Small Bright Songs in the Dark

An invitation to gift yourself a daily sliver of joy

A small assemblage from 2023. You’ll find the full Nick Cave passage from which this fragment was taken at the end of this post.

Last week, I talked about creative play a bit abstractly in the context of the regression we are experiencing toward “Government by Psychopathic Fuckwits,” or what Riane Eisler would call a Domination System.

Today, I want to tell you the story of how creative play saved my life.

Twenty-two years ago, I had an 18-month-old baby, a husband with significant physical and mental health challenges, and a job that involved taking care of a large caseload of adult undergraduate students.

I was very much in danger of going under, I could feel myself crumbling, and I was terrified of the prospect. I’d already lost most of my twenties to depression and I really really didn’t want to go back to that place of lostness and darkness.

The good news was that in the process of extricating myself from the prolonged misery of my twenties, I had already learned (through a process I’ll share another time) that my sense of well-being and self-connection is intimately tied to creative play - with words, with color, with texture and with objects.

The bad news was that with my little daughter on my hip, my caregiving responsibilities made it seem impossible that I could ever have the space and time for my own play again. The lifeline that had saved me once before no longer felt accessible.

Right book, right moment

Then, somehow, I got ahold of “The Gift of a Year: How to Achieve the Most Meaningful, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Year of Your Life” by Mira Kirshenbaum. I don’t typically read self-help, and I have no memory of how this book came into my life, but this particular book was written for women who were waking up to the realization that they were living for everyone else, had lost their sense of ownership of their own lives, and were craving a life that they actually wanted to live. Ding! Ding! Ding!

Kirshenbaum promised that I could choose to make this “A year you say stop to the soul eroding momentum of your life.” Oh man, she had my number!

Kirshenbaum recommended picking one thing to give yourself over the course of the year, and I picked 20 minutes a day for creative play. Specifically, I wanted to use that time to continue to explore mixed-media projects, including making three-dimensional collages in boxes (the word “assemblage” hadn’t yet entered my vocabulary). I wanted to experiment with paints, and papers, and beads and canvases. I wanted to decorate stuff and have paint under my fingernails.

A seemingly inadequate gift

I felt, at the start, that twenty minutes was going to be woefully inadequate. I am, by nature, a big gulper. I crave deep dives, instant gratification, more and more of what I love. But Kirshenbaum promised me that small gifts would add up to a shift in my experience of my life.

So, I stuck to my 20-minutes-a-day plan pretty religiously. Sometimes, on a weekend, or if Annie took an extra-long nap, I’d linger longer at my craft table, but between my exhaustion and my obligations, I accepted that most days, 20 minutes would be all I could do.

After one year, I had made a bunch of crazy experimental collage paintings, a few giant clocks, and 14 assemblages in boxes. By the summer of the next year, we had moved to Whidbey Island and I got up the courage to include those 14 assemblages in a group show on the Whidbey Island studio tour. By the end of the weekend, I had sold 11 of them.

The day after the tour, someone dropped off a box of broken jewelry at the front desk of the consultancy where I was working, with a note saying “you’ll know what to do with these…”

My life as a working artist had begun.

It was never about the selling

Although it was validating that so many people appreciated my work, it was very clear to me that sales were just a byproduct of the real gift of creative play. By gifting myself the tiniest possible sliver of play every single day, I was enacting over and over again the commitment I had made to not abandon myself.

I had learned to make space for something every day that was

1. just for fun, and

2. just for me

I had practiced listening to my own mind and heart.

I had experienced the trickster magic that surrounds the creative process.

I had microdosed flexibility, self-trust, pleasure, and inventiveness.

I had claimed just enough inner freedom to build a healthy life around.

I had cracked the seemingly uncrackable puzzle of how to be both needed and free.

This is a different kind of year

I don’t have a toddler anymore; in fact that 18-month-old is now a full-grown 24-year-old who will be getting married this summer. And although I continue to be as available as I can to the people for whom I care, I have far more time for thinking my own thoughts and addressing my own needs.

But in this time of excruciating grief, uncertainty, and fear for the future of our country, I find myself reaching anew for daily practices that connect me to a feeling of groundedness, calm, and inner freedom. In the face of the “soul eroding momentum” of what is happening to the United States of America, I find myself wanting to return to the fierce devotion I brought to that first year of 20-minutes for play, reaching for those life saving micro-pulses of joy to relieve the darkness with their “small bright songs.”

And I thought you might be craving these things, too.

An Invitation

My invitation to you this week is to give yourself the gift of a week.

Pretend you have been granted 20-minutes a day to do something just for fun and just for you: what will you do? Nap? Paint your toes? Dance around? Doodle? Sing? Plant something in the dirt? Invent a new dessert? Embroider defiant slogans on dishcloths?

Try giving yourself that little sliver of joy every day this week. It won’t feel like enough, but it is only a placeholder for the world of pleasure you deserve. It may feel uncomfortably decadent, but it is only 20 minutes, and no one needs to know.

Except me, that is! Let me know what you want your gift to be!

Here’s the full quote from Nick Cave from which I borrowed the line in the art piece at the top of this post:

“For me, to strive toward joy has become a calling and a practice. It is carried out with the full understanding of the terms of this hallowed and harrowed world.

I pursue it with an awareness that joy exists both in the worst of the world and within the best, and that joy, flighty, jumpy, startling thing that it is, often finds its true voice within its opposite.

Joy sings small, bright songs in the dark – these moments, so easily disregarded, so quickly dismissed, are the radiant points of light that pierce the gloom to give validation to the world.”

– Nick Cave, musician, writer, actor, poet

Sara Saltee is an artist, writer, and creativity coach living on Whidbey Island, Washington. Through her writing, coaching, and workshops, she provisions complex humans for joyful creative adventures. In the studio, she conjures enchanting little worlds in shrines and shadow boxes.

Upcoming Events and Resources:

ONLINE WORKSHOPS

Saturday, March 8th: Choosing the Freedom to Create. In this 90-minute online workshop, Melissa West and I will be offering a deep dive into the topic of creative freedom - including exploring the cultural and psychological forces that restrict and bind us in both conscious and unconscious ways; a gallery of examples of women artists and writers who found ways to claim their freedom, and a process for authorizing yourself to expand the territory in which you are truly free.

EBOOK
Sara’s new Ebook Welcome to the Round World: What to Expect When You’re Creating is now available for immediate download.

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