A PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY : WHEN WHAT YOU WANT, IS WHAT YOU NEED.
"I've learned how to live without knowing. I don't have to be sure I'm succeeding, and as I said before about science, I think my life is fuller because I realize that I don't know what I'm doing. I'm delighted with the width of the world!" - Richard Feynman
The Rolling Stones are playing in the background, a familiar tone of my childhood second to Guns and Roses (curtesy of my mum). It’s been a month of transition, and we’re still here. However, I feel that is the essence of life. I had been thinking for a while what do I write here? It’s not that I stopped writing. I just not everything is supposed to be shared.
4 weeks ago as I was packing up my Design District sun trap of a studio. I accepted a residency with no set time limit from another artist Marcus Jake 3 mins walk away from my previous place. Fully well knowing I had 4 evenings to move everything either into storage or my home; so this offer was quite literally a God send. And in the 30c heat, as I stepped into an air-conditioned, fully wooden-clad triple-heighted ceiling space with some fresh optimism. I knew this would be my home for the next few months while I figured out a few things and made some work which very much needed to come to fruition. Come 4 pm on Monday 26th June 2023, I’d handed in my keys and the last meal eaten in the space was done in a similar fashion to the first me I’d had in the space. Sat on the floor, watching tv off a laptop screen while eating a cheese sandwich, waiting for the removal men to arrive. Only this time the prior week I’d spent taking as many photos of myself in the space so I had as many memories as possible to look back on.
The weeks which followed would be a rollercoaster. 2 weeks spent with my parents celebrating a very busy and blessed Eid and my birthday (I know, I kept it really quiet this year which is unusual to my usual 2 weeks of celebrating). I would soon conveniently forget the gifts I’d been given as exhaustion, a lack of rest which I so very wanted, a need to take up other means-to-an-ends tasks, a gripping onto desire of other future endeavours as they became stagnant. My tight grip I had sooner mistaken for ambition - but we hold onto that which matters to us. Granted my heart was always full of ambition.
For myself, I noted down there are two sides to ambition. The external being the lit brightly and admired drive. The internal which serves as self fulfillment. If all goes well this internal gratitude is the beacon which continues your life force as a steady, calm reassurance. And if you miss the bar, if you find yourself being unkind to the self, this ambition can if left unchecked, resulting in under self-fulfilled or even shame in falling short.
All artists experience our fair share of rejections. I’ve always told myself a rejection is never a failing, but rather a building to where we’re supposed to be going. Another part of the path which we transcribe to fit our personal journey. After all, it’s the losses which make us, and give way for celebration when we do win. What did you learn? Where can you go from here? How did you really feel about this passing by? Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
My burning, overly ambitious quick heart, has so many cards spread across the table this evening. I have never stopped running and soon I came to realise I’d fallen into my shadow of ambition. There’s an important passage in the Quran (20:131) which paraphrased translates to not being envious of others because we can not know what each person has faced within their own trials. And I so proud of not comparing myself to others, had instead compared myself to an ideal of myself, the version which time after time, succeeds without rest. And when I didn’t meet this bar a few times almost instantly, be with creating paintings or writing or even - getting waitlisted at RCA even though I applied late in May, so this was a huge achievement (and not a rejection) - a darker internal side of shame came out to play. At what point while trying to move mountains for myself did I then throw myself into the ocean instead?
Meanwhile, at the time of writing this, Mars is in direct opposition to Saturn. Mars being the planet of action, power and direction; while Saturn being a father figure, the reason, lesson, and pause. And I again, me, who deeply resonates all that is Martian in energy, always on the go, will always have a plan, some intense fire which refuses to cool, has had to reconcile that ultimately in all situations, the pause has to win. Sometimes. And that pause sat me down, in this new studio space, with the same familiar sunlight beaming through new windows, sitting in this ocean I’d found myself in to say ‘this is enough for today. Look around at where you are now’. Remembering all life has its rhythm, and all moments have their time.
Yes, it’s healthy to keep your aspirations going and growing. Remembering life expands - rather than shifts side to side. Much like the universe, we humans build our own worlds and we never stay stagnant. Be open to some shifting, because that one unexpected change - or pause, might be the thing that propels you to where you’re headed or maybe even, further. May we never forget that we prayed for where we currently find ourselves. It’s said as long as our desires align with something purposeful and harmonic within the soul and the higher powers, a dua is answered. And no doubt, my prayers made today will find themselves to me another day in a possibly closer future, where I will no doubt be praying for life to move yet again.
So you see, sometimes you get what you want, but it’s always what you need.
Peace out fam. Look after yourselves. X
A HUMAN CONDITION
Two or three, or even maybe
Fifteen years prior
I held this moment close
I combed her hair
Sang her lullabies
Fed and curated her well
I wanted to be here
Stand with a flag on a pole
Name this island
With flames in my eyes
Say it from the chest now
Mine, this is all mine
I gave birth to this
All of this
Explosive, reckless, driven
Creature
Woman
Where is your flag now
Have you stumbled into other dreams
SET DAILY MEAL
Kiss the sour patch away
Lick this body
Until all you’ve seen
Dissolves into sugar
Sweat tasting like sugar
I used to feast at this table
Different three course meals
Are now available