MOUNTAIN MAGIC & PLEASURE ACTIVISM
I’ve been in Colorado for the past month. Staying in a small town sitting in the hills looking out at the purple mountain ranges and green plains. My goal was to nurture my creativity, allowing time for my imagination to flourish. Gratefully, I achieved this and encountered new awakenings that I’m still contemplating.
I’m home now and looking back at the themes and threads that wove themselves through my time and it’s difficult to solidify what some of those moments are and/or mean to my everyday self. (A few themes jotted from my notebooks are: intuition, abundance, sacred silence, spiral vs iterative, liberation and companionship). I grew up in the forest in NJ and that landscape has always lived within me. I was talking with my sister about this and she brought up the notion that we were raised by the land and how place was a primary caretaker in our lives in such a way that when anything happened, “[I’d] always run out of the house and climb a tree” as a child to seek comfort.
The landscape in Colorado where my wife and I and our dog Boss stayed was so similar to the area in NJ I grew up in that it awoke in little Parke the magic and playfulness of my childhood. A reclamation of that time and parts of myself that are joyful and pure. The part of me that relishes in the wonder-inducing parts of nature like shooting stars, wildflowers and hail storms and how inspiring they are for creation and self reflection. Simultaneously I re-read adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy and resonated with how she writes, “pleasure invites us to move, open, and grow” feeling that opening and growth in myself.
“Shame makes us freeze, get small and invisible, pleasure invites us to move, open, and grow.”
This is a concept that I first began chewing on after seeing her speak at the Allied Media Conference back in 2018 and subsequently her book Pleasure Activism. I remember she said something to the tune of, “I don’t think we’ll survive if it’s just struggle and horrible and bullshit. That one of the radical acts, especially for oppressed people, is how to experience pleasure now, in our bodies. To use pleasure, imagination and embodiment as a guide to create the future we want to inhabit.”
All this to say that, I reconnected with my own simple pleasures and creative practice in a fun and profound way. Focusing on how to incorporate this into my styling, developing new projects and work with private clients, and playing around with new mediums to infuse my work with pleasure, wild imaginings and excited curiosity.
I pulled a Peacock card one morning from the Untamed Elemental oracle deck I got at Yarrow and Sage in Austin, that read “everything is energy just waiting to be liberated into a more authentic expression of itself.” A feeling I have with styling and creative work in general. That the expression and art exists already and the act of the artist is in the medium of reveal.
My whole life theory (generally) behind work is to use time, talent and treasure to empower and present our authentic selves with joy and to create the world we want to live in. To utilize adornment and visual communication to tell the stories of our lives and live our fantasies today.
“It’s ok to feel beautiful in the process of creating justice.”
I’m looking forward to cultivating these ideas and inspirations into tangibles. To see how this time will influence all my work and projects upcoming. If you're available to work together this Fall my book is now open and you can schedule a consult call to discuss!
Until next time,
PARKE
