Fixed water: prayer, holy visions, projections

In Catholicism there is endless creativity in the naming of patron saints. Some of the more obscure ones include St. Julian the patron saint of murderers, and St. Lidwina, the patron saint of ice skaters.

Fixed water: underwater caves, stalactites, isolation

There is a bottomless green pool of water that chills the air around it. Once you arrive, there is nowhere else to go. There is nothing to do but contemplate the icy, beautiful surroundings.

Fixed water: dreams, Gothic spaces, wells

I told her about a dream about a banquet: the hushed grandeur of the room, gold brocade on the table, rotten fruit drawing flies.

Cardinal air: speculation, madness, atmospheric strangeness.

Much of the transformation of the game from mundane to numinous is achieved through the intervention of a sudden moon in cosmic magenta which changes the landscape entirely.

Cardinal air: big mood, the mundane sublime, weird landscapes

Weird landscapes tell us so much about making the hidden aspects of life visible, and, about our interconnectedness with the natural world.

Cardinal air: harmony, nourishment, artists

I’m thinking about art about artmaking. My own process is in disarray at the moment, and I am finding solace and guidance in the work of other artists grappling with these questions.

Mutable earth: the craft, inner circle, art

But the film is also about the daily grind of showing up. Showing up to your job when you want to work on your art. Showing up for your art when you’re exhausted from your job.

In the first episode of season two, I have the pleasure of speaking with writer, editor, and playwright May Ngo. I talked to May about the process of writing her first novel, the whiteness of crime fiction, the traumas of academia, and how pregnancy is a Tower moment.

Fixed fire: tending the hearth, creativity, life source.

Fire can go out if it isn’t tended, but if it grows too fast, it can be destructive. The work of art, or of creativity, is to keep something as wild and unpredictable as fire contained.

Cardinal water: oceanic feelings, water, psychoanalysis, intimacy.

I was an adult when I learned to swim, and I think that is why water is troubling and desirable to me, and why it appears in so many of my dreams and visions.

Cardinal water: strange tides, lovers, deep waters

This is a story written as a liminal space, but this intensifies, rather than diminishes the terror.

Mutable air: internal contradictions, tenderness, creative solutions.

The relief of facing something is so much greater than the temporary balm of running away.

Mutable air: research, reflection, voice

You unearth your work like an archaeologist discovers treasures, or a farmer pulls up crops.

Mutable air: circulation of ideas, intrusive thoughts, risk-taking

There is something so compelling abut the poison apple; it is sweeter, juicier, shinier, and a deeper colour than any other fruit. But its seductive appeal means that it is easy to ignore the fatal aspects.

Fixed earth: surrender, cocooning, deep rest

There are ways to move into a different plane of time - meditation, music, psychedelics, movement, reading, having a crush, eating a whole bowl of cherries very slowly.

Fixed Earth: containers, support, grounding

Some people see the container as a capacious space to experiment in, and some people feel it is a barrier that needs to be broken down.

Fixed earth: salt crystals, haunted forests, deep rest

The cocoon is not about shame and fear and perfection but it does allow those elements to be held; it contains multitudes. It allows those things to decay and to be renewed. It is miraculous.

Fixed earth: sensitivity, grounding, sensuality

It was Kali Malone’s core artistic principle, ‘cherish sensitivity’, that helped me to think about sensitivity as one of my most precious resources.