‘It's the Transition that's Troublesome’
Isaac Asimov
Autumn Colours
As we move from the summer into autumn, and the approaching winter and festive season offer us a whole new phase of activity and opportunity, my thoughts turn the subject of change, all the more so as one project ends and another emerges, all in the context of several other tectonic life changes,
Ideally, transitions can be periods of inner growth, helping us to develop some truly desirable qualities, but they certainly are troublesome times in any process, so I’d like to share with you some of the things that recent experiences have been teaching me.
Right now, sitting on my balcony, enjoying a light, cooling breeze wafting in from the south over a parched land which, thankfully, the hardy Mediterranean pine trees cloak with greenery all seems deceptively calm and tranquil. The summer heat has been enervating and not conducive to creative endeavour, but there has been a lot more going on to distract me from my work.
My services as grandmother have been much in demand during the long school holidays, all the more as the family prepares to disperse for distant abodes. Their going will be a major change in my life - empty nest all over again - and I too am looking at moving from one Balearic island to another once I have had the eye surgery that I am waiting for.
So it has been a creatively fallow time, something that I find is usual between projects. But as a new idea surfaces amid the bustle of relocating I feel like a labouring mother in the transition phase of a delivery - that time during labour when the baby’s head is engaged and the desire to push is greatest but absolutely not recommended because the passage is not fully open; that time when the frustrated, labouring mother is most like to scream obscenities at all and sundry.
Creative transitions between projects or series of works are, I find, tinged with a strange mix of feelings - relief and satisfaction at having completed something; anticipation at the prospect of how it will be received; and a degree of creative exhaustion and trepidation, when it seems as though I will never again get another good idea.
And yet, somewhere in the background is a sense of excitement at the thought of embarking on something new, but also a degree of prevarication that usually surfaces at times of difficulty and always bedevils me when I haven’t been working for a while.
At the end of the day, though, I do know that the only way to break out of the grip of procrastination is to actually do something - anything - because even making mess generates ideas. And, as I have now discovered, even working on something that you hadn’t planned on can serve a purpose.
When my three years of making work solely about one particular old olive tree inspired a colleague to start writing short stories with trees as the main protagonists, he commissioned me to translate those stories from German into English and create illustrations for the book. That project is now in the process of being finalised, with all the material in the hands of a designer, and publication anticipated in the autumn.
Initially when I was asked to work on this book I regarded it as something that was taking me away from my own work. Looking back on it now I realise that it has been the perfect transition buffer. It has forced me to keep up the impetus to make work that has loose relevance to my own ideas while at the same time given me the space to allow those ideas to ferment and grow.
In that space I have found a way of articulating something that I was only dimly aware of - that the old tree had become a metaphor for my own alter ego. That in itself prompted the question, What did that mean to me? And slowly the concepts of alter ego and family tree began to merge in my mind, creating the foundational idea for my next project - a metamorphosis of treasured family documents into the core material of a family tree that has made me and those who come after me who we are.
Click here for updates on my progress
It will be a while longer before I can start on the actual work, because of all the hindrances I’ve already mentioned so to help me cope with the frustration I have been filling the time with research and gathering material that will form the basis of the work. At the same time, I have been finishing something off. Begun 12 years ago, it was clearly the original germ of the idea (though I didn’t know it then) and is acting as a prelude to the new work, while also keeping me drawing and painting (though painting is difficult in the heat because the paint dries too quickly).
In summary then, resilience, patience, persistence and flexible thinking are the qualities that I’ve most needed to help me cope and negotiate the choppy waters of change.
BE PATIENT WITH YOURSELF AND THE PROCESS
KEEP WORKING AT SOMETHING, ANYTHING, BUT KEEP WORKING. IT WILL STOP YOU SEIZING UP AND HELP TO OVERCOME ANY TENDENCY TO PROCRASTINATE
EMBRACE ANY ‘DISTRACTING’ WORK THAT COMES YOUR WAY, AS LONG AS IT IS SOMEHOW RELEVANT. IT MAY WELL HELP YOU TO FIND YOUR ULTIMATE FOCUS
GO THROUGH OLD WORK. YOU MAY WELL FIND SOMETHING UNFINISHED OR THAT YOU PUT ONTO THE BACK BURNER THAT HAS RELEVANCE TO YOU NOW, DOWN THE LINE.
However uncomfortable you are in times of change and transition, bear in mind the wise words of Khalil Gibran,
‘Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.’
The title of the book is Trees and Souls/Bäumen und Seelen, Short stories in English and German.
It is a book that would make an excellent gift for anyone who has ever looked at a tree and wondered about the secrets it holds.They are stories where mythology merges with history, and the boundaries between religion and spirituality blur; where the strands of different cultures mesh together and magic happens; stories that will hold wonder for young and old alike.
