A brief ode to stepping away and breathing in.
We took the day to get away from work and the studio and the facets of of our everyday life that, while most often wonderful, have the tendency to begin to appear flat, expected, and creatively sedative the more usual and familiar they become, despite their wonderfulness. Without fail, we always always always find it refreshing and wildly productive to step away from our industry of being daily creatives. It’s rare that it doesn’t result in a piling up of work on the back end, but it’s always worth it in the long run, it’s just a simple matter of making the time and remembering that it’s always worth it.
After a day’s worth of exploring, we ended up heading back to Los Angeles with an armful of eclectic literature—everything from biographies we’d been meaning to read to new world publishing high end magazines to area hiking guides to half-century-old cookbooks to treatises on creativity itself.
One publication Katie picked up—issue no. 8 of Darling: The Art of Being a Woman—is the epitome of this now not-so-new movement of beautifully produced new world magazines, boasting a masterfully crafted layout, subtly beautiful design, big, bold photography, and even an embossed logotype on the thick card stock of the cover. Some might call this a shift into the pretentious for the periodical publishing world, but I admire both the end product and the fact that so many have found a way to survive as a print publication in a digital world.
This particular issue of Darling kicks off with an inspiring and particularly fitting piece from author + WANT (Women Against Negative Talk) founder, Katie Joy Horwitch on creativity. In a sense, the one-pager a list of ways to keep faith in one’s self and continually refill that well of creativity within each of us. In another, more important way, it’s a reminder that we all need to constantly seek inspiration both inside and outside of ourselves. As Horwitch so beautifully puts it:
“Yes, this world is turning. Yes, this air is alive. Yes, to be static is an illusion, and, yes, to be creative is our calling. Everything is a little piece of artwork, from complex humanity to the grass and the clouds. Creative dry spells might make us feel as if we’re not imaginative enough, clever enough, or artistic enough—but with a little positive proactivity, we see that, just like in nature, every drought is followed by a fantastical rain.”
So, let it rain, world. We’ll do our best to stop what we’re doing and breathe it in.
