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𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓆙𓋼𓍊𓆇𓆨You may have heard me say the internet is like a forest. But this year, I came across 2-3 creatives who were drawing inspiration from the metaphor of gardening instead — as they tend to their weeds and (re)grew the flowers of their creative mind and practice. One of them was Emily Dickinson. I decided to slip into my gardening gloves, take my watering can and spade and join Emily in the garden ——— but I could hardly open the door to my tool shed. This made me curious to find out more about Emily Dickinson’s fascination for gardening, and how it shaped her creative practice.

When Emily Dickinson was still alive and living in Amherst, she would write hours on end onto things I personally would have thrown away — paper scraps, wrappings, collected or torn apart ephemera and envelopes. Fleeting thoughts, quick observations, a subtle way she felt about a loved one; they were all important enough to her for writing them down. Gathering her writings onto collected ephemera reminds me a lot of the way she put together her Herbarium as a young girl at Amherst Academy. Emily spent most of her later life reclusive inside her room, which to me raises very much the question of necessity for using various digital tools as a creative — like (Public Domain) Archives, Substack, Instagram, Pinterest, Archive.org, Are.na, Cosmos and other websites for visual and/or intellectual incentive, depending on what kind of (creative) research we are involved in. Emily Dickinson neither knew, nor needed these tools in the 19th century and yet she knew exactly where to draw inspiration from. So, I decided to write her a small letter… hopefully she’ll receive it.

Recently I’ve heard, that a group of fireflies was called a ‘sparkle’. But I can’t seem to gather mine, to shine a light out of this digital echo chamber. I stand with my spade and bucket hat knee deep in the mud like a ruminating cow, to try and find something — a thought, an image, an idea, a sentence — that feels new to me. Something that only I could excavate. How many word- or sentence combinations actually are there left to write within the latin alphabet, how many possible images are there left to be dug up from archives up to the 2010s, how many times do I have to see Octavia Butler’s »Essentials of Success« on my timeline until I pull an ace out of my sleeve — buried beneath countless hours of hoarding images on pinterest. As (graphic) designers, how do we open the portal to escaping this digital echo chamber, and tend to our own creative gardens — by planting an ecosystem of resources that exist far from algorithms and reproducing zeitgeist aesthetics?
With shovel and spade,
The Night Owl 🦉

Tapping into the digital echo chamber… Sometimes, engaging in algorithms on Pinterest, Instagram or Spotify feels like catching a train of thoughts, music or images cycling endlessly within the same room. How can we water our sprouts of inspiration and build our own tools, which lead us to new paths and ideas? Do these tools maybe already exist? The Night Owl aims to collect some of them, and lead it’s visitors to new paths across the web. It highly recommends looking into the concept of digital gardening.

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Emily Dickinson the gardening poet… “During her lifetime,” Susan Fraser insists, “Emily Dickinson was actually better known as a gardener than as a poet.” 19th century poet Emily Dickinson had a close relationship to gardening. Apparently it was Emily’s mother, who instilled the love for gardening in the family, which both Emily and her sister Lavinia embarked in. The official website of the Emily Dickinson museum has a proper section dedicated to this love. Within this activity, Dickinson was attuned to the weather and animals as well. She enjoyed »the changing seasons, transitions in times of day, and the populations of bees, flies, and birds that dwelled among her plants.«. Countless of Emily’s poems display this fascination, like the thunderstorm in »The Wind begun to rock the Grass« (Fr796):

The Leaves unhooked themselves from Trees And started all abroad –
The Dust did scoop itself like Hands And throw away the Road –

The speaker of “It will be Summer – eventually” (Fr374)
muses from winter’s “pallid landscape” on the coming glories of summer:

The Lilacs –bending many a year – Will sway with purple load –
The Bees – will not despise the tune – Their Forefathers – have hummed –

Emily, who famously became more reclusive over the course of her life, was bound to flowers and poems likewise for communication, who »served as emissaries for her«: She sent both to friends and acquaintances to acknowledge birthdays, comfort in time of illness, or express condolences: 

“Intrusiveness of flowers is brooked even by troubled hearts. / They enter and then knock—then chide their ruthless sweetness, and then remain forgiven. / May these molest as fondly!” (L540)

As for Emily, she wrote mostly alone in her room — so she of all people knows that you don’t need to listen to the echo chamber to feel inspired. »Cut out all the noise until you can hear your own thoughts again« she would have advised us, I suppose. Lingering — noticing just a detail, a word, a funny idea or conversation with yourself or the hug of a friend that grows like a sprout in your mind, is the art of actively experiencing the world and keeping around long enough to let it connect or adapt to us. Emily did this on an expert level. She lingered, even inside the ominous thunderstorm. And far as I could find out, Firefly larvae thrive in rainy, soggy conditions. The recurring theme of birds, which is found a lot inside of Emily’s garden related poems, is also found inside of Mary Oliver’s collected poems and essays »Owls and Other Fantasies«. 



A signed copy of Mary Olivers »Owls and other fantasies« which is sold for 800USD online…

I found out about these poems during my research for a bird magazine project, where I found out about Iris Murdoch’s Kestrel as well, and her philosophy of ‘unselfing’…

So how do we find a way of making the sparkle (a group of fireflies) lead us out of the digital echo chamber? I have an idea — Emily Dickinson, even if she didn’t know it yet, might have embarked in Murdoch’s ‘unselfing’ through gardening. 𓆸 On irismurdochsociety.org.uk, I found a blog post of Sita Turner’s master’s dissertation ‘Where Words Begin: Breaking the Illusion of the Self in the Poetry of Iris Murdoch’: “At times like this, I am reminded of Murdoch and her kestrel; the hovering force that was able to pull her away from the ‘brooding self with its hurt and vanity’. Looking out of my window into the grey stained air, it seems difficult to believe that my attention could be pulled away so directly by such a fickle thing as nature.” While Turner talks about “this time of year, as the winter equinox enfolds the northern hemisphere in her arms and turns light to darkness”. I figured, that Murdoch’s Kestrel from The Sovereignty of Good is not dependent on the grey and cold clouds of winter. More so, ‘unselfing’ becomes relevant to me when I find myself gathering grey clouds in a state of creative block.

When I am in this state, I often find myself stuck too much in my own head, or on social media, not going into enough resonance with the beauty of the world outside. But when I do, my brain cells seem to adjust to the Fibonacci spiral of the earth, drawing in the waves of breathing beings around me. These moments do more good for our creativity than spending hours on end on a digital deep-dive; they nourish the soil which our creative sprouts can grow upon. So, in case you find yourself roaming The Night Owl all day (or night) long, in search for inspiration — don’t forget to go outside at some point, too. The magic portal to escaping the creative echo chamber might as well just be your front door. 



A Kestrel in Flight © the wildlife trusts

Lastly, as a graphic designer I consumed a lot of digital clutter from other people’s creative output over the years online, which at times felt like weeds in the garden of my own creative process. Maybe some of them were treasures — valuable medicinal plants — (like that one Substack article about Fiona Apple lover’s epistemology), but the rest just felt like it was clouding the path to forming a coherent thought, or producing original work.


So, what can we learn from Emily Dickinson’s Writing- and Gardening Practice?

I guess, going into resonance with the world (wide web) around us to strengthen our creative muscles — by engaging socially through sharing (creative) resources, by (digital) gardening, reading, or birding. I love birding, and it is simply Murdoch’s concept of ‘unselfing’ which makes it feel so enriching. Next time you see a kestrel in flight, thank him for leading you the way out of the clouded chambers of your mind.

Sincerely,
(𝒯🄷𝓔 𝒩ⓘ𝓖🄷𝒯 Ⓞ𝓦🄻)

Lastly, two book recommendations:

1. On the Necessity of Gardening:
An ABC of Art, Botany and Cultivation

2. The Whole Earth Catalog:
Access to Tools

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