Sydney Barnett
@sydbarnett
Writer. Singer. Coach.
Sydney Barnett
sydneybarnettmusic.substack.com
To be a very spirited and intuitive person, you have to leave room for impulsivity. You have to leave room for the unprecedented. You have to leave room for the miracle of joy. Call it sacredness. You have to leave room for sacredness in your life.
If you don’t leave room for those things, and it can be a token, then you’re strangling spirit in
... See more#Grounded: Climate storyteller Aditi Mayer and director Simrah Farrukh collaborate on a lyrical stream of consciousness that meditates on home, displacement, and erasure - set against intimate portraits of home, both as architecture and ecology 🌿
Together, they build visual testaments that trace the emotional and... See more
nownessinstagram.comInteresting piece connecting displacement, erasure, choosing stewardship in hard times… and home as a practice.
Job quitters tend to have a Moses complex: they feel the need to free their people from corporate pharaohs by convincing them to ‘leave the matrix’ and that the pathless desert path is better than the nine-to-five because there is nothing better than having the freedom to do whatever one wants. Create content. Start a podcast. Build an email list.... See more
I feel such intense gratitude when I read a book by someone who, for a brief moment, makes me feel less alone in the world and makes these complicated things in my brain feel a little easier to understand.
Kevin Wilson • On What Makes a Good Writer with Kevin Wilson
So important to create. Even if you think your story isn’t important or your voice isn’t you unique.. you never know when it will touch someone and change their life.
people feel the most alienated when they suddenly sober up to the fact that most of their desires are herd-driven, that most of them are no where close to the truth, if they even have a clear enough sense of what that is that matters to them. It’s like waking up from a trance state and realizing, What have I done to myself? I certainly felt this... See more
Excerpt from “The Crane Wife” by CJ Hauser, page 32.
This reminds me of the vortex phenomenon what Joan Didion describes in her book, “The Year of Magical Thinking”—in which she is paralyzed by memories triggered by seemingly mundane circumstances as she comes to terms with her husband’s death and her daughter’s illness. In certain locations, a flood of memories overwhelms her, temporarily taking her out of the present.
The vortex effect is a deeply upsetting experience, and when Didion returns to Los Angeles, she desperately avoids places and situations that remind her of life with John and Quintana. However, she discovers that even seemingly small triggers, such as commercials or calendar dates, are capable of setting off the effect. The vortex effect is consistent with the idea that grief is a state of temporary mental illness.
Both what Hauser and Didion describe is how inexplicable and isolating a loss can feel like. And instead of trying to avoid that “silence” of being “invisibly destroyed”, both turned to writing about it, to grasp at what it could all mean. Opening up to others about our grief comes with the understanding that the person you confide in can never fully understand. When we turn to art to move through grief, we help ourselves come to our own understanding...or make peace with our lack of understanding. It’s in times of abrupt change or loss, that I am motivated to paint, or write, or sing. To create, to channel, to let it flow out of me in a new form. To really look at the pain, shine a light on it, inspect it from different angles, process it thoroughly.
A writing example: when I look back in my notes I realize so much of what I write about today I was ruminating about 2-3 years ago. I always knew what I was going to say. I just didn’t have the tools, I didn’t have the maturity, I didn’t have the language or sensitivity to beauty to recognize what that was. So much of what I learned was latent,... See more
Nix 🕊 • things that take time
"Old Soul" Is Just Childhood Abandonment In A Turtleneck.
cypherj.substack.com
