I opened LinkedIn to scroll a bit while waiting for Dad to return from the senior center. Excited to see that a close colleague had written an important piece, I clicked in to read. I expected fierce commitment to cause and profound challenge to dominant power. I did not expect to find my own words briefly quoted out of context, turned back in a sideways slant.
We had been in professional conversation for several years, but something was rudely amiss, so I immediately paused our weekly meetings. We were in a relationship tangle that needed release, not pull. I felt mansplained, masked, and a mean stroke coming toward me from a person I admire. Time and self-inquiry would help me know better how to respond.
I read the essay a few times more, especially focused on what made sense to me and aligned with our conversations. Nearly all of it, but a few undignifying tropes were tucked in a throw-away paragraph. ‘Naive’ appeared thoughtlessly as a critique of change-oriented strategies. A scarcity mindset that doubles down on scarcity is a mental racket. Also obvious, framing an ‘other’ as a fool or foil.
It seemed my colleague hadn’t taken in much of what I had said. Years of deliberation and a whole social philosophy fit blithely into a few dismissive sentences. I understood it as an editorial error, too – a paragraph to either expand or drop.
I know this critique pretty well. Each time I dutifully ask myself, what part of my perspective is naive? How do I support a logic of abundance? What does it mean to be a white person committed to humane liberation yet awash in social brutality, in my own family history, among communities, and in the world? Not always enjoyable inquiries, but fruitful. Over the years, I have studied the roots of my own leadership, unpicked them, and developed more productive frameworks and methods to use and share with others.
My aim today is to gently peel back layers of this recent experience to find my own guidance. I’m right about something, not everything. How might I reconnect to the grounded theories and stable practices of emergent, abundant, and appreciative work? Especially now when the either/or universe is coming down hard on those in charge. How can I stay centered in enduring love and protect the spaces of possibility? Tenderly, how do I relate to a beloved who hears my words as pablum, if at all.
Leading together through a humane process involves heart, mind, body, and spirit. Recognizing the time-limited nature of our work, we also notice how time operates differently in all our lives. We are each leaders at the table, bringing a complex of characteristics deeply woven by personal, social, and professional experiences. We bring our own current circumstances and personal dilemmas, too. Drawing on strengths and teasing out opportunities, we work ourselves into social fabrics sturdy enough to hold joys and burdens collectively.
It is ongoing, complicated work for anti-racist leaders. We must act every day in ways that degrade systemic racism or grapple with the psychological and emotional grief of voice silence and choice denial. Creative leaders, in particular, are tasked with the urgency of now. Our visions and values are so sharp against the neglect, abuse, and horror in the world. Often, our deepest motivations are ancestral; given to us to be made real again in our lives now. To embody our work, we stay culturally-rooted, emotionally open, oriented to action, and available to change. Leaders with such vision and power are themselves reckoning forces.
Also, the job calls for grace and patience among people and circumstances that evolve over time, no matter our demands and according powers well beyond direct influence. For me, it has always been a choice to engage and build trust equity among the circles of love that are constantly conspiring to heal the godforsaken spaces where we humans malign life. Yes, the charge to the trust bank is arguably too high when the debt is held in the heart of a jackass. I overspend consistently when I am the jackass, or they are a friend.
Both/and circumstances are exceedingly uncomfortable when cultural changes are afoot. These sacred centers of overlapping work demand mutual devotion to retain their creative tensions. Our ancestors are fulfilled in our ambiguous and ambitious efforts today. Opportunities hard won before us actually belong to our children. Sad sacks, we are left with only what is ours to do in these days. Never everything, but we do have the air we share.
Tag: arts
Fine arts, popular cultures, crafts and creative life – my definition of the #arts includes it all.
It’s a Pop Song
Up a gravelly trail on North Mountain, headed toward an elevation rise and a muscle challenge suited to me. My breath and footfall are a cadence, and just below it, the sound of the gritty sand.
It is like an instrument. A razz to a tambourine or a rainstick, alongside reliable percussion. The beat and brawn of my own song under my shoes.
I now know that I write in peculiar places. Moments in nature offer up melody or meaning that inspire me. A happy scaffolding to perch my words and practice a tune.
After a blissful first week at a new job, my imagination went wild on the possibilities ahead. In a land of ancient regenerative power, we would find our way again. This time, it was mine to lead a little.
Slide sets, yawn. Conference talk, not you. Story hour, quite a drag these days. I had been invited to an improv night, and to serve as a guest judge at a Western art show. Both met my creative criteria. I had dreams of being alive in the bureaucracy; of living my artful life even (especially!) in a largely administrative role.
Vistas opened in every direction as I slowly climbed. A simple set of lyrics arose.
It’s a pop song, and we all get along…
It went like that for the miles ahead, timing my heartbeat and breathing to the timbres in my limbs. Moving my arms and torso inside the emotion of words; building out gestures and lyrical phrases on the sandy path, suddenly a dance, too.
The invitation into the moment is unmistakable. Could I write a global jingle to save our sacred center right here on a desert path? The joy answered for me. Am doing, already.
You know how strategy tingles? I listen, look, linger, learn. I live with the insufferable ambiguities of not knowing. Eventually, I see a pattern. A story emerges, or a sensed opportunity. I call it catnip, a mild intoxicant that makes you purr, roll around, and count your lives left.
I wrote the lyric and lost the job. Two years later, still no replacement, and I can karaoke. Many more hills ahead. Music (not money) is the maker of memories. Mine are fine for me, and harmony is for us to embody. There is a root song and we can all sing our own.
[Lyrics just as they came out on the mountain]
A new way to read dance, walk it out, talk it out here. Angela is right, we all need to move more.
Yes the metaphor is meta-verse, but let’s still fight about form and first at the junction, the new menu for Senem, and then this, this is what we have in common.
It’s our bond, our problems. Give us this grace for grounding, give us some pace for founding a new nation every day in every way and in every matter make it be.
Infinite possibility charges uphill, picks her way down, ginger toed, knowing woes and occasional wonder like thunder out here, that smell.
Then fuck yeah, there’s a pop song, and we do get along. And we. And we sing as we-we mourn.
Yeah, then there’s a pop song. And we find a way home. And we all get along. Cause that’s a pop song it’s a pop song.
I took it to heart and I took it on a walk. I say Creative Aging like I’m not up, Ha, keep your heads kids, we gotta get lit, worry hurry cause you’ll have a bit. Cause is a pop song.
Walk ahead, wind in my face and over my shoulder, rolling the boulders like I swear and I told you. Table Mesa to my left, pin turn to the right. I can do this all night, and it ain’t even noon.
Kankō, salt lake sightseeing, you call me. Nick back on Highland, imma let you be. TicTac you in my life so far and so forward.
Someone called and I returned it, I took the book hell, yes, I burned, now I’m here and I def earned it, so maybe Valleys are for us to look up.
Yes friends, we all make the net ends that all-us live in, and at least one of us can can-can.
Remember us together through Heathers, and really fucking shitty weather. Whatever, I’m in to cause a pop song, so we all get along.
Persistence and Payoff
When I hosted the first social studio in 2023, it was quite an experiment with few expectations. Toward the end, as moment built up, that changed. I wanted to deliver big.
Of course, I did. I’m a conscious capitalist, a proponent of the circular economy. I believe in progress for a purpose. Also, I was dearly wanting to move on from a recent prickly past. Haste, I have very few professional days left to waste!
Also, it was the end of a big deal.
I planned a 10-week online social studio, hosted it, and succeeded by my own hand and measure.
I experimented and failed at everything there was to do, at first. Then, much of it became rote and routine in a newly formed way.
No longer do I fear the weekly missive, for example. Lately, I like to write on my phone from a nearby park. After a short walk to sort my thoughts and find the story, I sit and touch tap my minor truths. Duck quacks are great applause.
The first ten essays I wrote in September 2023 were an excruciating cosmic childbirth tended by dueling doulas. Do it, or don’t. Now, writing each week is like feeding kittens.
Also, the social studio is excellent for quiet, parallel play. After a little chatter and a conversation, dense trust fills the air space on mute, even thousands of miles away.
I connected with past colleagues and met new ones. We deeply discussed familiar notions in creative practice, revealing more and more from the roots of ancient, common wisdom.
I completed last year (did I?)
I am creating the year ahead (am I not?)
It’s not so simple.
The book ahead of me delves into a past long before I existed, and only a faint version of that past at best. AI is revealing new historical evidence about my genealogy and DNA, alongside its unintended consequences.
Digging up the dead is forbidden in most cultures, and for good reason. Some leave us out on a windy mountainside to let vultures pick the bones. We endlessly wrestle with competing tomes.
The same creative tension lives in all the professions, including medicine and mental health. Long dead brain surgeons are buried with their ice picks. Ketamine dreams are revealed decades on. Closed cases openly weep for what’s inside.
Luckily, one lobotomized woman lives just below my ribcage on the left. Lacework from tiny papercuts, effects of a life swallowing knives. But somehow still alive in me and beating my blood to get out.
I know the book will release her, but it’s not fit for public just yet. One insight from the social studio–we still have to contend with the lonely unknowns. No amount of friendship or fostering (or an effing robot) will entirely alleviate the internal ache of being humane. That’s the work of writing and a patient readership.
When brutality is unearthed, swaddle it like a stillbirth and give it a proper goodbye. The book ahead of me is a quiet way to say goodnight to a granny I never knew and to reclaim the family between us over time.
Until the end of the year, I’ll take some time to write and publish here. Then new social studios will begin. Connect with me directly in the usual ways, especially if there’s no one else to call. For comfort, I will read you the terrifying stickies on my wall.
Anne L'Ecuyer 