GIFTS—02

Creative Conviction, Birds, Colours

Oct 13, 2024

Dear reader,
Last time, I asked you all for a gift, 7 days of morning pages. The response was so beautiful. 🌈

Today, I am back with the second issue of GIFTS: a series in which I pass on the gifts I have received. The first issue is here.

Today’s GIFTS include:

the book that regularly inspires me to continue this Substack
a tiny podcast that made me fall in love with birds, & our world
a video I watch when my hands itch to make art

Creative Conviction x 100 = The Gift by Lewis Hyde

The Gift by Lewis Hyde, after which I have named this series, is very dear to me. Every time I get blocked with this Substack, this book helps me regain purpose.

I started reading it in 2022, and it made creativity feel healthy, urgent, natural, and fluid. It made me want to explore my inner gifts and give them an outer shape and a continuous flow. I had stayed stagnant for too long, started to smell, and the mosquitoes were swarming. Okay that’s too dramatic. But it’s funny how so many of us are found sitting bums down on our gifts. We need conviction to wrap them and share them with the world.

The book isn’t particularly easy to read. So I would love to share some quotes with you. Hyde starts by reflecting on the nature of gifts, and the culture of gift-giving across the world.

The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation…The gift must always move.

Then, Hyde writes about gifts that are not given, especially when we hoard or neglect our inner gifts, our unused creativity.

The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.
..gifts of the inner world must be accepted as gifts in the outer world if they are to retain their vitality..It is the talent which is not in use that is lost or atrophies, and to bestow one of our creations is the surest way to invoke the next.

Hyde writes about the stages of creative process in terms of gift-giving and gift-receiving.

Beginning: An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that “begging bowl” to which the gift is drawn.
Middle: Having accepted what has been given to him—either in the sense of inspiration or in the sense of talent—the artist often feels compelled, feels the desire, to make the work and offer it to an audience.
End: Once an inner gift has been realized, it may be passed along, communicated to the audience. And sometimes this embodied gift—the work—can reproduce the gifted state in the audience that receives it.

This book can be challenging. But it is also fiercely compelling. It reshapes the way you think about your creative calling. I hope the ideas from this book find you when you need it.

Tiny Birds + Tiny Podcast = BirdNote

As someone who listens to eight hour long podcast episodes, I was overjoyed to find this tiny episode of BirdNote.

How can something so small be so marvellous and adorable? Just like a bird. This is what the BirdNote website says:

“BirdNote Daily is a two-minute radio show that combines rich sounds with engaging stories, to illustrate the amazing lives of birds and give listeners a momentary respite from the news of the day.”

I hope you will listen to this and share your favourite episodes with me. 🐤

For similar bird joy, read our dear Ochre Sky birders:

Roshni

Doel

and their simply lovely birding experiences, here and here. This poem by Gary Snyder also reassures me that it is okay to not know everything about birds, but to know a bird a little is enough.