Thoughts — Blog — Amie Wiberley

Here is an update on how my weaving for my Intuitive Threads project has been progressing. Since my first piece that I wrote about in my last blog, I’ve woven three more pieces and continued to try out techniques, materials and colours. I’m not going to focus on the technical stuff in this post, I want to talk about the emotional and mental aspects of the creative process that have come up for me recently.

DIFFICULT SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH WOVEN PIECES

In my last blog I mentioned something I referred to as ‘the difficult second album’, that musicians often suffer with when under pressure to follow up the initial successful album. Can they recreate the conditions and the magic that made the first one successful? Can they perform under the pressure that wasn’t there when they were still unknown and had less external pressures on them to succeed?

Well now I’ve put it like that, I feel like I’m over exaggerating my weaving situation here, but certainly I felt something similar, if on a smaller stakes scale. I was really pleased with the first woven piece I created on my Saori loom. I felt free to experiment and follow through with the process I found myself in and was pleasantly surprised with the result. When it came to the second piece, I felt a pressure, albeit an internal one, to recreate or exceed that original success. So how would I do that? Well by using similar materials, yarns and techniques as before and adding additional techniques I’d learned from the workshops with Amanda at Beautiful Cloth Saori Studio

MOVING THROUGH DISCOMFORT

At first, weaving this second piece felt really uncomfortable. Not surprising considering the pressure I was putting on myself to produce something ‘really good’. I realised I had a background belief that I needed to create a coherent collection. Perhaps this is because in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking I’d like to display these works as an exhibition at some point in the future or it could come from my original textile design training. Maybe it also relates to an underlying belief that I need to have a recognisable style as an artist. A recogonisable style or voice may be something that emerges with time, but it's unreasonable to expect it to show up on my second piece on the loom. Other feelings of discomfort that arose during the second and third pieces were dislike, boredom and impatience. Which brings me to…

STAGES OF PROCESS

I realised I hadn’t been allowing for the different stages and phases of the creative process. After all, we don't all feel the same everyday. There are ebbs and flows; some days we are full of creative intention, inspiration and energy and others, we feel tired or uninspired.

Poetry is not usually my thing but every now and then words come to me and I write them down and then try to make sense of them. I wrote this a few weeks ago when I was experiencing what could have been a relapse of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). I’ve experienced ME/CFS for almost eight years now, so I thought I knew the deal with this. I'm not new to experiencing fatigue, but somehow this had a different feel to it. I think the exhaustion I was feeling had other routes to it this time, perhaps some emotional and physical burnout.

At first I felt all the usual frustration that accompanies this kind of fatigue but then I started to think about fatigue as a place of healing. After all, what happens to us when we are ill? The body gets tired, we are forced to rest until we recover. Whilst we sleep, whilst we rest, the body and mind (all being well) goes through a process of recovery, regeneration and healing.

I started to think about allowing the fatigue; not fighting and resisting it. Allowing it to be there. Accommodating it with extra rest. Allowing myself to go through whatever was needing to be processed. Accepting, allowing, resting and waiting to feel better.

Could I think of this fatigue as some healing and recovery that needed to happen and be patient until I was through to the other side?

Well patience can be a big ask and of course emotions like frustration, grief and impatience came up for me. But this reframe was helpful in giving me a different perspective and not spiralling into fear that my health was much worse and going into relapse. It encouraged me to rest rather than always pushing through.

The healing process isn’t linear, sometimes there are steps backwards, and it’s not always easy to see and experience those setbacks with perspective.