Category: Commentary

Since, he has appeared, approaching me at our friend’s birthday which we celebrated sprawled along the bank of the Langer See. As I was entering the lake alone the second time around, the water felt cooler after I’d been sitting in the shade of the trees for a while. I took my time, lingering in the shallows as I allowed the water to climb up to my belly button. He was hanging off the branch of tree submerged in the water and asked me how the experience of getting into the lake was going for me. We picked up a conversation – nice, easy and fun. Lost in it, I didn’t notice as a group of his friends arrived around us, emerging like sprites of the forest or nymphs of the lake – young, attractive, cheeky. As one of them (long, shiny hair and the humble confidence of toned cute) dove into the water right in front of us, his trunks slid down and the rest of us chuckled at the smooth, scrumptious shapes he uncovered. We moved around one another and spoke in a way which cast spells of the young who have missed each other; who are keen to play but are now careful how quickly they approach.

As I began to feel I began to swim through life. Reality was no longer a spectacle of observation, but a feat of sensation; no longer made up of air, but the fluid which binds all existence – past, present and future, faraway and immediately close – into the mesh constituting each moment’s experience. I sense, therefore I am. I take my body with me as I permit it to inform me of concepts thinking alone could never conjure.

The current age of exalted analytical reason had clouded my corporal intelligence for too long. It is no wonder we suffer from mental illness if all we inhabit, if all we are taught is worthy of inhabiting, is the realm of the mind. It is but an imbalance, a healthy part of a rounded whole turned sour in receiving undivided focus at the expense of other organs of sense. To reflect is a great gift, but our ability to feel must consciously envelop our capacity for analytical evaluation should we seek wisdom in a state where we do not abuse one another, or the greater ecological whole we are a part of.

Inhabiting our bodies carries a knowledge whose value is not undermined because it is ineffable; it merely exists in a realm that language, our analytical mind’s primary tool, cannot access. To dismiss its existence based on this failure of representation is foolish; and to access it begs dedicated practice with tools which can. The body is where I begin and as my practice deepens, I peek within my tissues to discover a sensory organ, ubiquitous and intuitive, which processes information much the way my brain does – by receiving endless stimuli and unconsciously transforming them into guidance for my being, as I swim and sway and dance lightly between past, present and future, feeling.

This excerpt is inspired by my readings of Susanne K. Langer’s work on the symbology of music, as well as a love for rhythmic, embodied and undulating movement.

Hello there, whoever you might be,

I am writing these words at a time when the world has arrived at a point of reckoning, where life feels as though it has been disrupted and many hang on the expectation of a return to normality. Worry, uncertainty and grief are some of the emotions that have reached me, mirroring what I believe is the understanding that a return to what we used to call ‘normal’ may never occur.

Before you dismiss this as fatalistic, I want to share the reason I am priming my body and mind to accept this possibility. I think we all knew, on some level, that the hyperactive organism, our society, was stressed, inflamed and at war with itself. The heat, the speed, the flux of events and information were overwhelming us as we consciously sped towards our own annihilation. I dare then ask – was that normal preferable to what we might conceive past our current inflection point?

I must admit I have embraced these times as an invitation for the transformation I and our entire world needed. Far from idealism about a perfect future of peace and prosperity, I find refuge in the understanding that crises will forever invite change. And I believe change was (and still is) a’ comin’. What shall we manifest from it? That truly is down to us, to each individual’s response and willingness to reimagine our future. Make no mistake – the image each one of us holds in our minds is a thread in the tapestry our collective intelligence ends up weaving into what we refer to as our ‘objective, occurring reality.’

Even if it may feel like this period of viral segregation offers nothing but a darkening, I invite you to consider that it is the balance of life which ensures that after a darkening comes the light. Patience is all that separates these two mutually-affirming surfaces, and the light that shall follow is but an aggregate of our individual sparks.

I plead that you take the time to consider what your spark harbours and to accept all that arises with equanimity and a readiness to support those who may struggle more than you. As a collective, we shall survive this threat, which though painful is most likely gruesome on a different scale in the parallel reality where it is not Corona, but a cousin of the Black Death which is eliminating a whole portion of our species. I am not attempting to trivialise our current state, but merely to aid digestion through perspective on the fact things can always be much, much worse. Holding each other in our mind’s eye and acting with strength, vigilance, compassion and a curiosity for the brighter future is fully within our capability. With urgency, I ask you to embrace this capacity and act out the present and future we are currently constructing with all the care and love you are capable of.  

I am keenly writing on topics of interconnectivity, slowness, depth, acceptance, purpose and clarity, hoping to offer a structured account of these thoughts one day. In the meantime, I am always here to exchange notes and thoughts if this might help you in any way with the challenges, fears or grief you might be experiencing.

We remain connected, even at a distance, and our ability to embrace the signals of our reality gracefully and with as little opposition as possible is where peace and resilience lie. Dancing and shaping this reality with the boundless powers of our imagination is what shall keep our heads above the water.

Yours,

Sia

On Saturday morning I woke up quite early and decided to spend some time in the sunshine. I made myself a cup of tea and took it out with me in the bamboo cup I normally use for takeaway coffee. Similarly to the day prior, it felt like spring outside – by 10:30 am the sun had already warmed the air and the light breeze that accompanied the quiet morning was fresh, though not chilly.

I set off towards Admiralsbrücke, wanting to loop over the bridge before heading down the canal in the direction of Neukölln. As I strolled slowly, I realised how rarely I get to enjoy this beautiful part of the day – the air is warm yet crisp and the restfully vibrant sense of a new day envelops everything. Filled with breath, I reached the bridge to find a very old lady selling newspapers at its southern tip. Life in Bulgaria has taught me how commonplace it can be for such activity to arise of desperate necessity, and seeing poverty afflict the elderly, particularly elderly women, always spurs a pressing desire to help.

I picked out the latest Die Zeit, which the lady folded for me with utmost care as she wiggled and played with her dentures, revealing a completely bare upper gum. I was happy to relieve the look of despair on her face at the €50 note I initially produced by collecting the necessary €5.50 in coins. I passed the metal money to her as we both took care to not brush each other’s skin. I couldn’t help but smile at the gentle simplicity of this exchange. Not only could I not remember when, if ever, I last bought a newspaper, but the entire interaction on this famous Berlin bridge felt like a surreal glimpse into a time past slowly yet decisively resurrecting into the present. The quiet morning, the lack of people on the street and the unusual vendor all felt like they do not belong to the reality of a 21st century metropolis, and yet are making a stance for the transformed world that might emerge after the pandemic. As I walked away smiling, neatly-folded newspaper under one arm and a bamboo cup full of hot Sideritis tea in the other, I noticed another woman approach the elderly newspaper vendor for her very own read of choice.

All of this filled me with joy. It felt like a sign pointing brightly to the immeasurable beauty of the simplicity that lies so close to each and every one of us. It felt like an affirmation to the idea that infinite detail lies in the most mundane and that we do not need to cross seas or own the world to find happiness in its appreciation. The beauty of a morning, whether in Berlin, Sofia or Mumbai, is gorgeous as it is. It is not its novelty that makes it so, neither the fact it is larger, faster or stronger in any one of these places. Rather, it is its natural state of morningness, in whichever form if may appear, that breathes life into the beholder. It took the slowness and sparseness imposed by a virus, alongside the grin of an elderly lady with no teeth receiving €5.50 from me, to make me feel, in my whole being, that all is complete without needing to strive for it to be so.

After he died I could never trust the void because in her depths lay the ripping pain and loss that would always overpower me. So, I held on tight, never permitting myself to let go lest I fall into her.

Now, I discover that grief is not all that lives in her murky misty depths. Serendipity, magic or coincidence, call it what you will – all of it resides within her. And as you release to her she blossoms and weaves within you.

She offers surprises enveloped in clarity, awarding the patience that always eluded me. Feeling her is knowing myself and releasing to the path that can finally take me.

‘Once, I had great sadness
buried deep inside.
I invited it to come out and play.
I wept oceans. My tear ducts ran dry.
And I found joy right there.
Right at the core of my sorrow.
It was heartbreak that taught me how to love.’

~ excerpt from Jeff Foster’s How I Became a Warrior, brought into my life by newly-found healer, teacher, shaman Liina Tael 

Over the course of the past year realisations of life-altering proportions have shifted my self-perception and behaviour alike.  Whether as a result of being blind to the painfully evident or deluded about the purpose I find, simple adjustments to my own definition of who I dare to be have unleashed torrents of release and the strength that stems therefrom. I have finally come to accept the artist within me and to award actionable agency to the poetry and prose I never took seriously enough. The conclusions that drove this shift in personal identification dawned on me through multiple dimensions, which I would like to share with you today. 

The first conduit for such enthralling reflection lies in my current abode. In the base of the artists I am not only surrounded by opportunities to internalise varied forms of self-expression, but also find myself in the presence of individuals who have naturally adopted their creative personna as their main me. They do not, like myself, split their world between what must be done and what their internal fluctuation produces; they are and dare to be that which the rest may forsake for the vague fear of being labeled as having their heads in the clouds.

I suppose it is the variety of activities my roomies engage in that emboldened me to summon the courage I need. From Toms’ sax through Rebeka and Christian’s paintings to Charly’s audio / visual endeavors, what’s missing in this idyllic picture is a writer. But I digress – what I intended to share is that this range of creative bustle inspired me to look beyond the unimpactful formalism of academia and accept the affect of art. It drove me to perceive how the poet within me thrives in hyperbole, linguistic exaggeration and potent imagery. It lead me to understand that the output that flows most readily from me shall not be destined as a cash cow, but rather as expression through the medium of writing free in its purpose of merely existing. I now dare to liberate my creative process from the shackles of a daily occupation and render it unambiguously committed to artistic output. ‘Tis to live a cliché – I stayed in Berlin, ran away to live with the artists and in the process discovered the creative self. Perhaps the angst of the last 15 years and that unmistakable internal pressure which finds no valve can finally spill into this realisation, filling it with truth and prowess by sheer magnitude and force. 

The second conduit relevant to this exploration is the space I have discovered in my solitude. I have read and read and read and have at last conceived that before one can dare to call themselves a writer, they must be a reader first and foremost. Through my literary explorations I was guided to develop the habit of journal keeping (thank you, Georgi Gospodinov) and of pragmatically ingesting formats that I may one day dream to call my own. All of this is exciting to a point of motivation far greater than the one encountered in a lacklustre attempt to make my master thesis publishable. More importantly, my newly-found habituality may represent a dim signal for the validity of my tweaked self-perception.  

As a final observation I will briefly address Virginia Woolf’s conceptualisation of the artist that one encounters in a A Room of One’s Own. In her work, Woolf raises the hypothetical scenario of the existence of  Shakespeare’s equally gifted sister who, like him, is drawn to theatre by her immeasurable talent. The outright mockery she encounters as a woman attempting to enter the art drives her to suicide as the unexpressed internal turmoil slowly pushes genius to insanity. Woolf appears to implicitly equate the artist to a human of grand emotional capacity which, if left inarticulate, engulfs the mind in a suffering that degenerates into surrender or abandon. In the early days of emotional exploration, I often permitted the tides of sorrow and confusion associated with my father’s passing to spill into my earliest poetry, a gate that sealed shut as teenagehood taught me the concepts of shame and capitalistic ambition. Now, over a decade down the line, I stand where I did so many years ago, observing how a room of my own and the small desk and solitude that go along with it have returned me to that same expression that not only keeps me sane, but also heals practices that bring nothing but ruin. 

I must thank you, Charly, Rebeka, Christian and Toms (and might I mention Rory and Kate here, too), for illuminating the seriousness of art at its core, and for being stronger in your conviction than I ever dared to be. I continue to grow as the artist within me is finally free to write what the mind chooses to write. 

Yours,
Sia

Everything, everything runs too fast for common conceptions of memory to dice out what significance momentary decisions bear. One’s dialogue runs faster than the hand can keep up and the medium becomes restrictive. The mind is alive in a way that neither memory or process can reward, and thus must exist in a realm guided by principles other than the plainly physical. Art is the tool that unites the two, transforming the metaphysical impressions generated by the fluid, rapid mind into the concreteness of expression. It is, in essence, a practice permitting the self to sift unlimited outpour into focused statement, with decision and compromise guiding the flow. For long I have known that patience and peace are virtues I must yet construct; and it is in connecting the dichotomy of source and result, at that very intersection of the physical and metaphysical, that my practice must lie. 

Underpinning such standpoints is an understanding that views the mind as both actor and receiver: as much a vessel consuming external stimuli as a beacon projecting and shaping the subjective reality of each being’s existence. Passivity in reception is not for me, thanks. I choose to believe I am not helpless in shaping my world, and that the effort that transforms the metaphysical source into concrete result via the creative process reflects a fundamental capacity of our conscious being to shape the nature of reality, even if only at the margin.