The Creative Independent — Dear Somebody

*My latest illustration for Issue 62 of* Uppercase Magazine

A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

I wake to the sounds of a duckling quacking. I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling. It’s midnight; there are no bodies of water nearby. After a minute, I realize it’s F; the sounds are coming from my child. On the monitor, I see her balled body rolling around the crib, quacking. The quacking continues, then becomes laughter—until finally, it’s tears. I change her diaper, I sing her a lullaby, I crawl back into bed and wait for her to sleep. When she finally does, it’s 4:30 in the morning.

The quacking has gone on for weeks now. I stand at the kitchen island, too tired to think. Instead, I give myself over to the mechanics of morning routine, grateful for a chance to turn my mind off. When I decided to become a parent, I never thought I’d find myself caring for a duckling—but here I am. This is what commitment is: caring for the one you have, regardless of whether they are who you imagined them to be.

I’m smearing sunbutter on toast when N runs into the kitchen. She’s having breakfast on the porch with T, watching rain fall from the open sky in sheets. Mom, she says, do you want to join us? I do.

On the other side of the front door, the earth takes a long bath. The air is pleasant, cool. Lightning flashes; I close my eyes and see its brightness through my lids. N counts the seconds until thunder follows. Mom, she says, I love sitting on the porch. I love watching the rain. I’m sitting in the middle so I can be next to you and dad…at the same time! Isn’t this air is so fresh? It’s my favorite thing. It’s my favorite thing, too— being a witness to the earth. Seeing her recycle whatever resources are left, beginning again.

In a past life, I’m still in the kitchen. Still making lunches. Still stewing in my own tiredness. Still longing for silence. In a past life, I opt out of this moment entirely. How lucky, then, to be in this life instead: one where there is a porch and it’s covered. One where the rain perseveres—is relentless, even—and I, with my two very good friends, get to watch the world as it is reborn.

One floor above us, while the rain drapes her in its song, a little duckling quacks in her sleep.

TUESDAY

*Dear Library* deal announcement. Note: this artwork isn’t from the book!

I feel so lucky to share that my debut as a picture book illustrator will be DEAR LIBRARY, a love letter to libraries--and a celebration of the possibility that lives inside books. As a child, I went to the library multiple times a week with my family. My sister and I would lay on the floor of the children's section, reading, for hours. Every now and then, my mom would come collect us and we'd send her away. We were never ready to leave.

I still go to the library a couple times a week, now with my own little gremlins in tow. We come home with a big stack of books and read wherever we can: at the kitchen island, at the dining table, on the living room floor, in bed. We read in the car. We read while walking. I tell N that possibility lives inside books: a book can change your whole world. It can free you from much of what restricts you—especially your own mind.

Emily and I at The Bookshop in Nashville, a place where we’ve sang many songs, welcomed many books into the world, and made many memories (2024)

Emily and I first tried to make a picture book 6 years ago, but it didn't work out. Sometimes that's the way things go. I didn't want to admit it, but I wasn't ready. I had a lot to learn, mostly about myself. I needed to be real about what I was willing to change—and what I was willing to lose—in order to create the work I wanted to make. I've spent the last few years focusing on myself and my craft. I have a long way to go; I think every artist feels this way—but now, I've got my head on right. I listen to myself.

When this project came along, I knew it was a sign—life’s way of confirming that if I stop ignoring what’s inside my heart, I’ll be all right. And what a dream project it is: A book about books!—About libraries!—Written by my dear friend! I'm so grateful to Emily for keeping our dream alive, and I couldn't be more thrilled to work with the wonderful, gracious team at Candlewick. We're making a beautiful book together…and this time I'm ready.

WEDNESDAY

I’m almost done with Laurie Frankel’s Family Family, a beautiful novel that asks the reader to reimagine what a family is and how a family comes to be.

I’m listening to a lot of compositions by Joe Hisaishi while working on concepts for Dear Library and while writing. Hisaishi is best known for scoring almost all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films, and his music elicits feelings of mystery, contemplation, and peace.

I’m studying the composition and light value in Kaatje Vermeire’s gorgeous work, especially in De Vrouw En Het Jongetje (I have the French edition). I find her work astounding. It encapsules all of the dualities I admire in life—beauty with darkness, deep emotion and deep voids, danger and light.

THURSDAY

On the value of creative suffering:

“I used to really believe in the creative value of agony and I don’t really know if I can subscribe to that anymore. That old idea that if it wasn’t painful then it wasn’t meaningful.

It’s a stereotype that we’ve been sold, even in the history books. The anguished genius. We’ve been conditioned to believe that there’s some kind of relationship between the creative life and dysfunctional mental health, that somehow there’s kind a correlation between the two. I don’t subscribe to that anymore because it’s just too exhausting. I’ve become really good about delegating and organizing my time. When you’re just an artist floating out there in the ether you’re made to believe that you have to create great art through pain and suffering. It isn’t true.”

—from a The Creative Independent interview with Sufjan Stevens

FRIDAY

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

—Meditations in an Emergency by Cameron Awkward-Rich

xx,

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A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

I wake up at 5:30 to have some quiet before the rest of the house stirs. In the living room, I stretch. The sun comes up behind the maple trees on our street; pink and yellow push against the sky. Our street is lined with strange plants, all beautiful and mysterious in their own ways. I know I’ll live in the world for my entire life without really becoming one with the earth. It’ll still be a win if I learn how to become one with myself. Like a kaleidoscope, the sky keeps turning. It is good.

After breakfast, I lose my temper with N. The agitation courses through my body. We are both frustrated, but I am the adult. There isn’t good reason for my loss of control. I want to be different and I work hard at it, but I know when it happens, I’ll just want to be someone else. It is not good.

I mix peanut butter with banana and yogurt for F. I add chia seeds. N quells her frustration and I do, too. We look into each other’s eyes and I lose myself in the vastness of hers. I see straight into her plum-sized heart, and there is only goodness in there. I’m not perfect, but I’m beginning to understand that I don’t want to be. I want to be a parent who apologizes to their child. I do, and it is good.

After N leaves for school, F and I finish breakfast. We listen to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack and she watches with interest as I sing along. When I don’t remember the words, I make them up. I laugh at myself and F laughs at me, too. I slip on the yogurt-covered floor but I don’t fall. This is an achievement. F chokes on her own laughter but keeps laughing anyway. I start to worry but then I laugh instead. It is good.

During F’s nap, I draw. I work on a new illustration for my Uppercase column and it challenges me in all the right places. I’m using colors that feel fresh but still like me. I’m excited by my work; I’m working on projects I care about. I’ve tried to listen to myself for years now, and it’s finally paying off. I hear my voice again. I’m saying nomore often. I don’t feel like any particular opportunity will be the one that determines my future. This lesson took me a long time to learn; it’s freeing to finally learn it. It is good.

When F wakes, we sit outside. It’s 56 degrees and the bare branches scrape the stars. I can’t see them but I know they’re there. F scoots around on her stomach and eats dead grass. I pull some of it out of her mouth and then stop bothering. I think about how distracted I feel all of the time—how the more I work on staying still, the less successful I am.

Years ago, a friend sent me an email about a word they thought I’d like: apricity, which means the warmth of the sun in winter. I feel it now, the sharp knife of sun cutting through winter. Cutting it in half. Sunlight glints off of the dead grass, off of the dead branches, off of my small child’s small nose. It warms the shaking part of me. It is good.

TUESDAY

“It’s incredibly comfortable and nice when you can look at your own work and say to yourself, “I did a good job.” And then you let it go, because anything else is going to make you crazy, and anything else, you’re going to be trying to impress people who don’t even like you. That’s the truth! You have to be very careful of letting people who not only don’t know you, but don’t understand you, don’t like you… you can’t let those people determine who you are.

When I did the conversation with Jimmy, there were people standing in line for that—it was more Jimmy than me. I’m very fortunate to have a publisher; I’ve been with HarperCollins now for 40 years. I haven’t jumped around. Poets don’t make money. If you’re not looking for, “Oh, I want to write a book, and there’ll be a movie, and I’ll become rich and famous,” you’ll be happy. There can be a kind of freedom, when the reward is itself the work.”

—Nikki Giovanni in The Creative Independent

WEDNESDAY

I’m thinking about The Dumpster Fire and the Garden by Brad Montague, To Destroy is to Create by Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Breaking My Own Silence by Min Jin Lee.

THURSDAY

“Once upon a time there lived a woman who wanted to exchange her present for her daughter’s future. Little did she know that, if she did so, the two of them would merge into one ungainly creature, at once divided and reconstituted, and time would flow through both of them like water in a single stream. The child became the mother’s future, and the mother became the child’s present, taking up residence in her brain, blood, and bones. The woman vowed that she had no need for God, but her child always wondered, Was the bargain her mother had made a kind of prayer?”

—from A Mother’s Exchange For Her Daughter’s Future by Jiayang Fan

FRIDAY

Still not believing in age I wake
to find myself older than I can understand
with most of my life in a fragment
that only I remember
some of the old colors are still there
but not the voices or what they are saying
how can it be old when it is now
with the sky taking itself for granted
there was no beginning I was there

—No Believer by W.S. Merwin

xx,

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