Community & Ritual

The Artist-Creator’s Office (Dispatch No. 11) | Honor New Information #3

So we’ve made space for new information, realized its value and have become motivated to honor it. Now, the new information has acquired meaning and it begins to animate the efforts we make in our daily lives and art practices. There is a responsibility that comes attached to the desire to honor new information; it’s similar to the responsibility to nurture a relationship with someone we have become fond of or fallen in love with. 

To the immature, (and by immature, I mean the one who either through choice or circumstance doesn’t possess the capacity to step up to the plate of what ever requires their care,) love is an inconvenient urge, and so is the recognition that new information needs to be honored. The threat of failure wards them away from giving a good shot at anything meaningful. Too wrapped up in external expectations and perceptions, which may have become internalized over time, we allow new information to remain stagnant and therefore impotent in our minds. We prevent it from taking transformational effect in our lived experiences. So how can we live up to new information? How can we build capacity for what new information requires of us?

Use ritual to create moments 

Rituals facilitate demarcations between what you want to release and what you want to embrace.

One bleak aspect of adulthood these days is that the rites that would help us embrace new information without shame have been eroded or tethered to capitalism, racism, and cisheteropatriarchy. Once you turn 18, you basically have to figure out for yourself what adulthood means to you in isolation. With the influence of social media, many people find themselves seeking out markers of belonging and significance where no supportive container for these needs exists. 

Somehow, we need to get away from faceless online audiences for these foundational experiences and events. This is an obstacle I’m still navigating, so I don’t have any real solutions as yet. In the (partial or total) absence of understanding or supportive real-life community, it becomes necessary to create rituals and witness oneself through these transformations. Not only that, but because isolation is a fertilizer for fear, it also becomes necessary to remember a greater community that is rooting for your good: these can be nature and the Earth, artists whose work and being you admire, a spiritual community with God and life-giving spiritual forces, the life-force that is the art within you longing to be created. 

So we have a kind of community. Now we incorporate ritual. Think of a birthday party: we invite guests, prepare food and games, set the space up with the right ambience and decor. We may have a cake with candles. Think about birthday rituals in your culture. 

Now, imagine we’re inviting a new way of thinking into our lives: our minds have already invited them in. The initiation ritual is a moment, but it marks the beginning of a process. So, we create a moment around a new piece of information. It could be a big moment, like taking a long day season of rest, going out for a treat, buying a new piece of jewelry, getting a tattoo or a phone call with a friend to celebrate together. It could be a small moment, like uttering a prayer of thanks, taking a nice long bath, journaling/creating art, taking a selfie or dancing to a beloved album. 

Making moments is bookmarking time, creating a space to witness yourself and your transformation. Just the simple external acknowledgement that something has shifted within you is an act of creating capacity to begin moving in the direction guided by your new information.

Questions to Ponder 

(Check Shame at the door of this questionnaire.)

What about the responsibility to respond to love or new information feels annoying? 

Is there another emotion underlying the annoyance? Name it. Ask it what it wants and negotiate terms that will allow any level of response and honoring.

As pertains to your creative practice: If you could … What would you do? (This is a capacity measurement.) What is the difference between the present you and the you who does what you would do? 

What does maturity mean to you? How has this idea been shaped by your environment?

When you think of belonging, what spaces, people, media come to mind?

In what ways are you significant? If you became more significant, what would that look like? Take away the things that other people would be able to see: what remains of your significance? In what ways are you (in)significant? 

Here’s a resource I created for a Poetry Workshop over at that might help with the work of witnessing yourself through your transformation.