💜[12/26] the creativity for good friday five

1. ”Picture This: You’re a Frog” (Alex Manley for Hazlitt)

My kids are really into Frog and Toad right now. And honestly, who can blame them? Frog and Toad are, let’s be real, Goals. Friend Goals, Husband Goals (yes, Frog and Toad are gay), General Vibe Goals. I mean, come on:

The wouldn’t it be nice whimsy of Frog and Toad comes up in Manley’s lengthy (but worth the read) rumination on “frogposting” — that genre of posting that’s centered around the fantasy of taking off our People Hats in order to imagine the sort of pastoral simplicity of life as a little woodland creature: an insect, a frog, a mouse, a duckling. Frogposting, Manley writes, differs from other exercises in nostalgia by its intentional separation from capitalism and corporate entities:

Manley goes into frogposting much more deeply than I can here, and I really do encourage you to read the whole essay if you have time. But one of the key points that Manley makes — and the one that most stuck out to me — is that the type of escapism we find ourselves drawn to can tell us more about ourselves and our needs than what we’re trying to escape in the first place. What are we looking for? What are the needs we’re imagining being fulfilled? Why aren’t they possible in our current circumstances — and what would it be like if they were?

What forms of escapism are you most drawn to, and why? What do those escapes bring you that the “real world” doesn’t? What does it feel like to indulge in them, and, conversely, what does it feel like when you emerge back into reality? Can those two worlds be reconciled? What would it be like to try?

Prompt: Spend some time with your favorite form of escape — whether it’s frogposting, fantasizing, movement, movies, or anything else. Pay attention to what happens in your body before, during, and after you come back to “real life.” Create about it.

2. “Congressional Candidate Kat Abughazaleh on Parable of the Sower, and Her Love of Sci-Fi” (James Folta for Literary Hub)

In a lot of ways, Kat Abughazaleh’s campaign (she’s running for Congress in Illinois’ 9th District) reminds me a lot of Zohran Mamdani’s. It’s playful and good-humored and clearly principled, but also purposefully hopeful — optimistic in a way that we really, deeply need right now. So maybe it wasn’t a surprise that when a trend started going around BlueSky asking what book you’d be sworn in on if you were elected to office, Kat’s was perfectly aligned with her campaign’s ethos:

Parable of the Sower, for those who haven’t read it, is possibly one of the greatest works of science fiction ever written. It’s eerily prophetic, but also unexpectedly optimistic — much like Abughazaleh herself:

The whole article is worth a read — or, alternatively, you can listen to the podcast, which is equally excellent — but the point that Abughazaleh comes back to, repeatedly, is this idea of open optimism, of looking forward, of belief in change. She looks at this dystopian classic and sees “reminders of what we as humanity collectively can do and can be, how we can fight darkness through change, and how nothing lasts forever.”

In moments like this, when the fight ahead seems endless, that’s a reminder worth holding onto.

How do you feel about science fiction? What is your personal definition of the genre? Are there particular questions that you feel sci-fi should engage with or explore? What (to you) is required for worldbuilding in sci-fi in order to make it interesting, new, or exciting? Do you see the genre as ultimately optimistic, as Abughazaleh does? Why or why not?

Prompt: Jot down the first five titles — of any medium — that come to mind when you think of science fiction. What do they have in common? What separates them? Create about it.

3. “‘Weapons of mass construction’: the US ‘craftivists’ using yarn to fight back against Trump” (Cecilia Nowell for Guardian US)

Every now and then, someone asks me why I take a broad approach to creativity in this newsletter, when it’s so obvious that my own focus is on writing.

The answer — other than my honest belief that I think every form of creativity is worth celebrating — is that just because my medium is writing doesn’t mean that I don’t see the power in showing up to the resistance armed with, for example, knitting needles instead of a pen or a paintbrush.

Articles like this one are a reminder of exactly that:

The term “craftivism,” Newell writes, originated in 2003 with writer Betsy Greer, putting a name to the way in which “knitters, crocheters, sewers, embroiderers and other makers have long used their art to speak out against environmental degradation, racism, wealth inequality, fast fashion and other social issues.”

Resistance movements are tapestries, not single threads. To truly create change, we require cooperation, collaboration, and an understanding that no one type of involvement has more value than another. The person who provides childcare so that someone else can go to a protest is no less important than the protestor.

The pink pussy hats of 2017 may have become a bit of a joke in progressive spaces these days, but when I see one out in the wild — before the cynicism sets in — my first association is still to remember how powerful it was to stand on a mailbox in midtown Manhattan (do not do this, I almost fell off and it was super embarrassing) and see an entire sea of them, stretching out for miles.

A piece of writing or a powerful mural may reach more people than a cross-stitch pattern or a work of embroidery. But what matters, as I’ve said consistently in this newsletter, isn’t what you make. It’s the act of making it. The energy that moves you. The values you’re trying to express.

The good you’re trying to do.

Do you see certain forms of creative work as more or less impactful in creating social change? Why or why not? To a similar degree: Do you see certain forms of resistance work as more or less important or valuable? Consider what types of people you associate with those particular forms of creativity or resistance, and how those value judgments align with your other values. Are they consistent, or in conflict?

Prompt: Choose a particular resistance or social movement, and do a deep dive into the types of creative works made by participants. What surprises you? Create about it.

4. ”Let’s Talk About What It Means to Rest for the Sake of Rest” (Benjamin Schaefer for Electric Lit)

5. ”Your body was not designed to swallow the whole planet’s screams” (The Earthly)

This being the last Friday Five of the year, it made sense to end not just on a slightly weird note (because obviously I had to go just a bit off-script) but also to end with a focus on something I hope we can all work on in the year to come: Rest. Real, intentional, impactful rest.

In his essay for Electric Lit, Schaefer takes a close look at the way he rediscovered rest as an intentional practice during the earliest days of the pandemic. He highlights ups and downs, pitfalls and triumphs, and ultimately comes to a place of equilibrium. One key idea he engages with is the concept of overfunctioning, which he defines as a stress response: “in moments of high stress, overfunctioners compensate: They do more, work harder, and take on additional responsibilities.” It’s a way, essentially, of keeping our brains so busy with Things that they don’t actually have to deal with the anxiety that sits beneath all the Things — which is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, since there are only so many Things we can do before we crash.

(I’m in this picture, and I don’t like it.)

Schaefer writes,

He goes on,

What’s interesting to me about Schaefer’s essay is that it almost, but not quite, digs into the roles that capitalism, climate change, and collective grief play in not just creating but investing in that exhaustion. And that’s where the essay from The Earthly comes in.

Where Schaefer engages with rest as an individual challenge, the writer(s) at The Earthly understand it as a collective one. “Rest,” they write, “must be part of the fight. Not retreat.”

Intentionally cultivating a practice of real rest might be something we undertake as individuals, but no matter how much I rest or you rest, we can’t create effective change unless rest becomes something we value as a collective. But — to get back to Abughazaleh’s words on optimism — to build those changes requires imagination.

But imagination is creativity. And that, of course, is what we do.

What is your relationship to rest? Do you think of rest as a physical act, or lack thereof? A mental one? Emotional? How does rest feel to you, and what thoughts, feelings, and sensations do you associate with it? What is it like to talk about rest? What would it be like to shift towards integrating more restfulness into your routines, your conversations, your community?

Prompt: So close your eyes. Imagine what you — what we — could build, if we were rested enough to make it happen.

Do not create about it. Just let yourself rest.