The ‘Soul’ Gremlin:
WOULD YOU RECOGNISE YOUR SOUL IN THE DARK?*
This week, I’ve been on the move. I needed to switch up the big sketchbook for something smaller that I could pop in my handbag, which meant I needed to pivot. On top of that, I’ve grown a bit bored of acrylic painting - I need something that is more radiant, more fluid and mirrors what I’m projecting from my psyche right now.
So I started playing with watercolours - I hadn’t touched them in about two years and like a soul friend, our connection came back like muscle memory, with even more joy than I remembered. In less than a week I’ve made approximately 30 of these small, colourful wonders.
The me of two years ago would have been scared to show you these paintings - judging them for being too simple/abstract and not demonstrating enough skill.
But the thing is? I love looking at them.
Every morning and night I make a new colour swathe, and skimming my sketchbook the following day soothes me. These blocks of colour are for me. Now, I’m more confident with my position as an artist, I’m less burdened by the need to proove my worth and I can see that these colour blocks are perhaps even more high quality than previous pieces. They are more meditative, true, and free and if anything, more inspiring than what I’ve made before.
I share this development because — these colour squares are reflections of my soul. If I lined up a hundred colour squares from different people, I’d know straight away which was mine. I would be able to smell the frequency of my spirit and I’d know - “yes, that colour there, thats my medicine.”
You see, we each have an imitable soul. Society tells us that celebrities are special and in their specialness, we would be best to imitate them with filters, plastic surgery, lifestyles and things that make us at best a copy and at worst a parody of the greats. But in fact, the greatest thing about the greats is that they are distinctively THEM.
They do them unlike anyone else. What society doesn’t tell you is that we each have the power to do us in our own individual way. The moment we stop placing attention i.e. energy and time onto mimicking others and instead, concentrating on our soul power and distinctive qualities is the moment we create a richer, more inspirational world to live in.
Soul Print
“Among the teenage population, it is always the few who have given themselves permission to reveal the hidden qualities of the soul that become the leaders and the mavericks. It is these few who develop their own individuality that later become the trendsetters, the ones to set the tone, to create new movements and chase new opportunities and prospects. They do not copy other people or religiously obey the rules. They allow themselves to realise the distinctive qualities of their soul.”
So I ask:
What are the distinctive qualities of your soul?
How would we remember you if we could not see your image?
What TV programmes did you watch as a kid that had breadcrumbs of your quirky interests and perspective?
What themes excite you, and what conversations light you up?
What secret things do you watch the most on YouTube, and what images do you privately add to your saved tab on IG?
In which situations do you feel magnetic and powerful?
WHERE IS YOUR SOUL HIDING?
The irony is that so many of us are trying to mimic others to follow their route to liberation and/or success. When, in fact, it is when the artists we admire doubled down on their expression of individuality that the rest followed.
So indeed, we like these people because they’ve realised their own unique qualities. Whilst they can serve as an initial role model, they are not the template to be copied.
The only template is your soul.
In the park with my colour
P.S The top line about recognising your soul in the dark? It is taken from John Amaechi narrating the experience of his mother reacting to him telling her that he was leaving Leeds to go to America to play for the NBA.
She, a worried mother, was concerned about her baby boy leaving home without knowing his character because, “if you want to do something that no one has ever done, you have to know who you are.”
Wise mamma.
“I think it’s too easy to just say that there is a direct and necessary conflict between black identity and gay identity. I think it’s more nuanced than that simply because I think black is a color and then people layer on top of it all kinds of socio-cultural elements.”
- check out his talk here.
Till next week you wild, soulful, radiant, dangerously free thing.
Karimah x
