Robyn Gordon, back at work

Connections
“Everything is connected.” The first time I heard it I both believed it and didn’t believe it. I could see how war tore apart the whole world, no matter within which border it is fought. Or how a death, no matter how private, can touch a heart across an ocean. But then again, we really don’t know people we have lived next door to for years; we don’t understand the actions of our own family.

Occasionally, belief in amazing powers of creativity blow through my window–in the form of my computer screen. Several weeks ago, I got a note from a woman in Africa, a woman I have never seen or talked to. She reads my blog. Something in the line of words, in the shape of a sentence, made her want to reach out to her own creativity again. When I read something like this, my heart stutters. I want it to be true. I don’t want the responsibility of it being true.

But then I remember: it’s not about me. Creativity is never used up. It is available to everyone who takes the spark and fans it into a flame. Sometimes it just requires a puff of air, sometimes an enormous force of will to begin creating. Or begin again. We return to an unused studio, and sit down. We choose to make meaning in our lives and we pick up the tools to do it.

Robyn Gordon exercised that will. I knew she had been awake at night, and rose to sift through writing on the busy air that hold the Internet. She came across my blog and she made a decision. She began creating again. Today, several weeks after the first contact, she wrote again. I asked to see some of her work, and she generously shared it.

Imagine how impoverished we would have been without this work. Imagine what it means to Robyn to have made this with her heart and hands. We are all connected. Thank you for your art, Robyn. Thank you for being awake and night and sending it to someone you have never met.

–Totem images by Robyn Gordon

To see another image of Robyn’s work, visit my “Connections” post at the Taverna.