bridget martin

It’s a beautiful morning. The harvest moon has left a heavy drenching dew and a softly shrouding mist. There are sparkling cobwebs everywhere, soft wet grass and a stillness in the air that is anticipatory.

Gradually the sun peels away the mist to reveal the earth in all its beauty. All of the colours become sharply defined against the clear blue sky in the bright morning sun. Your senses are sharpened and you feel insignificant. It is a morning that makes you feel all of the emotions.

I think about the slowly shifting mist, the slow reveal of the earth – the mountains, trees, sky and sea. It’s like the unveiling of a work of art with its accompanying anticipation, hope and mix of emotions. What was always there is now visible. The emotion has risen to the surface.

The making visible of something you create is the hard part. When I say making visible I mean putting it out into the world, letting go and sharing. Pouring my messy ideas and feelings into something I make is one thing but sharing it with others is quite another. In sharing something I’ve made I’m sharing something about myself and that makes me feel vulnerable.

Being vulnerable, expressing emotion, revealing your feelings – these are difficult things to do in our judgemental world. And yet we all carry fragility and vulnerability within, it is what connects us and makes us human. I think that in making and sharing something utterly personal I am in some way connecting with others. Even if it is just one person. That’s a nice thought.

The poet e.e. cummings wrote this,

‘Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.’

In our world of superficiality, to be ‘nobody-but-yourself’ is surely something to aim for. It seems so obvious and yet is so difficult. Making stuff seems to be one way but only if it avoids self consciousness and imposter syndrome. A return to the child mind then, where everything is possible and there is no inner critic. This may take practice but the more we make, the more we create and the more we feel then it just might just be possible. The freedom to be ‘nobody-but-yourself’.