How the Fool led me to create a Substack

An ode to sharing the mess

Image: The Fool for The Tarot of Leonora Carrington

Having just left the portal of April Fool’s Day, I have been thinking much about this archetype of the Fool: the one who plays tricks, who arrives to the party with curiosity, who wakes up in the morning knowing that there is so much more in store than can ever be imagined, who approaches the altar of each moment with a whimsical acceptance of taking risk. As I think about what this archetype might be asking of me at a moment in my life where I am crossing a big threshold into a new beginning, there is one particular quote ringing through my mind like a daily mantra: 

If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

-William Blake 

What I have always loved about the world of archetypes is the invitation extended toward embodiment. An upward palm, asking mischievously, “Who might you be if you allowed yourself the liberty of play? If you truly believed in your own multitudinous configuration, and allowed yourself the compassion of seeing them all play out? What is the full possibility of your becoming?” How much wilder our world might be, if we all walked around with an encyclopedic knowledge of the many parts of us, rooted in the soma of our bodies. This is, I believe, the work of the Artist… whose archetype duets nicely with The Fool. As Lewis Hyde elaborates in his fantastic book (and one of my favorite holy gospels that I return to for annual reading) Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art 

“That trickster is a boundary-crosser is the standard line, but in the course of writing this book I realized that it needs to be modified in one important way, for there are also cases in which trickster creates a boundary, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight. In several mythologies, for example, the gods lived on earth until something trickster did caused them to rise into heaven. Trickster is thus the author of the great distance between heaven and earth; when he becomes the messenger of the gods it’s as if he has been enlisted to solve a problem he himself created. In a case like that, boundary creation and boundary crossing are related to one another, and the best way to describe trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found – sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there, the god of the threshold, in all its forms.”

Therein, four of my favorite tasks of the artist: 

1. Acting as the messenger (and, oftentimes, interloper) between the beings of heaven and earth

2. Solving seemingly impossible equations

3. Crossing thresholds

4. Imagining new possibilities

To expand a bit on the fourth task listed above: It has always been a guiding principle of mine, for as long as I can remember, that the artist is placed on this rotating globe in the middle of space in order to create the potentiality for new ways of living and being. For too long, however, I imagined this work being done primarily in the concentrated spaces of performance and studio work. The past three years have brought me to the quirky, messy, and chaotic realization that it is the work of the artist to also imagine new ways of sharing work that offers an alternative to the polished, prepared, marketed, and packaged modes of art-making that we are most often confronted with. What would it look like if we shared things we weren’t yet “good at”? What might it look like to tune our ears, eyes, brains, spirits, and bodies to acknowledge the wisdom in art forms that we haven’t yet seen? Like tuning ears to hear and play new harmonic scales, what kinds of art making and, subsequently, living, might come into existence from our open-ended forms and curiosities? What do those instruments look like? What are the shapes our bodies might take?

It is in this vein that I write to you now announcing the initiation of a new foolish endeavor of my own, the creation of an online space to share process, research, and development of a number of projects that are brewing up my sleeve but will be shared in the performance setting over the course of the next two years. Here we will walk the path of creation together. My work takes on a layered configuration, and inside of any minute of choreography lies a web of other artists, books, poems, dances, songs, memories that can be tied directly to its creation. It is through this Substack that I am aiming to share with you all of this subterranean material: an expansive guide to the creation of a body work. 

I extend an invitation for you to be with me in disruptive space, one that is messy; configured and re-configured time and again; winding; It is my hope that sharing with you all the particles of what it means to be constantly working “in process” will inspire your own mess, your own strength to share what is not yet ready to be seen by eyes other than your own, and to allow that to bring you to new possibilities of living and sharing. 

By becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter you will receive biweekly newsletters (two per month) that will chronicle the ideas and projects that I am working on, and will be shared in written and video format. We will have a community forum where I will post small snippets of research outside of the newsletter format, and where you can comment and start conversation. Once a month we will have an online community gathering where I will share the practices developed and research gleaned that month, and also open space for us to share our own processes. You can subscribe at this link: www.akrische.substack.com

I am so, so thrilled about this endeavor, and it has taken a lot of time mustering the courage to final put this out into the world. I hope that you will join me there.

With care and devotion (and much gratitude for reading);

Amanda