Today was a rare day. We had terrible nightmares and someone woke to an unfamiliar world. We live so much in the day at the moment, our strange poets have been pushed into the shadows of life. Full of intensity and desperate to make art, she tried to stay out but couldn’t shake the sense of displacement from being out in the day. Rocked in their wake we reached for stillness and tried to listen closely.

We worked through last weekend so were due a day off. We decided to stay home and hope to make art. We’ve been severely blocked, not short of ideas but unable to create, overwhelmed by an appalling inner presence who dominated and destroys the process. All our efforts to work around or reduce the impact of this introject have been unsuccessful. We’ve made no art unless required since our friend Leanne died and we sculpted a pendant in her memory.

Somehow today we found a way through. Someone turned up who is silent and who listens to silence. All through the day we didn’t speak or play music or do admin or touch Facebook. Out on our island another world descended and the block was left behind. We cleaned up or studio space until we could function in it, and then spent the day sculpting, painting, and carving. We painted the pendant we’d made for Leanne. It’s burnished silver which doesn’t photograph easily, with swarovski crystals, a pearl, and paua shell. I’m very proud of it, and deeply relieved to have found some way to create again.