Team Blog Post – Emmett Bradshaw for Swallowing Clouds

BLOG #1

It has been such a blast getting started with Swallowing Clouds programming this past summer and into the fall. As an artist and learner, I am a firm believer in learning by doing, and there has been lots of doing to learn from so far. In my first workshop at St. Alban’s Boys and Girls Club, we learned each other’s names with movement, soared with the wind, and imagined our coziest rooms. I was especially excited when we got to build versions of the rooms we dreamt up. My team divided and conquered to make an elegant chandelier, a fortune teller garden, and a bed fixed with pillows. I can’t wait to keep dreaming, listening, and dancing together into the winter.

BLOG #2

*Written while listening to Golden Baby by Ta Reine*

The winter months bring pause and reflection, most of which I do with a steady beat in the background. I curiously consider my attention, to the sounds of techno, while techno curiously considers the same thing.

Give me too much… 

I feel like it is too complicated and I will never understand it.

Give me too little…

I feel it is too simple and I already understand it.

Give me too little…

Keep giving me too little…

Then give me a tiny bit more…

I feel discovery and I want to understand more.

With attention comes ritual. I consider the parallels between the music I listen to and the creative practices I come back to. As artists (or creatives), we keep coming back to the blank canvas, to the body, to the beat. With that canvas we layer piece by piece, tweak and amplify. We repeat and reflect. Build and break. In all the different forms and activities, we come back to a creative practice. We come back to creativity. But why do we make? Why do we keep dreaming? For me, it’s the same reason we come to a beat – to discover and experience. We all have the power to be astounded by our own work, as long as we keep giving ourselves the time to make it.