The Spark Crew – March/April: Layering
Adding depth and texture to our writing, art and creative work
The Spark Crew is a community of writers, poets, photographers, dancers, dreamers and creative folk. Each month we draw inspiration from a new theme and a range of arts-based practices, bringing the opportunity to expand, reflect and share. If you’d like to read on beyond the preview, a paid subscription (£6 a month) provides full access. You are welcome to pop in and out, or stay forever, as suits!
For reasons I won’t bore you with (endless lurgies blah blah blah), I’m cheekily bundling the March and April editions of The Spark Crew together and calling this the spring edition. I’ll pop back in with an extra something for you later in the month if the demon viruses stay away!
Over the next few weeks I’d like to encourage you to think about layering in relation to your creative work. This is inspired, in part, by a word that caught my attention recently…
Definition from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press
The older I get, the more layers I see and experience in pretty much everything. Recently, I was travelling to Edinburgh by train and thinking back to the years I spent there as a student. A literal city of layers, due to its topography and history of streets having been built on top of each other, the Old Town is a sprawling array of vaults, narrow closes and winding streets. Many have been sealed off and at times forgotten over the centuries, before being rediscovered and emerging as time capsules.
From underground chambers housing the city’s poorest residents in slum-like conditions to sites where women were accused of witchcraft and punished in horrific ways, stepping below today’s sanitised top layer soon leads to dark places. Add in the devastation wrought by the bubonic plague plus a side of 19th century body snatching, and then imagine being 20 years-old and tipsily weaving your way home through this time-shifting labyrinth, boot heels slipping on rain-slicked cobblestones. No matter how many five star hotels and tartan tat shops have appeared since, it’s hard to unsee once you’ve learned of the violence and cruelty that once stalked these streets. Contradiction is everywhere.
And of course, there can be a lightness to layers. A shedding, a casting off, a freeing. In nature we see layers of buds unfurl into the most glorious fresh leaves. From the protection of the cocoon, the moth emerges. And we too are emerging here in the Northern Hemisphere. Yesterday I dared to leave the house without a coat.
Where does layered thinking take you? Let’s dive in and see.
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