Finding The Centre: The Interiors Of An Artist by Katie Doherty
This piece was written after the event - The Labyrinth: A Conversation on Anaïs Nin with Amanda Maciel Antune and Cindy Rehm of Hexentexte. I began to think more deeply about Nin’s influence on me as a person and a writer regarding my interiors. I had previously written this small essay about the poetic mind (you can find it in its entirety here). I felt compelled to answer my own echo.
“Our poetic mind is always archiving. A natural library of the soul builds as life moves forward, sideways and any other way it feels it wants to go. There is no map, no linear way of living because we should all follow our own callings. A life planned is a life lost, a life experienced and felt through the soles of our feet is a start”. The Canvas That Is Life: Poetic Living
I have always looked inward. I was called “thoughtful” and some would say I was always “living in my head”, often portrayed as a negative trait. As an adult I see this very differently now. I see that others were afraid of their own minds and projected that fear onto me. However, I can now appreciate the maturity and curiosity I held as a child, there was clearly a fire inside me.
Over the years I have observed many minds being lost to consumerism, social media and other addictive habits. This routine of living outward does not reward me,but “living in my head” does in ways I would never imagined possible.
It is often the subject of an Instagram post or part of a self-help book synopsis – that phrase “find yourself”. Can we ever fully find ourselves or are we going to pick up fragments along the way? Will we stumble upon the pieces in the reflections on the water, in the pages of a novel, the symbolism of our dreams? In the reading of our tarot cards? Are we building that library of the soul? Are we walking between the conscious and unconscious unknowingly, picking, unpicking and weaving as we go along? Without a map, life may sound disorderly and wild, but the exploration and wildness that comes with it helps you answer your own "calling". We could rename this our intuition, the gentle stirring, the internal compass of the soul.
Many years ago I came up with my own ritual. There were times I was following my intuition, listening to myself, journalling, reading cards and just following my own pathway. However, there were other times I became distracted and I was pulled in many different directions. The ritual was often to pull myself away (both mentally and physically) and take some time to be alone. I would find my way back to that centre through stream of consciousness writing, meditation, making collages and reading books. Slowly, piece by piece – I would find myself again. Just like a labyrinth – I searched for that path to lead me back to the centre again.
This is how the creative life would be for me. Collecting thoughts, memories, photographs, pieces of dialogue and dreams - all ready to be indexed for the archives. Sometimes things would go awry but I always had the key to my soul library tucked away safely in my pocket.
