Hurry Slowly - The beauty of belief

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Artwork by Mike Karolos.

Hi Friends-

Even though I am well aware of my tendency toward seasonal depression, when the grey weight of February in New England drapes itself over me, it still feels like a sad surprise.

Before I moved out of the city and changed my relationship to alcohol, I used to have a “F*ck February” party every winter to celebrate the end of this bitter month. That’s how much I don’t dig February!

That said, I can also appreciate the power and utility of "wintering." I know that this moment of being hunkered down, this moment of waiting and gestating in uncertainty, is a necessary precursor to new growth and new incarnations.

As we yearn toward those new sprigs of green, I’m offering a collection of links that meditate on cultivating deeper awareness and stepping into yourself and your artistic practice more deeply — as well as releasing old mindsets focused on anxiety and efficiency.

I’m also excited to share a new episode of Hurry Slowly, which has been in the works for a long time now: An interview with writer and embodiment coach Prentis Hemphill, who is also the host of the excellent Finding Our Way podcast. I’ve long been an admirer of Prentis’ work, and it was wonderful to finally get to sit down in conversation with them.

We talk about what dignity feels like in the body, how the dominant culture cuts us off from the natural bodily rhythms of life, and why healing always happens in relationship.

It was a wonderful, clear-eyed, grounding conversation. You can tune in here:

Prentis Hemphill: Breaking Out of “Control Mode”

Sending you warmth & hope,
Jocelyn

Artwork by Mike Karolos.

LINK ABOUT IT

"We believe our way into things." I thoroughly enjoyed this interview with legendary music producer Rick Rubin. Based on his new book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rubin shares practices for cultivating deeper creativity and awareness: "The beauty of belief is it doesn’t matter whether the thing you believe is true or not. It’s your belief in it that gives it its power. It’s not the truth in it that gives it its power. It’s your belief in it. So belief is a really powerful force in the universe and a great one to have on your side. I talk, also, in the book about how you have to believe that something that doesn’t exist can exist to bring it into the world. If you start with the idea that it’s impossible, then it’s impossible. We believe our way into things, allowing them to come into being in the world."

"I think the wrong things are kept secret." I loved this conversation with photographer Nan Goldin and filmmaker Laura Poitras, the duo behind the new documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. It also made me think of David Wojnarowicz, another great artist/activist. (His memoir, Close to the Knives, is fantastic btw.) Here's Goldin: "I think the wrong things are kept secret. So the fact that I put out my work - it was not accepted as art at the beginning because it was so personal. I came up in a time of black-and-white vertical photographs about light. And then, there was the period in the '80s when people were using appropriated images. So my work didn't really fit in anywhere. It's the way people respond to the work that is important to me. I show myself battered. And in different countries, women have come up to me and said, 'I couldn't show myself. I couldn't talk about it until I saw these images.' And that's what the work is really about."

On taking the risk of being yourself. I have done a lot of writing for other people (as opposed to for myself), and I recently noticed this trend — this external focus, something I talked about in my last podcast — in a deeper way. So this piece from Lisa Olivera really resonated with me: "Feeling boring and bland has made it safer to be a 'self help' writer than a Writer writer — it’s made it safer to lean on the universal wisdom gleaned from experience than to just write about the experience itself, without extracting wisdom to share from it. Because if my writing isn’t useful or valuable in a tangible way, it has to be extraordinary in some other way, doesn’t it? It has to wow you in a different form, which long felt like too much pressure. So sticking to writing from the therapist/human parts instead of the just human part has felt more cautious, more of what people want, more pleasing, more acceptable.”

Stop adopting other people’s anxiety. Sometimes I feel like I spend a lot of time warding off other people’s anxiety. As I was reflecting on this, I revisited this classic essay from Mike Monteiro: “If you remember your high school science you’ll remember that anxiety is conductive. It wants to travel from one person to another person. And once it sees itself in another person, it feels justified in being in that first person... To put it another way: once a client becomes anxious, their primary goal becomes to make you anxious, because that justifies their own anxiety. So if they’re freaking out and they can get you to freak out then OMG WE SHOULD ALL BE FREAKING OUT!”

Uncoupling from couple-dom. If traditional views of romance are feeling tired, outmoded, or constraining to you this Valentine’s Day week, I would invite you to check out my friend Sebene Selassie’s Uncoupling from Couple-Dom workshop. It’s all about letting go of compulsory heteronormative/monogamous couple-dom and returning to a sacred love of self and the world. I took the workshop last December, and it was truly transformative!

Creativity vs efficiency. I recently revisited this podcast I recorded a few years ago, about how creativity resists efficiency, and it happened to be exactly what I needed to hear. It’s cool when you can talk to your past self. : )

Death of an Artist. Although it technically could fall into the genre of true crime (a genre I have repudiated), this podcast retelling of the life and death of ground-breaking Cuban artist Ana Mendieta is so much more: A sharp commentary on the art world, women’s place in it, and who our justice system deems worthy of grace.

Work at CHANI. I’ve long been a fan of astrologist Chani Nicholas and her CHANI app. (I interviewed her on Hurry Slowly awhile back.) If you, like me, are drawn to the stars, it looks like there are some great positions open at CHANI, and her vision for the company and how folks are paid is what we need to see more of.

Reservation Dogs. I somehow missed the boat on Reservation Dogs, which follows the exploits of four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma, when it first came out in 2021. Created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, this TV show is one of the most wonderful things I’ve watched in a long time — smart, funny, heartbreaking, and tender.

A Scatter of Light. For those into queer YA, the new Malinda Lo novel, a sequel to Last Night at the Telegraph Club, is a lovely coming of age story with a lot of wisdom about what it means to be an artist.

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Artwork by Mike Karolos.

SHOUT-OUTS:

The artwork is from: Mike Karolos, who is based in Athens, Greece.

Link ideas from: Marlee Grace and Andrew Glei.

You can support this newsletter by: Tweeting about i t or leaving a review for Hurry Slowly on iTunes.

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Hi, I'm Jocelyn, the human behind this newsletter. I created the online course RESET, a cosmic tune-up for your workday, as well as Hi-Fi, a journey into the wisdom of the heart. I also host Hurry Slowly — a podcast about personal and collective transformation.

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Website: jkglei.com
Twitter: @jkglei

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Hurry Slowly - The beauty of belief

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