bridget martin

This afternoon we sailed our boat (also our home) downriver and anchored in a small bay for the night. With a brisk wind to whisk us along we were there in a couple of hours which is fast for us.

Sailing an old, heavy, wooden boat is a slow process and quite the antithesis of what the modern world is about – speed, efficiency, productivity – but what’s the rush? We’re giving ourselves the space and time to drift and dream, to notice and listen, to savour each moment. It’s subversive.

We’re not machines and our lives should be about so much more than spreadsheets and bullet points, proficiency and time management. Sometimes we need to muse and meditate, to wonder and wander, to rebel and be impractical and often this is when our best ideas come to us.

I find this to be particularly true in my art practice which is quiet and slow and meditative. It needs to be given the time and space for thinking and pondering, for taking detours and getting lost, for wandering off the beaten track. It allows for distractions and mistakes and embracing the unexpected. 

Art isn’t something to ‘get done’. It’s something to immerse yourself in, to lose yourself in, to give yourself to – just like play for a child. Children aren’t productive, they are in the moment, busy with being alive, with being messy and curious and imaginative. They are busy making magic and so must we.