Be a verb, not a noun
Story Doula is a newsletter exploring why we tell stories and how we stay connected— with our communities, with each other, with ourselves.
I’m Bel Lopez and this is Story Doula, a newsletter exploring why we tell stories and how we stay connected— with our communities, with each other, with ourselves. It runs like an old friendship strong enough to withstand occasional absences— You won't be spammed daily. We'll pick up from where we left off the last time.
A few months ago, I went to a writers’ residency at Bundanon, on the NSW South Coast. The artist Arthur Boyd left the property as a creative meeting ground for the wider community. The artists-in-residence accommodation hosts painters, writers, musicians etc. in a variety of small cottages set in the bush, close to the studio where Arthur Boyd worked.
In the studio, there’s the scrabbly mess of his paintbrushes set amongst the scrabbly bush. As soon as I entered I felt jealous, not for the first time, that painters can work with the material and the real— wet paint, hard canvas, a brush to wield.
I usually carry with me a pen and index cards, held together with a fat bulldog clip. Still a poor consolation for the painters’ tools, a grasp at hoping that not all words are backlit, scrollable, ephemeral, although I guess at some point they are now.
I looked around and was immediately struck by this, hung on one wall; A painting of Boyd and his wife Yvonne, titled Night of the Pirahnas (1995):
A Bundanon brochure says of the work:
This painting relates to Arthur’s comment in an interview about no longer being an artist but a maker of paintings. Arthur experienced some disillusionment with the arts industry. The piranhas signify the pressures and demands he had on him, yet in the midst of the turmoil the two figures represent himself and Yvonne, as he has said it was Yvonne’s love and support that got him through this stressful time in his life.
The little green frog can be interpreted as a voyeur, whimsical– a symbol of hope.
Boyd painted landscapes on end— and a photo in the studio shows a stack of little paintings of the bush lined up, as though in a factory, which it was. The ravenous galleries in Sydney and Melbourne demanded of him ‘paintings of bush’, and so he delivered, again and again.
And now we are in the infancy of a new age, of what it means to create, when we are collectively wondering if that too will be taken away from us, or swallowed up— let alone to hold the great title of Artist. (I have mandatory links to reads on AI, below).
Boyd wanted to be an artist, not a maker of paintings. But I have wondered if there is value in the opposite view, especially now. For many years I have tried to dismiss lifelong private desires of Artistry, and to think of myself instead as a maker. To insist on being a verb, and not a noun. Not a professional title but focused on the act of doing the thing, a determination to verb all the way through.
By the end of the retreat I’d achieved what I’d been longing for during the early years of motherhood— to return to working in a trance. The manuscript entered my dreams and wrote itself, and while I missed my kids they felt for the first time in their lives very far away, elsewhere, at some strange periphery, a 15-minute chat on video calls twice a day, a few texts to continue the administration of life for them.
I think I’ve carried some residual benefit from the retreat back to real life and the relationships that ground me. Some kind of lingering trance that will carry me through to the end of this, of the doing, the act, the physical thing, even as the world burns around us. What else is left for us, but to insist on viewing ourselves as verbs in action? As doers, regardless of titles and outcomes? It doesn’t guarantee anything. But at least, the machines can’t take it away.
Stories elsewhere
AI chatbots often advise women to ask for lower pay than men: new study
A promising new column to follow about AI from Christine Kenneally:
Indonesia: End Crackdown on Protesters, Arbitrary Detention
Talk soon,
Bel x
Fascinating read and take, Bel.
I spent yesterday with a group of creative makers who work with yarn and fibre and I find myself pushing the fact that they are artists, and viewing their own work as craft leads them to undervalue what they make and sell.
I’m also relishing accepting myself as an artist, but perhaps I’m simply at a different stage in my creative journey.
Miss you, wahine toa.