The Stitch that Unravels Fear's Caul: On Artists' Residencies and Making Time for your Art

“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.” ― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993

I recently spent a full month in the Adirondack Mountains, on unceded Haudenoshonee and Anishinaabe Land, in a building made of large wooden beams, alongside a rippling lake, working on a book. This is what they call a “writing residency,” and it is a magical gift of time and attention. 

Historically, these kinds of residencies are funded by wealthy benefactors to allow artists time to create, often towards beautifying the halls of capitalism. These days, many artists are creating mutual aid based residencies, to do for ourselves what benefactors have traditionally done. However you arrive to the residency, and whatever path brought you to it, what we seek is time. Time, to attend to your creative work, without the common distractions of the usual hustle. At my residency, I was not alone. Painters, activists, filmmakers, weavers, memoirists, journalists, poets, and performers made up our small cohort. 

The rare-ness, the sacred-ness of this space has been on my mind since I left. And so I have tried to dissect it a little, to figure out what made a month in the mountains more than the sum of its parts. In these troubled and troubling times, there is not a single close friend of mine who hasn’t been “through it” these past years. As we get older, many of us are navigating the pressures of caring for parents, children, extended family, and our communities impacted by pandemics and structural neglect. We are challenged to find new ways to be in the world, to feel safe, to make art. All the more reason to cultivate pockets of generative time for ourselves.

What makes something a “residency?” Can you make one for yourself, for those times when you are needing a sacred space to cultivate your own creative practice? For those times when you need spaciousness to see what comes forth. Of course, any and all should apply for residencies (here are a few places to start your search), but if you have just a week, or a weekend, or a few days in the middle of a challenging season, what can you do to create a sacred container around you and your work? How might we make for ourselves, something akin to a residency, something akin to creative freedom?

I learned some important things, and hope that these learnings might help you make and sustain the time for a creative practice in the form of a residency, should you like to apply to one, or make one of your own:

1. Ditch the internet. This is much harder said than done, of course. I was twitchy for days when I realized that I didn’t have any signal or tether to the outside world. No wifi, no connection, zero bars.

First, panic. 

Then, liberation. 

If you are making a residency in your own home, figure out the times/ways you can pull the plug. This is perhaps the hardest thing to do, but it might be the most important.

I know it is near impossible for caretakers, leaders, the ones who are the glue of our families and communities to do this, to allow ourselves the time away from those responsibilities. To this I say, the key is preparation. Cover your bases if you must, make plans for who will do what in your absence, let folks know you’ll be unreachable, and how to get you in an emergency. Do whatever you can to make it possible to be disconnected from the airwaves for as long as you can. Solitude is challenging. It was for me - but it was transformative. 

If you are at a residency with other people, or even just one other person, create the parameters of when and how you will be together in advance. It’s easy to slide into in-person socializing in the absence of digital socializing. If that’s not your goal, be prepared to (re)claim your time.

I’m not one to demonize social media. I see it’s great power and it’s magnificent connective potential. I also know that, at times, it has been a force that degrades my own creative energies. It lulls, it enrages, it exhausts. It takes more than it gives, sometimes. It will be there when you get back. It will be there a week, or a month later. Turn your attention to yourself, your art, your writing, to nature - and see what comes. 

2. In the wake of the social, digital connectivity, you will need a plan for comfort and care. Bring a few things that comfort and soothe you. Softest clothes, favorite poems, hiking boots…you get the idea. Creative energy can be a depleting force! You will get tired, and you will need to tend to your exhaustion. Be prepared. I am a writer, but on my residency I brought some paints and paper, which allowed me to create in new ways. It gave me a way to make something when I was struggling with words - a fresh outlet, a way to recharge. 

3. Bring your talismans to induce the magic. Bring the sacred texts that steer you toward yourself. You don’t need a lot of these kinds of things, in my experience. If you are making a residency at home, clear off your workspace, and re-anoint it with a new vibe so it feels different than your day-to-day workspace - so it invites some magic. The ritual is key, it creates a boundary between this time and other time. 

4. Goals are helpful but rest is transformative. Make sure you plan for balance, especially if, like me you arrive to your residency exhausted from the effort of clearing the space in your life to get there. Plan for the rest, take it without guilt. It is an end in itself. In fact, you might make a rest to-do list (how many epic naps, how much laying around in the sunshine, how many long morning walks do you want to get in while on your residency?). Leave guilt at the door. It is subversive, and healing to approach our rest like we approach our work - with intention and attention. 

5. Try new ways of creating, new patterns.  You could work late into the night and see if you’re most creative as a night owl. Or you could rise before the sun to see if that’s your speed. A residency allows you to try the things that are impossible in the day-to-day hustle of your life, and see if any of them unlock something in you. I learned I love to work late, when I could quite literally hear the owls hooting outside, reminding me that I was not up alone.

6. Listen to what emerges. To find your rhythm, the beating heart of your practice, you have to cultivate your ability to listen. Slow way down and see what your body, your spirit are saying to you. A journaling practice, morning pages, helped me listen when I didn’t really know how. Free-writes, where you learn to stop editing and see what comes out, are another great way to hear yourself. Time spent in nature, or through meditation, or whatever practice of cultivating attention makes sense to you, are all ways to listen, and attend, to yourself. Many of us are collaborators, organizers, and community anchored creators, for us, solitude and enough time to locate our own creative wellspring is vital. Listen closely.

I arrived to the mountains with a checklist of goals and a plan for word counts by the week. I left with a new sense of myself as a creative person, a reinvigorated creative practice, and a commitment to not undermining it from here out. My goals could not have anticipated the internal transformation that was awaiting me. For all those of you that crave this kind of time, this sacred attention to yourselves and your work, I hope these meandering learnings and ideas propel you to create a residency of your own. 

Show us your belief’s wide skirt.

We need your art.