my body is morning light

iii. become the possibility the act contains

after awareness, after breath, after settling into embodied making, comes clarity. i rise with the sun, i ground into my own body, and in the moment that follows, i am finally able to know something about myself. and what i know is known so thoroughly within my body that it makes me say things like the rising sun is my breathing lungs. i didn’t know it before, but i know it now. this comprehension happens because after i become the act of repetition, i can sense all around me is open space to grow into.

in their essay on the somatics of weaving, artist Gļeb(s) Maiboroda writes:

Therefore, considering repetition solely as a realm of the mechanical overlooks its profound somatic potential described earlier. Hence, the act of making is one of continuous engagement of the body: a process, attended with patience. It brings the weaver into a state of deeper inner movement that transcends the external world and immerses them in the present moment through rhythmical engagement into the work and growth of form.16

moment by moment, repetition in creative practice can make deeply substantial work. but i am extending this thought even further. the “growth of form” is not limited to the art-making material, but also the material of our bodies, most specifically the material of our meaning-making. repetition carries you into a place where the boundaries for who or what you are disperse. how you come to experience your own existence shifts as your sense of self becomes fluid.

this is part three: expand out. become 

the possibility the act contains.

to become the possibility the act contains means you have pulled so far inward as to now be shown the quality of your own expansiveness. the repetitive creative act has settled you thoroughly into your body and you find yourself practicing thought “so absorbing as to be its own reward.”17 here is a place where meaning is not prioritized according to its ability to answer a question. meaning is simply available to hold, to play with, to release.

the meanings you come upon in this place—these are the possibilities the act contains. they are all your flowing thoughts—all the ways of knowing—that you wander into. some are familiar, some don’t quite make sense, and some you haven’t been fully introduced to yet. the act of repetition brings me to this place of infinite and amorphous embodied thought. i reach for meaning, expanding out toward all the ways in which i am a body making sense of my own existence. if you have come to believe that circles are the shape of everything, then this is the moment where you see your circular existence breathing and growing.

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growing is frequently visualized by upward movement, but what my body knows is that growing always contains movement in all directions. when i say that repetition can lead to the growth of our meaning-making forms, i mean it does so with unbounded bearings. there is no north to the ways we make sense of our own existences. there is only the continuous, flowing practice of becoming one thought after another.

becoming the possibility the act contains is a practice concerned with process. it's meant to direct attention away from some finished art product and toward the meanings that happen along the way. meanings can be personal and happen in your core, like the ones that show you how your body is morning light. meanings can be liberating and happen in the liminal spaces you drift through on your way to another thought, like the ones that show you how circles are the shape of everything. or meanings can be collective and happen in the company of the people you gather, like the ones that show you how nothing we make is as significant as the relationships we keep.

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what i have come to appreciate about these meanings is that they are the research of my creative practice. admittingly, it took me some time to grasp what was meant by “research” within art-making contexts. my science background defined research as something methodical, reductive, sterilized, and controlled. how could research be the breath i take at dawn, or the friends i have over for craft night? because meaning-making is boundless. of course.

in her anthology attempting to change who is driving the discussion of research in art, Janneke Wesseling writes, “The exceptional thing about research in and through art is that practical action (the making) and theoretical reflection (the thinking) go hand in hand. The one cannot exist without the other, in the same way action and thought are inextricably linked in artistic practice.”18 there is no separating the making body from the thinking body; they create together, as one fluid motion. once my body accepted this idea, every form of creative making i practiced simultaneously became a way to practice research. research, it turns out, has always been every possibility the act contained.

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repetition provides continuous access to the research, the meanings, the possibilities for how i understand my own existence. the most valuable possibility my repetitive acts have contained is the knowledge that making is the best part. this is the part that holds everything together—to exist so completely inside a process, practicing awareness for the thoughts happening around and throughout you. this is the part others can’t see but is responsible for what gets made. this is the part that is steady, embodied, real. this is the part that is the true art.