01- Art - Being seen by non human eyes.

Humans learn with our senses. Artistic practice is embodiment. We've been raised in a culture that teaches us 'about' the world rather than a kinaesthetic engagement 'with' the world. 

Coming home to the body is the richest, wildest and most deliciously succulent journey a human can go on. It is just so exquisite to be alive as a human. Artistic practice is inherently feeling based and that's why people diminish it from the perspective of a disembodied society.

Come home baby, come home. 

The Embodied Vessel is launching this week. I cannot wait to be with you - with women.

Transcript

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And she's back just like that.

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Bloop, click.

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Those of you who have been in my little world for a while will know that I had a podcast a few years ago in 2020, and it was saying the same thing essentially, but my vision hadn't dropped down into the condensation that it had now. So I deleted it. I had 50 episodes or something, and I loved making them, but I deleted it. That was a few years ago, and now it's time to resurrect this mode. I yeah, it's time to resurrect this mode. So I was recently speaking with this amazing woman, artist, psychic, healer, who was telling me that she'd been reading like deeply entrenched in this in the reading about the medieval alchemical traditions of Europe. And that for many hundreds of years, you know, the image, like this was before the printing press, especially for imagery. The printing press started with text and then it moved on to imagery. But for many, many hundreds of years, the image was revered, and many people might see a hand-painted image once in their lives. Like just let that land, you know, once in their lives. People didn't have art on their walls, and images were seen as really sacred for most of our recent history. She told me that if you were fortunate enough to see an image because you'd found you'd you'd found, you know, practice within secret organizations, like you'd accessed an in-road to be able to see an image, or even within the church, they were always hand-painted, and they were hand-painted by people who had been sort of apprenticing this tradition of master painting for many, many years. You perhaps see it a few times in your life, and you'd have to completely internalize the feelingscape of that image. So there was no Pinterest, there was no like, oh, I'll just screenshot it on my phone and come back to it later. I'll just have it as like a vision board on my phone. Like, no. You had to completely like absorb that image into the matrix of your body. And there was no certainty you'd ever see it again, right? So if you're poor, you might see it once in your life. And only the rich had images and books. So if you were poor, you might never meet a rich person. It wasn't like there was the social mobility that there was today. If you were a feudal farmer or if you were a peasant or something and you were devoted to a certain saint or a patron saint or a somebody in your village, somebody in your territory, and you saw a picture of them that was painted in gold, and you know, and even in churches and temples and things, there were images that only come that only would come out once a year. And the village, the surrounding area, they'd be paraded around the village, and people would get to see it once, and they might have a momentary glance to connect with this image. And so the ability to internalize that image and store it in the body, store it in the kinesthetic memory was really necessary and important. So this meant that people had to create an internal library of imagery in the body. Say that again. They had to create this internal library of imagery within the body. These words literally flawed me. Um, when she said it, I wept because this is how I've always experienced the artistic gesture, you know, the creative moment and learning. Mammals we learn with our senses, humans learn with our senses, and that's how I've always been. We have this vast capacity within the inner dimensions of the body to store vast libraries of pattern, melody, movement sequences, knowledge of materials. In fact, you know, for most of our human history and still some groups of people today, knowledge has only ever been stored within the body. I just like think about that. Our bodies are like computer sounds like a really reductionist word because our brains and bodies and nervous systems are so much more complex than a computer will ever be. You know, will ever be. The information stored in one mitochondria is more than a computer can ever even come close to. So, you know, like as modern humans, we're confused about our about assessing the difference between grasping a concept, a concept intellectually, and embodying it. So, like if I've seen a video of a world-class pastry chef making a world-class hazelnut work of art pastry, it's obvious that I'm not going to be able to match that standard just because I see myself as a great pastry chef. It takes practice and passion and and you know, no amount of money can buy experience. Only devotion will get you to a level of excellence. Only like deep curiosity and the desire to keep fine-tuning the details of your craft, and that's a beautiful thing if we get a chance to experience that. And I think we can create that if we haven't experienced that naturally by how we've been brought up or what we've been exposed to. So, like, we've been raised in a culture where we learn about the world through books of places we'll never go, and you know, learning about things we'll never experience with our senses. And I, for one, am grateful to have had, you know, education with no questions asked about my gender, my wealth level, and so on. There are so many parts of the world where women don't learn how to read still, you know, because obviously if you teach women how to read, they're gonna be a bit more objectionable to your very small world view. Um, so obviously the education of women is paramount and so great to grateful to have been born in a place where that was just a non-negotiable. But you know, societally we've become heads on very, very small, weak bodies. Like most people don't even realize they have a fucking body. That's my experience. It's like um cerebrally interacting with the world the whole time. Like it doesn't actually uh for most of experience, it doesn't actually matter what we think about it. The thing is the thing, you know, like clay is clay. You can you can have opinions about it, but it's clay. Like um, so it's really important to know how to actually do things like with our hands, how to actually manually do things, to understand how things are fabricated, to understand the elements of this of this planet. This is where we live, this is our home, you know. We like understanding how to do things galvanizes our humanity, it strengthens the library of internal imagery. We have an education system that shows us books and books of what the world is like, yet it all happens in a classroom, and mostly nobody gets their hands dirty. We're not supposed to spectate in this way. We're supposed to engage, and this is how we learn. We learn through engagement of the senses and making mistakes. We're not supposed to spectate and just learn about from a distance. This is a colonial idea, this is a colonial mindset, and it's it's really shot us in the foot, I would say, experientially. Artistic practice is inherently feeling-based. Feelings are within the body, therefore, artistic practice is within the body. I sometimes see embodiment teachers kind of express their work in a way that's about, you know, reclaiming erotic energy through a certain, through a certain like lens, through a certain gaze. Um, and I totally understand the desire to reclaim this outcast genre of embodiment, like if you've been slut-shamed or if you've been raised by a really sort of paranoid father who told you you couldn't go out with a low-cut top on and you couldn't go out with in a mini-skirt. Like the desire to reclaim a sort of very um classical sensuality from a Western perspective is totally understandable, right? Lingerie and love all that shit. But um but my experience of embodiment involves like every aspect that's not just like it's got almost nothing to do with the male gaze. It's got almost nothing to do with a very kind of pedestrian understanding of sexuality, which is like lingerie in the bedroom, you know. My experience of embodiment is much more like squatting on the ground where the earth meets the sea at the beach, and my hands absolutely kind of acting on their own accord, picking up, you know, like debris of shell until you just stop because there's just this shell that that your hand instantly recognises. It's got this pulse of this buzz of aliveness and beauty and aesthetic kind of condensation in it, and you're like, fuck yeah, that's the shell, man. You know, and it's like there are hundreds of shells next to it that look exactly the same, but something in your hands recognizes, like, this is the shell. And it all happens outside words. My experience of embodiment involves like weeping for things without understanding why. Do you ever just like let tears come through, even though you don't know where they're from? You don't know why they're there. They're just kind of feel like a blessing of sensitivity, strengthening you somehow through softness. Do you ever get that? As if there are angels circling around waiting for a vessel, like open enough for the beauty and poignance of this life that they can express as tears of tenderness in the human willing to feel before they understand. And then when you're there and you're sensitive, they're like, Yeah, I'm gonna go to her. And you're driving and you just start weeping at the beauty of it, like the unfathomable beauty of it all, which includes losing people we love, which includes so much pain and tenderness and like unexpected joy, and like fuck, it's such an intense thing to say in words. And sometimes the intensity of that just overflows and you're just crying, and it's like that's a blessing. Do you ever have that? When I let feelings come through me without having to ask for their like, you know, documentation upon arrival at the gates, like, do you have I do? What do what feeling are you, you know? Whenever I just let things come through me, I always travel somewhere. And when the intensity of sensation has passed, you know, like whether it's an anxiety, a frustration, a grief, a sadness, a joy, an inspiration, an obsession, a fixation, a desire, whatever, this new vitality is restored. And I don't know what this is, but it is so. Every single time I allow the feeling, the energy, the emotion to be there without wishing it was different, without wishing I was different, and I just let the fucker in. Don't ask your emotions for their documentation. It's like trying to trying to make everything logical, like, well, you know, frustration comes because it's like, oh my god. Just let your body experience sensation in the form of feeling. Obviously, this is related to artistic insight and inspiration because if we just let things happen through us, trust your nervous system, trust your body to not break, trust that it's safe to let yourself feel this, trust that it's safe, create that safety, right? Create that safety through ritual, through art, through embodiment, create that safety and then trust that when the feelings come, it's okay. You can you can handle them, and then vaster feelings can come. And so it's like a tempering of the of the ability to hold them, of that vessel, you know. It's like when I wear clothing designed and made by women who preserve craft traditions, then this clothing touches my body. It's like my skin responds with a thousand memories. You know that feeling when you like that is embodiment, you know. You just you you pick up, you you've got a garment on, and it's like it's alive, it's like it's it's communicating with your body, it's not been made in a sweatshop and come a million miles. I've done that, like I buy things like that too. I'm not just living in this like artisanal world. And I think it's it's important to notice the contrast. Like sometimes I need to buy my son some leggings from HM. And I notice the contrast energetically between like, you know, like a three quid t-shirt and an exquisite alive piece of sheepskin clothing, and it's the contrast that makes us awake. I don't believe we have to like live in this monoculture of modern luxury. I think actually that can be problematic. Um, it's like embodiment is when I smell my son's mouth when he's ill, to use my she-wolf senses to clock his health. Like, I can smell when he's got a virus. It's different. I can fucking smell that. So can you? Like, it's the smell of your partner's armpits after they've been working out. It's this deep visceral connection to our senses that makes us more attuned to pheromones, more sensitive to people's energy, more alert also to things that aren't pleasant. Like it's all embodiment. Really being able to feel ill without having to take painkillers, like, really experience. Have you ever had food poisoning and literally like just fucking surrendered to the feeling of your guts like ringing out, like gargling because they've got this thing that the intelligence of the body, like your intestines are pulsating to get this to cleanse your body, or if you're sick, like to really be sick and feel it all. It's the most exquisite feeling. Okay, it's not comfortable, it's not nice, it's not like you know, nice massage, you know, it's not like lying on a beach with a coconut water, but fuck me, is it like I've got a body and all the nerve endings in it, like it's exquisite, it's absolutely exquisite having a body, and I enjoy just I enjoy all of it. I enjoy the feeling of my womb when I'm on my period, like the tenderness of it all. I don't, I don't yearn for a life without without discomfort. It's the discomfort that brings me online, it's like it brings me forwards. And yeah, this deep visceral connection takes courage, and that's something we all have, no? But it's something we have to practice, it's something we have to practice. So, embodiment for some women, you know, might involve the desire to dress in a classical kind of goddess, dress as a classical goddess, or dance ancient Shakti rites, or dress as a modern day femme fetal in stilettos. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, I love that shit. I've done all of that. The thing is, if we can't actually access our appetite, feel safe to be hungry within the body, feel safe to feast, to want more, to need more, we can't access that intense, full body open to receive what's coming in, be it food, inspiration, new experiences, sexuality, if we can't open and actually like let that in viscerally, no amount of stilettos or poles will bring that experience of genuinely letting our guards down so we can let that food in and nourish us. It's like you can do all the ritual practice in the world, but if the if the nervous system, if you're not, if you're seeing the ritual practice is the only, like the ritual is the metaphor. We do things in ritual so that we can do them out of ritual as well. We ritualize things because the energy unleashed in that ritual needs containment, and otherwise we act things out unconsciously. So when you ritualize something, it creates a container for like vast currents of energy that might be dangerous or inappropriate or just need holding because it's you know intense for a for a human being to feel. But it's like unless you can really let like let yourself be hungry, let yourself eat, like really, really eat, then no amount of like the most gorgeous goddess dress in the world and the most expensive retreat in Bali or India or Mexico is not gonna do it if we can't really feel sitting on the toilet and taking a shit and like actually feel that and actually experience the moment by moment changing of sensations in the body, like oh, so good. I remember one day being in a restaurant eating lunch alone, and I'd been walking around Lisbon all day. It was Thai was like hot, it was summer, I was having a fucking good time in between different things, so I was like hungry. I must have been eating in such a full-on, like childlike way. You know, when you're just so hungry and you just eat, and it's like every cell in your body is happy to be eating and receiving, and it's like mm-mm, gimme, gimme, gimme. And I was clearly unaware that I I was just in the zone, in the in the feasting zone, no? Because there's been times when I've had meals out by myself a lot of times. Dinner, especially, I love having dinner by myself, but sometimes I feel uncomfortable, and it's it's like I have to sink into it, I have to expand into the discomfort of just being like feeling a bit exposed. Like it's different every time, but this time I was like, I am here to eat, god damn it. I remember. Um I was I must have been eating in this like really ravenous way. And I was there were these people watching, and after I finished, this hot couple came up to me and they said, like, they looked they looked, you know, kind of they looked like their energy was radiant, they were hot, they were clearly into sort of more out there sexual practices and things. They came up to me and they've been like, they were like, they're Portuguese, they were like, we've been watching you eat and like it really turned us on. And do you want to have a threesome with me? Basically, it was hilarious. I was like, whoa, you know, I kid you not, this is embodiment, this is appetite, like spreading butter on bread with your finger because the waiter forgot to bring a knife, and you're fucking ravenous. A woman needs to eat, and I ate. And I always remember that story because it was like, I remember around the same time actually, a friend, I think I was going through some stuff, and like I'd been feeling a bit low, and my energy had been a bit suppressed, and my energy was really coming back. And a friend of mine said, she said the same thing. She's like, I've been watching you eat recently, and it's like your sexuality is just coming really online at the moment, and like I love it. And I was like, Oh my god, this is so hot. So a woman appetite is linked, like the way what a woman's appetite is linked with her desire, her authenticity, her drive, like aggression and boundaries, really importantly, boundaries is known very intentionally by the system that benefits from women being hungry for authentic nourishment. That we stay small and quiet. Like when we eat and we have appetites, we become more dangerous to the system of oppression of women. Where is the barometer of your appetite? Like right now, where is your appetite? Like on a physical level for food, on an energetic level, on a hungry for life level, on a hungry for bringing out something that's in you? Like, what are you hungry for? Close your eyes. Like, tune into your body long as you're not driving. Don't close your eyes if you're driving. Can you feel appetite for this life coursing through your veins, muscles, bones? Like, are you hungry? Are you hungry? What are you hungry for? What are you hungry for? Let yourself feel that. Like, hunger is not a bad thing, and eating is not a bad thing. And I always think that like modern culture, people are chronically snacking. And the the paradox of that is like the more hungry you get, the more you can taste the food. I I like to eat like an animal once or twice a day, twice a day. I don't snack and stuff. I think like it's just an ADHD thing. I don't think about food until I'm really hungry, and then I'm really feast. And like I like to eat with my hands. I like to really, I feel like an animal. I'm like, I can taste this. If I can talk to you whilst I'm eating, I'm not hungry enough, you know. Um, so I recently had the delight of looking after my friend's gorgeous girls who are really good friends with my son. The three of them just oh have the most beautiful relationship, and my son adores them. He loves looking after girls, like looking out for them. It's really sweet. So I had these three mischievous little cherubs with me all day, and we made this exquisite lemon cake. It was moist, tart, sweet. We ate it fresh from the oven, piping hot, sliced up with our hands. Um the oldest girl looked at me with trepidation and innocence after we'd kind of finished our slices and she said Lauren, is it really greedy if I ask for another slice? Oh my heart melted. I was not gonna miss an opportunity like this. Like she's at that age as well where she's starting to be a little bit aware of her body, you know, such a vulnerable time. I looked at her with just like conviction and confirmation of her energy and said, There is nothing wrong with being greedy for something delicious. Let's all be greedy and have more. And like they erupted in cheer, you know, in like, yay! And we went to slice ourselves more steaming, decadent cake. But I I felt with this astute sensitivity how important that was in that moment to affirm her so-called greed and show her that I two share this appetite for pleasure, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Like, let's fucking feast. We like the three of us ate two-thirds of a loaf cake in like 15 minutes. It was hilarious. A woman with appetite is not only capable of trusting herself and her choices, but she's also tapped into her vitality and her body. And there are too many women energetically trying to be smaller, like eat less, be less, desire less, settle for less. Asking for more needs to be affirmed when we are young. And I felt blessed to have had that intimate encounter with her where she looked at me testing if it was all right, testing with a woman. She's a girl, she's coming of age, she'll she'll be bleeding, she'll be, she'll have her period in the next, you know, three or four or five years. Testing the the conviction of her body, testing, is it okay that I want another slice? I was like, you fucking bet it is. Like, let's all have some. And I hope that we all affirm that and that in in speaking up for what she wanted, everyone was like, Yeah, I want that too, you know. It was a beautiful moment, and I'll always remember it. I think often we hold ourselves back from living fully because we fear pain, we fear sadness, disappointment, but you know, embodying these sensations deepen us, they make us able to see others more clearly to truly open our heart. And I think with well, my experience with emotions is that it gets to the point where you don't you don't fear parts of yourself anymore because you know that there's this kind of homeostatic emotional equilibrium where when you really feel things, they pass and you get you get these little gifts, you know, you get these gifts when you're in a dark night of the soul. If all you're transmitting is I can't wait for this shit to be over, like you're missing the point. Bravery, courage is about really accepting the ground where we are. And there have been times in my life where it's been like shit's just hard for a while. Like you're kind of soul sick, and you can look after yourself, you can exercise, you can have saunas, you can eat well, but there's just something you're just like, I'm just in a soul sickness. But when you look, when you when you soften into that and you like read the poetry that's gonna nourish that, you you don't pretend, you don't veneer, you just like soften into it and make make friends with it. Years later, months later, weeks later, when you come out of it, you realize like ah, it was an initiation, it was it was a blessing to go through that, and you become somehow more able to help others. I think that's a beautiful thing. I think that is such a beautiful thing, and a testament to our humanity. Um God, I keep having this experience. So I there's a out there's a sauna and swimming pool that I love to go to near my house and my son's school, and it's really nice. It's kind of known in the city where I live. And the water's cold, it's not like ice plunge water, it's um what temperature is it? Like 18 degrees. So it's not warm, you can't sort of have a chat in there, and in the winter it's often steaming, and you go in the sauna, you go in the steam, then like people do low delayants. I do about three because I work out elsewhere and it's like my downtime. But every single time I lower my body into the pool, it's cold enough that you you really need to gasp. Like, I always, especially in the winter, I go, ho ho just under my breath, not for show, but like it's a noise, you know, it's a noise. It's it's like in the way that every single child will make that noise. And I got in the pool the other day, and I was right, I was a meter away from this woman who had also just come out from 20 minutes, half an hour in the sauna. And she made this funny, like she went underwater, and I and when she came back up, I was lowering myself in and I was making this sound. Like, I can't not make this sound. It's more the sound I make is like it's like quite a guttural sound, right? Three seconds, four seconds. And she said, she just looked at me and she said, I always go under she said it quite flippantly, like it wasn't like a disclosure. She just said, I always go underwater so I don't make that sound publicly, and like it broke my heart that she felt the need to mask her experience in that way that she felt like she couldn't just make it make that sound, like almost like it was too much of a animal sound to make in public, and this is such a metaphor for to me for how I see women like making making themselves like the range is just so narrow, it's like smiling and everything, you know, it's like you get in some cold water. Ever next time you're with children who get in cold water, every single child emote makes a sound viscerally when they get in the water, and apparently, this is just the nervous system's way of you know equalizing and just attuning to that difference in temperature, just like when you have been freezing and you get in a hot bath or a sauna, you go, oh like everyone does it, it's natural, but to hold in that voice that this woman was doing, and I think I was like, where else in your life are you feeling like you can't just have a human sound, you know? And I think there's a lot in that. I think there's a lot in that. So really feeling my body and all the miraculous happenings, frustration and anger, like when I've been forcing things and finally surrender into tears, sore muscles after working out, like it's also tender and alive and gritty and beautiful and animal. And the idea that some of that shit you have to suppress when you're around people who aren't even gonna care, like it doesn't even matter. It's such a suppression of our humanity, and the humanity is where art comes from, which is why there's no such thing as AI art. Like AI stuff, yeah, but AI art, no, because art comes from humanity deeply, uncompromisingly, through and from the body. AI doesn't have a body, so it can't make art. That's not the same as saying people who are paralyzed can't make art because they absolutely can, because they have a body. Okay, they don't have the connection with it neurologically that someone who's not paralyzed has, but it's still they've got a bank of experience from the body, they're still in a body, you see. So this is an invitation of sorts. If you've heard the word embodiment and have seen workshops and teachings, and don't and they don't quite do it for you. If you don't desire to sort of emote sexually in a group of people in yoga clothing on retreat, like, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not for all of us, it's not for me. I did it for years, like it's not my vibe, it's just not, and I've always felt uncomfortable and I always made myself think, oh, maybe I'm just like maybe I should just accept. I don't like it, I don't want to do it, I don't, I'm not into sharing circles. I just like it, they're not for me, okay. If you don't feel that you want to be in that environment, like fear not, because embodied is what we all already are. Yes, there are ways we might need to soften to de-armour, like, you know, levels of protection around the vulnerability of expression of the heart, of sadness, of but my creative practice has been the vessel I've used to enter, understand, and process these deeper feeling states my entire life. Feelings that I couldn't have accessed in conversation in analysis. Excuse me, and believe me, I tried because the feelings come through the body, and so we need to engage the senses, both like the gross senses of like what can I actually touch, like what does my arse actually feel like on this chair, and the finer senses of aesthetic sensitivity and subtlety, and like you know, why certain words just feel right, like we need to use them in certain things and certain shapes. So, this you know, this library of imagery stored within the body, then, is a mode of intelligence. We don't need endless references, notebooks to write the salient points down, reminders from outside of ourselves. The body is the memory. We store our skills not in the cerebral cortex, but the body, the tissues, the neurons of motility, the lymphatic highways that zoom through our flesh. In this vein, then, magic is also stored within the body. Potency then is also stored within the body. Not outside. I don't know who needs to hear this, but we have got this wellness culture now, or this self-help culture of like going outside every different week, a chiropractor, a therapist, like all these people. And I am not for a moment saying that those things aren't important. They are deep, incredibly healing modalities that have developed over, you know, many thousands of years and stem back to the ancient origins of human medicinal practice. But at what point is it an outsourcing of the potency and magic that is accessible when we are brave enough to see with closed eyes through practice and repetition, through repetition which becomes devotion and devotion to a world that is utterly invisible to someone in another body, but can be deeply and palpably felt. So it comes back to feeling, it comes back to trusting feeling over the cerebellum, essentially, over the intellect. You know, this is where authenticity comes from. Feeling drawn to things artistically, poetically, some words just like, oh God, that word combination is just like fucking feeding me. They carry the perfect, like, uh. This is embodiment. It's needed to write a text message that lands, to be a good conversationalist and feel the flow of unfolding and curiosity. It happens when we listen to people. It happens when we sense things that need to happen without anyone asking us, when someone picks up on something we need without us saying it. It happens in the body, in this body, in my body, your body, your body, as it is, with all the emotions that you feel, with all the things you've come in with, with all your issues, with all your stuff you you wish you didn't have. That's where it is. That's where it happens, nowhere else. And like in some unintelligible way, when we deepen into the body, we go beyond the body and into energy, baby, into energy. But it happens through the body. That's all I know. I don't know how I don't know that. And artistic practice is not only something we can enjoy for all sorts of reasons in our lives, but it's a matrix, a living matrix of connection to our ancestors, to forces we have no learning of. It's a living lineage where the one and only price we have to pay is engagement, participation, and openness. We have to participate in this shit. It is not a spectator sport. Life is not a spectator sport. And sure, if this brings you to a place where you want to pole dance, to do erotic photo shoots, you do that, my love. You do that, you do you. But embodiment is so much vaster than like the male gaze affirming that you are a sexual woman if you are a heterosexual woman. Embodiment is so much vaster than the pleasure of lying on the beach and having an orgasm. Like, but it's really good. If you haven't had an orgasm outside, like I really, I really suggest you do that. Give yourself one and just like commune with nature is absolutely incredible. So it's often as simple as taking our interests seriously, like following curiosity as it finds us, not rationalizing out of existence the sometimes left-field bursts of inspiration that can fill us. Letting ourselves dress not like a responsible mother and business owner, but wearing that clashing outfit, like enjoying that shit, wearing your cycling shorts with a blazer and some wellies because you just love the way it works together. Like, you do you let yourself do that in the way that your five-year-old did? Enjoying the kitsch, the offbeat, the uncool, whatever it is. Or if you're always dressed like in a really quirky way, maybe you need to dress in a really responsible way and like rock a suit for a moment, like whatever. It can be so simple. What would the child in your heart do before they knew they could get it wrong? Like, what would you be drawn to if you knew there was nothing wrong with anything that anyone could be interested in? There's not things that are more important than others in terms of personal interest and hobbies and you know, just what we're drawn to. Perhaps you should go there. There's probably a feeling that will welcome you once you face whatever stands in the way of that curiosity. And curiosity is a guiding force to bringing us home. I've never felt as seen by any human being as I feel seen by the creative process. I recall being held by something as a child that was so real and so precious, and I'm still held in this ungraspable embrace. I never I forget well, I forget often and I remember a million times a day, and art is my ritual of remembrance. It's the thing, it's the ritual I use when I forget to remember. I'm seen by non human eyes, and it is wild out here. Please come with me. Please come home, I'll meet you there, or is it I'll meet you here.