I got a message asking me to talk about managing being a multi-passionate person. Funnily enough I’d never considered myself to be this.
I know I have a whole range of interests but I find them all to be the same thing. By this I mean that they stem from the same interest point. I suppose that is why I havent ever struggled with the overwhelm so many people speak of when they have so many things they want to do.
But it is true, I have so many things I want to do. And sometimes when I really think about it, I do feel worried that I wont get to do it all.
So, how do I manage it? I must be managing it, I live through it one way or the other.
I am the type of person who will actively cringe at any box you try to put me in. This all started from about the age of 13 when I insisted I wasn’t an emo, and actively shivered at the words being used. Though in secret it made me feel safe, like if I’m not the pretty girl, the loud girl, the one with all the friends then I am the gothic one. The dark and deep one.
And to an extent this part of me never left. There are traces of this self somewhere in the depths of internet history. Reposting bruised knees on tumblr and pictures of Ollie Sykes. Following tutorials on how to do my eyeliner and pierce my own skin. Which I did do by the way, and don’t recommend. Now I have an ash coloured spec on my lower lip as a reminder of a girl who was so unsure and so desperately wanted to be understood. To find common ground. Words and painting were where I truly found myself. But not one or the other, both and simultaneously.
Narrowing down my pleasures has never been option for me. When we leave school we are told to choose a path, to become a doctor, a writer, a scientist and so on. We apply to universities and choose a topic, society is priming us to be this one thing, to latch onto. To box ourselves in. For the multi-passionate amongst us, this is a nightmare. I chose art, and still to this day I know that was the right decision. (If there is such thing as a right decision). I know this because art to me encompasses all manner of practices.
To be an artist is to the view the world as something to learn from and be a part of. When you’re an artist you cannot take things at face value, you question and experiment with ideas and objects. We have to try and deeply understand ourselves if we want the art to be true. The art being true is the point. It may not be right, it may be ugly , but it will always attempt to be true. And that’s what being multipassionate is about. Being true to yourself. Being an artist is about perceiving and recognising what is already within oneself.
The thing is, we all change and warp with time and some of us know this better than others. The multipassionate way, is one of adaption. It is one of cross pollination and pattern spotting. How does your interest of making banana bread, knitting baby bonnets and knowing the whole chronology of the Napoleonic war intersect? Beacuse it will, because at the centre of it all, is you. You are the common thread that weaves through your interests. What is it you are trying to express?
My biggest joy from multiple interests is the way they lean on eachother and inform one another. Sometimes you have to look outside of a subject area to find inspiration - I heard this once in a lecture and it has stuck with me. Looking outside of a subject can spark new ideas, new paths to be trodden. What a gift it is to find so much joy in so many areas of life. As close to child like wonder as an adult might get.
Agnes Martin said
I think that in order to be an artist you have to move. When you stop moving you’re no longer an artist.
I find there isn’t one straight path, not for me anyway, my path is full of sidequests and various stops. And I want to pay attention to most of them.
The path still folds out before me but it moves, it’s not stagnant. To some this may sounds disorientating, but for me this is steady. I want to adapt because I want to explore, I want to learn. I want to be more me, more loudly.
I keep catching up with myself as I see myself stop to smell a flower to lace up a shoe and to stare at a strange formation of clouds. And why shouldnt I? Life is all about the journey, the very act of living.
I am not living as a means to an end. The end is obvious and that is death, so whilst I am alive why not try all flavours and dips, become a mix of all the things that have sparked something in me.
Be more life!
Full and fleshed out, that is the life for me.
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