Make the Unconscious Conscious

We had an interesting conversation yesterday regarding our blogs and writing and I couldn’t help but think of Virginia Woolf and her ideas on journaling as being “a way to ‘loosen one’s ligaments’ for formal writing.”

In her view journaling “grants us unfiltered access to the rough gems of our own minds, ordinarily dismissed by the self-censorship of ‘formal’ writing. “ [1]

Maria Popova says journaling teaches us “how to be present with our own selves, bear witness to our experience, and fully inhabit our inner selves.”

In her piece on the creative benefits of keeping a diary she mentions Anaïs Nin, who was a fervent diarist.

Nin believed that the practice of writing a journal was a doorway to writing that comes alive; fervent, spontaneous and natural writing.

This comes about through the freedom of writing about those things that genuinely interest us in that moment.

Thanks to the fact that the self-editor, who is normally there during any formal writing sessions, has been temporarily put on mute, countless images can grab us and find place on that page.

The possibility of following one’s mood, the use of free association or simply impulsively following an idea into the rabbit hole can give rise to an altogether unique and original style of writing that jumps off the page and into our lives.

Journaling was Nin’s “way of learning to translate the inner into the outer, the subjective into the universal” [2]

I suppose what prompted this blog was the idea that our work is exactly about that.

Through the sculpture we seek to ‘translate the inner into the outer’, because as it turns out, the subjective isn’t the enemy.

We are the subjective and it matters a great deal, especially these days where self-esteem seems to be under siege by society.

The Spirit collection is about understanding our inner worlds better.

The structure of each of the bronzes is different, as we are, and those differences should be celebrated.

Our blogs and our sculpture serve to document our subjective, to shed light on our mental, spiritual and creative worlds and in doing so, hopefully invite the viewer to look inside.

These sculptures are about inner beauty and inner strength.

“…sometimes in a man or a woman awareness takes place — not very often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret, but locked in wordlessness. The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. And sometimes if he is very fortunate and if the time is right, a very little of what he is trying to do trickles through — not ever much.” [3] Steinbeck

In the end, whether it’s by using bronze, clay, film or words, it’s about an attempt at making the unconscious conscious, as Jung said, lest we call it fate.

Written by Boky Hackel

1.https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/04/famous-writers-on-keeping-a-diary/
2.https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/04/famous-writers-on-keeping-a-diary/
3.https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/04/01/john-steinbeck-east-of-eden-journal-letters/?mc_cid=eef0166e83&mc_eid=7287d9a6bb