes time. Not knowing starts as a burden, transforms into a seed, gets placed in the soil and watered. From the tight grip of doubt comes relaxing. Trusting. Optimism. Curiosity arises. The seed grows.
To be with the unknown space, I turn to paper, blank space, black ink. Drawing is a thing I’m turning to lately to be with life: shape without story. It’s a relief. I worry there’s nothing to write about, so I paint instead; any small movement, I find, is a small nod and devotion to creativity, this balance between stillness and feeling stuck. Thin black ink, brush marks, wide lines, white paper. I zone out and start to hear the dove’s call. In between its calls, I notice a silence — spaciousness. I’m counting the timing between songs, listening to the morning in layers: dove song, radiator, drone of the exhaust from the restaurant door, swell of the train, a quiet street punctuated with car horn passing by. The lone bird calls, and then it pauses.
It seems the pause is the soil, the ground, the nutrient dense spot, the holding place. Like the stop in the dove’s song, I notice inspiration in contrast with its absence. In this gray morning, momentary spaciousness has given rise to inspiration. Patience, duration, endurance, and trust in time passing, paired with awareness — these are creative ingredients. We do the best with what we have, and this what I come back to when I think about what’s abundant.
From this not knowing, from this pause, this silent space makes way for listening. Then our bodies, with their inherent wisdom, those creative spaces, they becomes our basins. They are the lakes by which we sit by to gather drops of water — the inspiration. To enter into a receptive state is as important as the act of actively blooming and making. To write, to meditate, to speak, to clean, to sweat, to yell, to paint, to move through, to pour out into life. These are practices of making space.
In February, deep winter, I rip through Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet on the train. I am traveling back and forth across the city between my apartment and teaching classes. This in between time is the space for transitioning. My eyes are trailing fast over words, seemingly moving sometimes at the same speed of the train. I feel enthralled by the tug of the pages, feeling resonant truths and depths and tenderness, attuning to the process of writing and making. “Progress must come from deep within,” Rilke writes, “and cannot be forced or accelerated…To let every impression and the germ of every feeling come to completion inside, in the dark, in the unsayable, in the unconscious, is what is unattainable to one’s own intellect, and to wait with deep humility and patience for the hour when a new clarity is delivered: that alone is to live as an artist, in the understanding and in one’s creative work.”
I come to the page and remember that our minds aren’t meant to hold everything. Not all sensations need a storyline; sometime a single song, a tone, a shape is the channel enough to express the feelings out, to move them through. Creative process is not one of constant producing: winter teaches that. We are meant to experience life, receive nourishment, integrate what we need, and later digest and release the stories, feelings, and forms as they move through. To show up with a willingness to be witness to the I don’t know is to dance with the mysteries of chance, possibility, and the unknown. In a culture so dedicated to addition, it is revolutionary, necessary, and nourishing, I think, to create boundaries for the spaciousness around our ideas and creative lives. To give ourselves the chances to slow down and be with. To be with the quiet, the silence, the space in between.
Lately, I am thinking about the ground, still cold from winter. Soon, seeds go in. Soon, sun warms. That which we witnessed, metabolized, and confronted from winter will either grow into something more or get composted, making way for new nutrients in the season to come. How miraculous, despite these gray days, that nature continues, the sun still blazes hot and high in the sky. Sunsets. Soon, we’ll meet the leaves in their unfolding.
Meanwhile, the winter. Meanwhile we continue: into these silent spaces, the ripe nights, into the process of surrendering. I inhale and hold the ideas, and exhale, and let them go. Patience, slowness any creative endeavor seems to say. Adding in as much as letting go. Resting gives way to more action. Continuing on, creativity seems to say, goes on to encourage.
I start from I don’t know and end up here: looking wide to the fog sky, the tree that shifts with the breeze, I hear the dove cooing. Its voice is gentle and steady and slow. I’m met with points where its voice breaks. I can hear it expanding, coaxing its own voice louder. Soon after I start writing the birds flies away. Later the sirens will call in the street, a way of making space, carving a line through dense lanes of traffic. Above the street, I take in the wide view. Like the dove, my own call is one for connecting, too.
Creativity is a practice in collaborating, in trust building with the unknown. It takes the ingredients of our lives and asks us to notice what we have, to notice what we can do with them. It is the seed of voice, of thought, of idea, waiting to be nourished, planted — something trying to emerge. If we tear down the expectations around producing, what comes through? If the purpose of expression is not to be perfect but to be human, where can we let go? What does grace offer us? What could a practice in spaciousness do?
Try these prompts: I’m calling out to / I’m clearing out / I’m readying the soil for…
classes and upcoming experiences:
Join in for creative practices with me in NYC and beyond:
3/10 Bookbinding: Pamphlet Stitch
3/14 Grounded in Gratitude
3/17 Build Your Journaling Practice
3/17 Bookbinding: Casing In Hardcovers
3/20 Taste + Write: Meditating on the Senses
3/26 Ink/Play
4/2 Creative Landscape online
nourished by, nourishing:
Reading: This from Pema Chodron on transforming emotions (Lion’s Roar), Drifts by Kate Zambreno (more on Bookshop). Turned last week’s roast into this week’s stock, thinking about transforming what is, and continuing. Listening: a playlist for late winter, here. Making: a video on a well-lived in journal.
I’m bringing some changes to the subscriber-only features of this letter in the month to come. I’ll be adding more, growing some new shoots. I’m curious to know what you come to these letters for — reply with any reflections!
from a past season:
studio views:
Creative Nourishment is a reader-supported publication by Kelly Odette Laughlin. I’m an artist, writer, and teacher located in NYC, and the founder of Odette Press. I lead creative workshops throughout the city and beyond. Learn more about my work here, shop journals here. I’m glad you’re here.