Midnight Love Letters to My Hidden Artist #1 - "It’s ok that you’re still not creating"
For times of struggle to find the artist within
The first in a new series on A Tangerine Moon that explores the relationship between the emerging artist and their art
Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and find words spilling out onto my bed, pouring out from somewhere between the landscape of my heart and the world of my dreams.
Midnight, is when soundless words find their loudest voices within our walls.
Midnight, is also when magic can be found by those who believe in it enough to look for it.
Recently, the words that find me at midnight have taken a form that I’ve been inspired to call Midnight Love Letters to My Hidden Artist.
These letters are also my love letters to all our hidden artists.
In what I hope to grow into a new series here that explores the relationship between the emerging artist and their art, this is Midnight Love Letter No. 1 — “It’s ok that you’re still not creating”.
This is a love letter that traces the arc of the journey that I’ve walked to meet with my own longtime artist-in-hiding.
This is a love letter perfumed with the scents and infused with the spices of journeys walked by other artists I’ve encountered, and been deeply inspired by, along the way.
This is a love letter I am publishing a year to the day I was led by my own heart to start writing again, after 23 long years of freeze.
Following on from the midnight love letter, you’ll also find a love poem to the life we live.
〰️ Midnight Love Letter No. 1 〰️
It’s ok that you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve been trying for 22 years, 9 months and 18 days to create something — anything — and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve had your hours at work reduced, and you have more time than ever on your hands, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that your colleague (who’s way more successful at work) has also managed to write and publish a highly acclaimed / critics’ favourite groundbreaking first novel, all while working more hours than you at work, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve gone on a leave of absence from your job, and you’re spending more time than ever with yourself, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve quit your job to work casually in your local café / shop, because you wanted to give yourself more room to create, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve worked in your local café / shop for too long now, watching your former colleague (yes, that same one) write and publish their second highly acclaimed / critics’ favourite groundbreaking novel, all while staying in the same job you left, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that it’s been 477 days and 21 hours since you’ve quit your job, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve watched 3,168 hours of Netflix, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you have rested / “not done anything” for 1 year, 11 months and 28 days, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve spent too much / barely any time travelling to all the countries in the world you dream of travelling to, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve spent £4,879.99 (you think) on self-improvement and trying to figure out the meaning of life, the meaning of you, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve spent 2 years, 7 months, and 16 days trying out 599 either subtly different or super revolutionary breakthrough hacks to fight all those “negative habits” you’ve been convinced are afflicting you — procrastination, resistance, limiting beliefs, self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, lack of self-discipline, chronic inconsistency (insert 1,258 other external diagnoses of you by people who don’t know a thing about you, trying to tell you that they know exactly what’s wrong with you) — and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve spent 104 hours in therapy, cried your heart out every night while in the shower, and thought — this is it, I’m going to be healed now so I can finally create, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve never felt more alive, grateful, and inspired in your life, and you’re still not creating
It’s ok that you’ve never felt closer to the secret to the meaning of life, and you’re still not creating
because, you know what —
you’ve spent your past 22 years, 9 months and 18 days being a parent to others who were meant to be parenting you, and you’ve just found yourself walking down the long and winding road of learning to give yourself the parenting you never received
you’ve spent your leave of absence from your job tussling with intense feelings and profound sensations you’ve never experienced before, in addition to wondering how it could be that you still wake up with heart pounding in chest and blood rushing to head, despite no longer needing to set the loudest four alarms in the apartment to wake you up for work every morning
you’ve spent all your hours not at work recovering from all the hours you did spend at work, and navigating a state of not-so-mild panic about what not being at work means about you, your worth and value, your ability to “be an adult”, and your future — and by holding yourself through this panic, slowly, gently, and one day at a time, you’re learning to do the most adult thing of all
you’ve spent each moment of “not doing anything”, in fact doing everything you can to come up for air against the thundering tide of a society that screams at you all the time for being “too soft”, “too quiet”, “too simple”, “too weird”, and at the same time, “not resilient enough”, “not focused enough”, “not sociable enough”, “not exceptional enough”, or quite simply, “not enough, enough”
while your colleague was laser focused on succeeding at work and publishing their groundbreaking first and second novels, you were doing all you could to help your younger brother / best friend / child / grand aunt move through larger-than-life crises and being for them the rock they needed, even when you had no idea what it felt like to have a rock of your own to lean on
while you were not travelling to all the countries in the world you had always dreamt of travelling to, you were instead learning how to swim under rain clouds in an ocean of grief, until the one day you discovered how all that salt in the water is what, in fact, keeps you afloat, in the end
while you were travelling to all the countries in the world you had always dreamt of travelling to, your heart suddenly remembered again how to cry with joy and laugh in sadness, your heart suddenly remembered again how it felt to be held for you, by you, and could she not simply enjoy each of those moments to the full?
while you were buried under the labels of various “negative habits” that had been stuck onto you by others, your own stories lay silently, hidden beneath them all, waiting for the chance to be heard, so that they could show you your own way to be you
while you were searching for the secret to the meaning of life, you realized the secret no one told you is that — it is absolutely ok to spend your time just being, just breathing
(and sometimes just being and just breathing looks like Netflix, sometimes it looks like resting and doing something-that-looks-like-nothing for weeks / months / years, sometimes it looks like crying your heart out on the floor of your shower, sometimes it looks like screaming f— you to self-improvement and learning instead to love your perfectly imperfect self just as you are right now, sometimes it looks like feeling alive, grateful and inspired, and wanting to simply do nothing except soak it all up in the moment)
and in this way, you find that, in all that time, you were creating —
you were creating a home for your heart
you were creating a playground for your senses
you were creating a sanctuary of time and space —
to feel the sun on your face, to splash in puddles in the rain, to read the books that had been collecting dust on your bookshelf, to journey across the city to eat the pasta you’d always craved (freshly tossed in, and served to you out of, a giant wheel of cheese), to paint a handmade mug for your sister, to burn the cookies you’re trying to bake for the very first time, to try them and realize burnt cookies still taste pretty good, to laugh at how your dog looks when he’s napping at noon and dreaming about his dinner, to watch your snake tongue plant miraculously flower —
to learn just how much rain can a cloud hold,1
and realize that this is more or less the answer to how much love can a heart hold2
you were in the most important act of creating, ever —
the creating of personal meaning in your own life
the creating of autonomy over your own time
the creating of intimacy with your self, and with life
the creating of belonging to your self, and in your own home
the creating of a silken cocoon to nap, and from there, to dream
the creating of a soft landing place for your body that you’d forgotten was there, holding you together, giving you a home, always
the creating of stillness to get to know your intuition
the creating of self-permission to just be, exactly as you are
the creating of self-realization that you are worthy of it all, and you have been worthy since before you were born
the creating of self-trust that there will be a time for creating, and you will know when it’s here
the creating of an understanding of beauty that is felt with, and awakens, the heart
the creating of soul food for your free spirit who, for a long time, had to live far apart
the creating of your initiation into embodying the graceful warrior in art
because —
when you create, you also confront — yourself, in all of your never-ending-you, your family and origin histories, your darkness, your depths, your swamps, your shadows
because —
when you create, you also commit — to your self and to your art, to showing up with your sword of warm tears, your shield of fierce vulnerability, and your softly flickering flame of unending courage
because —
the whole life you live before you create is preparing you, wholeheartedly, for the journey of creating
and —
you see that
from your very first
breath
you have never stopped
creating
sometimes in wild colours, sometimes in black and white hours
sometimes with precious pearls, sometimes with ferocious fears
sometimes from freshly squeezed laughter, sometimes from stone baked tears
— all along
you have been
dancing
on the canvas
that is your life
Alive
(a love poem to the life we live)
Feeling alive is like
dried salt tears baked warm in the sun falling behind sunglass shields the colour of midnight
blue
a dredge of memories shaken, stirred
in the deep below
a gleaning – is therapy a portmanteau of “there” and “happy”?
flakes of scab land quietly in an invisible shower on the table linen
a twisted tummy soothed by an oozy delicious carbonara for one served in a giant wheel of cheese
by the lonely river
wind on face bare shoulders enveloped in a blanket of bracing cold warmth
on an early summer’s day the sun also shines
spilling down on London cobblestones in gentle golden pools
I hear the bells of time peal in the flight of words rising from the book
tenderly before me
a flying swan sings his afternoon song to me from across the canal
on the way home
my tears no longer show but in their worn tracks an engraving in crystalline brine
stories on my skin
the sky is blue with clouds that are fluffed and white
whispering
yes feeling alive can look like this, too
〰️ 〰️ 〰️
This was a poem I started writing before I believed that I could writebeginning its life in the cold of a tentative summer afternoon in May 2023, as I wandered my way south and north of the River Thames of London, across Tower Bridge, through St Katherine’s Docks Marina, and along the canals of Wapping
coming into full bloom in the warmth of two ripening summer afternoons a year later in May and June 2024, sat at a kitchen table accompanied by plants, coffee, and a giant chocolate brioche croissant, looking out over a street in Porto named, The Winds in a Place of the Eagles
This is a poem I’ve named, Alive
〰️ 〰️ 〰️
“The human soul doesn’t want to be advised, or fixed, or saved.
It simply wants to be witnessed, exactly as it is.”
— Parker Palmer3
Is there something you wish to tell your hidden artist, or that your hidden artist might wish to tell you?
Please share below, if you feel called to — I read and reply to each message I receive ♡
Writer’s Note:
If you’re drawn to reading more on the relationship between the emerging artist and their art, you may also enjoy reading my earlier pieces —
〰️ Postcards from October, especially the postcards titled If You Want the Mountains to Listen, Speak to Them and The Time Machine
〰️ In Becoming, Finding Belonging
〰️ Through the Other Looking-Glass, and What I Found There
inspired by the title of the poem, “How Much Rain Can A Cloud Hold?”, by London-based writer and poet, Laurie Bolger
because, after all, what is on the other side of grief, but love
as quoted by Megan Devine in this profound and moving short animation on “How to help a grieving friend”, from Maria Popova’s The Marginalian newsletter on “The Radical Act of Letting Things Hurt”
Ahhhh once again I am in awe of your beautiful words 😭 I admire so much your ability to go in such depth, into the soul of your experience to find the song we all need to hear from you🥹 this piece made me feel so much! Heard, understood, held and safe! Thank you for giving us permission to just be here, to trust life. I absolutely will come back to this when I need a warm hug or when I feel in doubt, truly wise and tender words✨ thank you for sharing your sacred relationship with your art and giving me hope today and always 🤍
Wow Suyin this was so moving and reassuring to read. I love the image of midnight as when magic can be found. I started writing love letters to myself last summer when going through a breakup and a rough time in general and sometimes magic just slipped out when I least expected. It shows that the healing is also the creative process, it is also the creating. Glad to be part of your creative journey and thank you for making me feel seen as a creative despite the lack of creating a lot of the time!