I'm sorry I missed last week's newsletter, and in the same breath, I am announcing I will not be sharing any newsletters in July. I will instead be traveling in Italy, which I have not done in six years! I will be posting to Instagram during this time.
One of the reasons I love Instagram is because it is a multimedia platform with an emphasis on visual language from the moment.
Long before Instagram, there was something called Blogspot, where I began sharing my written voice with visual work. I had a blog that chronicled my daily paintings and a daily journaling exercise. At that time, I thought of my written reflections as secondary to the visual expressions, but as the days passed, I developed an affinity for the written elements.
Once FB came around, I dropped my blog, simultaneously dropped my painting, and got busy boob feeding my newborn and using FB to connect desperately with other new mothers like me. Isolated mothers. FB became daily poetry. One liners. Until FB sold out, everything sacred disappeared, and the space filled with advertisers. I attempted to delete my account with all my history, which didn't happen. Instead, it just got mangled, and I moved away to Instagram.
Instagram was at first a beautiful place to share a scrapbook with a friend. Until it wasn't. Until we lost our friends in the algorithms and instead got trashy advertisements.
The last time I was in Italy 6 years ago, I felt trapped and isolated in the experience. My husband's father had just died. The heat was over 100 degrees daily. I was confined to the company of my young son as my husband navigated the daily bureaucracy of death. I was mute most of the day in a country that didn't speak my language. I remember the chamber of my mind loudly reverberating thoughts of loneliness. Instagram was like a little glass bottle with a note thrown in and tossed into the great ocean. I would go to the cafe, login to wifi and share a photo and scribble Morse code. "I'm here!" The next day I would be touched by someone's note back. This felt similar to when FB was a lifeboat.
Over these six years, I have enjoyed Instagram but stopped feeling like it was a vessel for connection and more like a gigantic mall where socialization is commodified. I've wanted to find a vessel for my thoughts longer than a few characters that generate dialogue with comrades.
Which is why I started Vessel, my monthly Mailchimp newsletter–which was very ambitious in scale and became impossible to create routinely with everything else I do. I love Vessel and how it holds an extended essay and visual ideas, and someday I want to revisit it and send beautiful monthly editorials. Most recently, I started Sunday Circle on Substack. Wanting it to be a happy medium of weekly thought sharing, like a bigger bundle than an Instagram post but less extensive than an essay. However, as soon as I started Sunday Circle, I started craving to write more extended essays again.
This is why I didn't write a newsletter last week. I was instead revising three essays I had recently begun during a wonderful non-fiction class led by writer Kate Divine (PS.we discussed the Hermit Crab essay form quite a bit, which I am not a fan). I was also reading for a workshop on the role of Fairytales with Sharon Blackie. It is also because I have finite hours every day and simply never go to bed having done everything I want to do in the day. That is not an excuse or complaint but a testimony to how much I love and want to do all the time!
I recently read a quote from one of my favorite writers–one I hold as an anthem for what one can become as a writer. Anne Carson. Because I can't find the quote, I will paraphrase it. She essentially says–she isn't sure she is a writer, she just likes to make things, and writing is one of those things.
I am like her in this way, and I am finding writing platforms each have their own shape. Our creative voices are like songs and must move freely between vessels that resonate differently at different times. Or, you could say I am like a hermit crab that moves between various shells, sometimes magnificently large and other times tiny.
I hope you are well and finding the appropriate sized forms for your daily artworks and feeling freedom to try on different shapes!
I will be back here in about a month and until then feel free to converse with me back on Instagram.