How to find your medium and build taste - the anti-guide
You don’t lack creativity. You lack exposure to your own life.
Running through the forest of my hometown, the leaves make a crunchy noise under my feet. Here, where I’m mostly by myself—with the exception of a few dogs and elderly people—I get most of my ideas. I’ve been running here since I was 15, I used to plot an entire novel on these paths. The tree logs hold infinite mystery to me, it's almost as if they knew me. I like to think that the nature around me absorbs some of my ideas, and every time I come back, it releases a bit of them again, and we go into an exchange. The forest gives back some of the thoughts I wasn’t ready to accept last time I was here. For me and most people, the forest is a place where we go to do ordinary things: walk the dog, run, enjoy nature. But it’s also where the magic happens, metaphorically speaking. (In the literal sense, I don’t know. There might be witches here. Nothing is certain.)
You can’t journal, watch, or read your way into a form of creative expression that actually feels right. There are a lot of articles, videos, and guides circulating right now, promising new insights on how to finally be creative again. I’ve written articles about that in the past, and I will continue to post journal prompts, rituals, all those bits. I love learning from other people, and I’m grateful for all that accessible wisdom. But a self-help book is nothing without practice.
Call it what you want: field studies, practical lessons, excursions. Random walks, small moments, or planned trips, not necessarily with the intention of improving your art. Few people have the luxury of planning their life around that. But those are the moments where, with practice, you will get the most inspiration. Yes, this is just ordinary life. But somehow I can never see a walk as just a walk. It’s always a process, a coming home, a fight against my lazy inner cat that doesn’t want to go out at all.
Here’s the good news: You don’t really have to change your routine to experience this. All it takes is a shift in perspective. Things will start to make sense to you. You see song lyrics in a poem; you see a jewelry design element in the wall of a church. My tastiest ideas have come to me in immunology classes, in cafés, or in cemeteries. Normal places, normal people, ordinary life. It really holds so much beauty and knowledge.
I’m writing this on the way to the organ museum (as in the instrument), and this is exactly the kind of experience I’m talking about. I got up really early to catch the train, frosty blue skies and a few snowflakes accompanying me as I make my way through the sleepy landscape.
Live your life as if you were a news reporter, seeing something for the first time. Investigate your surroundings. Don’t just accept their current state. Life and art are in an everlasting exchange: you can tell by looking at the work of people who have experienced a lot. I can tell by looking at the work of my dear artist friends, I know their life and I can observe just how clearly it translates into their art. I’ve numbed my senses a bit by staring at Pinterest and Substack for too long, which are both still social media. Time to look at the things that happen around me.
Through living, you will develop something that no book or guide will give you: an eye, curiosity, and taste. When I write taste, I don’t mean that mystical thing everyone strives for and few people possess; I mean your own personal taste. You will surprise yourself with what you’re drawn to. Let yourself explore without judgment and listen to your intuition. That is your taste, your inner voice, that’s what you should be following.
It might take years to figure out. I started living my life this way when I was 15 (the same time I started running in the forest!). I went through so many phases of trying out different mediums, things that didn’t work, art that felt performative, and just last year I started feeling like I was slowly approaching my core. I’m still miles away. I guess I’ll just have to keep running.
I miss magazines, I miss articles that investigate, document, explore. If you want more reports on creativity, art in everyday life and emerging artists, I would love to have you on board.
And, if you want to be featured in the next issue of oyster, world!, feel free to contact me! I would love to write with you or about you.
xx, Arielle
This post is beautiful & well written 🥹💕✨💎