i am not a content making machine
I AM NOT A CONTENT MAKING MACHINE.
I do not work for Instagram. I am not paid to perpetuate their programs. The spoken or not spoken expectation that I have to be spouting words on here every day so that I can grow thousands of double click looms more than it should.
Honor the people who honor your attention. Honor the folks who put out good work. Double click the people who took the time to think, ruminate and create something that speaks from the heart, when it is ready.
What value is there, really, in just throwing shit out there into the world for the sake of having a post? As Erica Williams Simon said, “I am tired of living in a world where the insatiable need for content and visibility drives what we say more than value, meaning or impact. May our words be guided by Spirit, not algorithms.”
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This pressure for endless content and strategy makes me feel like I have to be talking all the time in order to be heard. The story is: to have any measure of success, I have to be loud, constantly-- which is a lie that culture has told me since I was old enough to hear. I am not loud… unless I am. And quiet is valuable. Quiet hears things that Loud cannot. And we should listen. We should grant room and permission for that into ourselves and others. Honor what wants and needs to be spoken from a deeper place which requires depth, space, silence.
Creation + creativity is not a constancy process. It is an emergent process.
So maybe I won’t get as many likes or as many followers. And, that is something that I am ok with. Because being at peace with myself, honoring myself and my voice by not pretending I have more to say than I do, and also honoring your attention in the same way feels better in my body, my psyche, my spirit, which will last way longer than any social media platform.
One of my very favorite poets, Mary Ruefle says in her book Madness, Rack + Honey:
James Fenton, in An Introduction to English Poetry, puts forth the idea that poetry happens when one raises their voice. I agree, but I also believe that poetry happens when one lowers their voice. In the first instance, the raised voice, we have the street hawkers, the singers, the storytellers, the priests — anyone who wants to be heard over the din — but in the second we include the tellers of secrets, the lovers, the password keepers — all those who want to be heard beneath the din, not by the din itself but by one singular other who is part of the din, as when in the middle of a concert we lean to the person next to us and cup our hand around our mouth, forming a private amphitheater, a concert within a concert, connecting ourselves to one the way the concert is connecting itself to everyone.
[…]
Cries and whispers. A bang or a whimper. Whatever the case, if we want to be heard, we must raise our voice, or lower it.
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Love the boring part(s) of you. Love the quiet part(s) of you. Love that not every idea is a good idea. Love that not everything is for sharing. Love that things take the time they take, especially the gems.
Speak above the din…
or speak below it.
