Money, Room, & The Whole Sky

Often, I find myself reflecting on the conditions for creativity; what helps, what hinders it; how mothers navigate pursuing creative lives despite the unpaid labor of caregiving; how people without financial means or access to support and community can propel themselves creatively; and generally, how modern creative people can flourish with so much overstimulation, disconnection to the self and natural world, and working lives that deplete them of energy and time to create. Some notes:

In Mary Oliver’s essay, Of Power and Time, she said:

“Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart—to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.”

To have solitude and privacy are practical conditions for creative work, but there’s also a bit of an expansive quality to what Oliver is saying in mentioning the need for “the whole sky to fly in.” Solitude offers a spaciousness for one’s mind and spirit. Sure, you need time alone in quiet to focus, but you also need plenty privacy and space for connection to yourself to experience an internal expansion that nourishes you, which flows into creativity. I don’t think most people are afforded that privilege, especially mothers, or full-time workers. Or at least, they don’t come in large doses. It’s not that you can’t still pursue something like writing without that, but it is a condition that allows you to really pay attention to what you think and what you feel versus only ever being exposed to the opinions and thoughts of other people. And I do think space to make sense of all your inputs, but also, to step away from them, is important.

Meanwhile, in Virginia Woolf’s famous essay A Room of One’s Own, she writes:

“…a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved.”

She’s speaking of the limitations that women faced in the early 20th century and how that ties to women’s representation in literature. There was, of course, a lack of financial independence, where women were financially dependent on men, but were also expected to be caregivers, and support the ambitions of men over being allowed or encouraged to cultivate their own intellectual curiosities and ambitions; they lacked equal access to education, along with mentorship, and intellectual community; and they almost never had any access to the physical space necessary to pursue serious intellectual work; instead, they were often expected to exist in a communal fashion, burdened by constant disruptions. A woman’s intellectual potential wasn’t fully honored. And so, the conditions for them to thrive intellectually or creatively were largely absent.

Woolf is pointing to the negative impact of systemic issues. A lack of money impacts one psychologically, and shapes what they can access, and if you aren’t given the freedom and opportunity to work in peace, to have space to think deeply, then, you won’t have the ability to fully explore and develop your intellectual work. I think you can still work towards it, but meaningful progress will come a lot slower, if at all. So, even if a person has the skill, not having the financial means, or physical place for themselves, is a tremendous obstacle. And all this still applies to modern creative people. Often, people with little time, privacy, and energy, just squeeze in the tiniest version of a creative practice where they can manage to. And sometimes that just needs to be enough. Though, I think that can only be enough for so long. But, in other cases, where a person doesn’t have the practical conditions, or some sense of psychological safety, I find myself wondering how they can flourish creatively, too.

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Leave me feedback, thoughts, questions, whatever, etc.

These daily posts aren’t polished essays, but an experiment in taking one thing that’s lingering with me and publicly executing on trying to develop and articulate my thinking about it, especially when my thoughts are incomplete.

I think of everything on my entire Substack as something I can come back to and iterate & expand on later, including these posts! So, if anyone leaves a comment that sparks anything for me, I’ll consider exploring it further sometime. Here’s a link to a Google doc. of the above post:

→Right Here!!←

If you have any specific thoughts that came up for you while reading, feel free to just jump in the doc. and leave comments on those moments, or all over throughout; leave thoughts on whatever you want, and ask questions, or share reactions to specific things. What stands out? What are you curious to know more about?

— Sandra