What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?
- Langston Hughes
Dear Diary,
If you met me a couple of years ago you wouldn't recognise me. Hair poker-straight, outfits made of clean lines, power poses. That avatar was my armour. When I slowly softened into myself, my feminine side emerged with colour, flowy silhouettes and wild hair.
Somewhere in the midst of that transition I managed to get coaxed into going to a poetry retreat in the erstwhile home of Ted Hughes (where I met my now husband). The mornings were for classes and afternoons for individual critiques of our poems with a tutor. Having just quit my corporate job, I was over the moon to actually have time and space for creativity for perhaps the first time in my life.
In my first feedback session with one of the tutors, he read my work and then looked at me bewildered, saying “I’ve never read anything like this… It’s like you want to express so much, but do not want to be seen.” Writing to cover up the things I might actually have wanted to say. How he came to that conclusion in reading just 4 of my poems, I’ll never know, but it hit a nerve. I spent the rest of the afternoon distraught, knowing on some level that he was right.
A LOT has changed since that moment over 3 years ago. I have shaken up my life to allow a more authentic part of me to emerge – painting, creating. As some of you might have seen, I recently launched my first collection of paintings. It was a vulnerable moment for me – pushing through that desire not to be seen, and putting the work out there.
For those unpracticed in being seen, when you allow yourself to do it, it can be tempting to immediately qualify the lack of a desired outcome (in my case, selling out) as a reason to go back into your shell. But I know intimately what happens when you defer your dream and don’t allow yourself to be seen - you rot, like in the Langston Hughes poem, until maybe one day you explode.
The idea of success entrenched in our society is one I have questioned for decades, but only now am I coming to my own definition of success. I am learning that for me in this moment, success is just allowing myself to be seen.
If this resonates with you, if you’ve felt this, if you’re working on being seen, I’d love to know about how you’re working through it.
In the studio
I am playing around this month with some materials I don’t usually use to see what happens - Some old Indian inks, khadi paper, and oil paints have been taken out of the back to create new studies. Sometimes something as simple as switching a medium can reveal the path to a new body of work. Here are some new paintings I’ve finished and uploaded on the website. If you’d like to take the opportunity to collect any of these click on the image below to be redirected to the website and use code SUBSTACKFRIENDS10 to get 10% of your first order.
On my bookshelf
I’m rereading The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, the second time around to refresh my commitment to this life and it truly is a book that changes your perspective on the life available to you. I will always recommend this book.
I just finished reading Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, though an oldie, I found it especially relevant and heartening to know that other artists too come face to face with fear and learn to move part it in a way that in inherent to the the growth of the practice.
On the novel side, I’ve just finished Woman, Eating. A strange and wonderful book about a young asian woman based in London who also happens to be a vampire and is afraid of being found out. Relatable!
x
sana
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Could definetly relate to wanting to not be seen, especially as an artist. I have been writing poetry for years. Realizing that I was not good at remembering lines on stage like other poets or spoken artists do sort of broke me. However, I found my way back to it and It's been beautiful.
Your art is beautiful and "YOU ARE DOING AMAZING SWEETIE!!"