Every creative needs a cloister

fig tree and creativity suffering in an online age.

its been a while since i’ve written here so you might have to bear with me. a transition to move from writing and editing articles for my magazine to coming onto this platform and spilling poetic thoughts and my deepest desires to 180 of you (insane by the way). and i don’t usually start this way but ive felt so disconnected from rawness and reality recently that i decide to come to you like this instead. a little messy.

as a self proclaimed ‘creative’ (still hard to say that out loud) , I often sit right beneath my fig tree, so close to it I can smell the sweetness of the fruits above teasing my nose. And I watch new figs blossom, I watch old figs shrivel up and turn into something entirely different. In the last 6 months the tree has become overcrowded: magazine editor, poet, creative community facilitator, holistic workshop runner, photographer, fashion line designer, short film writer…florist. And I’ve never been so afraid of Sylvia Plath’s analogy: I’m so overwhelmed with desire to be something, I might end up becoming nothing at all. My figs will fall.

It is a feeling I know so many resonate with, and it also something so many fall victim to. I am so hungry to express creativity, it can sometimes be utterly paralysing. And nothing comes out. All the ideas I have turn into a kaleidoscopic blur, and it becomes almost impossible to begin any of them. I’m going to now risk sounding a lot like my mother but I put a big responsibility for this onto my phone. ‘its that damn phone’, and it really is. Especially when you’re consuming so so much, the consumption overtakes how much you are actually sitting down to create. we are constantly exposed to what others are doing, how they’re spending their time, what’s trending, what clothes are cool, what cafes are cool, what people are… cool. And in a way, it is all slowly chipping away at our autonomy. We’re being told what to like, and the creative and critical brain stops exercising, it becomes lazy and switches off. So even if you have ideas, they become harder to execute.

As a person who creates, it has become a sort of non-negotiable to tap into social media, but you can fall victim to a very dangerous trap. You start to create FOR content, instead of creating for the love and passion of doing it. I truly believe this is when it is far too easy to disconnect from your craft.

In my upcoming fashion and philosophy magazine, idpeelapomegrante (which you should subscribe to), i wrote a micro essay titled ‘Against the Useful Self: how every creative needs a cloister’. A cloister is a covered walkway that tends to have archway architecture and leads to a garden of some sort. They provide a quiet and contemplative space, a space to think, meditate on ideas, and connect to the creation. In a place where you are disconnected and sit with only yourself, your thoughts, and beautiful nature, inspiration is sure not to miss. Sometimes we need to take ourselves out of the comfortable day-to-day: the doomscrolling as soon as we wake up, and the comparison with everyone else online, and create from a different place. Without output in mind, create from a place of instinct and intimacy. Create because you were made to do it, because it seeps into your veins, because it is a fire you refuse to extinguish. Not because you want a viral TikTok moment.

It’s an idea i am too learning, and one i feel committed to mastering. This is my mission . And i want to take you with me, through a series of artist dates, finding my ‘cloister’, and creating because i love it. I plan to share my findings, my projects and my pieces on this Substack! And through it I hope to tend to all my figs, so as that I can identify the ones that i really want and never close myself off to becoming because I am afraid of it.