The Art of the Heart

Sunday

…

Spoken Word 

Transcribed into Print

By Joshua David Hester 

2024

well books

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I had an idea for something, and Mr. Tokaliki, the squirrel, came scuttling over to show that he was comfortable with that energy and that he's feeling me. But I even stopped allowing him to get close because I was a little bit scared. I was thinking, what if he bites me? Then he started shaking his tail all excited. So cute but he scuttled off.

The thought I had before Mr Tokaliki came over was about the talk I am giving on…

Flow and finding your heart, and how that's your path. 

[Points to board] Flow. 

What does this word even mean? What can it do for us? What can it not do for us? Finding flow, whatever we do, is how we get clues to the keys that unlock our heart and take us away from moments of intellectualization, over rationale, and logic-ing our way out of situations. There’s a bit too much head knowledge in what we do, and we've got more than enough of that in our culture. So it's only fair that in the name of balance, we find ways to tap into our hearts. 

How do we even do that? How did I do that? 

Well, the first simple one came through getting comfortable with silence and allowing for a long while there to be no answers. Sitting in stillness, even though in stillness, we're constantly moving, our body is still moving, our cells are moving. Allowing those moments of slower movement and quieting the mind through a breathing practice, creates the space for the airiness of your head to dissipate and the fire of your heart to rise upwards. Even before then, if that is way too daunting for some people, the way that I started doing it was becoming very aware and observing moments when I'd slip into flow. By flow, I mean anything, any activity, it's a dynamic force, even reading is dynamic in a way, any activity that allows you to transcend space and time. Those moments where three hours have gone by and you haven't even thought about rent, you haven't thought about bills, you haven't thought about what's coming up next. You were lost in this unimaginable void that you were taken to through probably something you did as a kid, whether it's painting, whether it's running, whether it's playing video games, which is a little bit of a shaky one. Sometimes you can get lost in avoidance in that world. That world is manufactured to force flow, because they've built it in such a way your psychology can’t help but crave. Outside of that, what are the things that you do to help you feel free to play and experiment without a fear of what you're doing. Could be something you're studying and you're fascinated by it, so you go down a rabbit hole then two hours go by, “whoa, I need to make food” or going to a football club with your mates, and that's enough. 

Start off with that first, whatever that first thing is, in fact, it's never really a first. It's a circle. So there’s many different angles on this circle at which we can penetrate straight into our heart. From that first thing for me, it was screen printing. The first time as a teenager, because you always have it as a kid, I rediscovered that feeling of free play and transcendence through flow. I’d be listening to music, focused, locked in. It met all of the things I needed in terms of my very perfectionist, analytical way that I am. It allowed me to really focus and lock in. It gave me the satisfaction of seeing my work there before me that was fully a creation of my own. Then I got to this interesting place I'd never been before, where the actual printed t-shirt was not the focus anymore. It became that process of creation, that process of feeling the flow and wanting to continually be in that process. So the more I started to do the screen printing, I was becoming even more conscious of this deeper feeling within me. It was hard to put into words, but that then led me to try and put it into words, because I couldn't describe it, and that fascinated me. 

Then, I started looking at writing, and that is where I unlocked many, many doors to my heart. It allowed me to bypass many blocks I had in communicating with self and communicating with the world through speech, which seems very unlikely now, but it took me a while to get to this point of being able to communicate. First, I had to overcome those internal obstacles through writing and for whatever reason, the written word, I was free to express myself without any fear of the response I'd get if it was spoken. So that then took me on a whole year long journey and even at some point completely disbanding design, as my calling, as my purpose. I lost the love for the design of life a little bit as I was going deep into self exploration and discovery in my writing practice. 

Then I came back to university after a placement year full of confusion with a clear headed writing practice that was also distracted by thinking I needed to write a book, which I did anyway, but when I came back, that's when it all pieced together. That's when the full balance of my practice was allowed to flourish. I'd never really made a book before. Eventhough I did as a kid. Weirdly, I have books like the ones I made today from when I was four and five that I found recently, which is another little clue that this is the path of my heart. When I first started making those books in my final year at university, everything slowly unlocked. Before I was just collating this writing, I didn't really know what to do with it. I almost have too much writing to know what to do with it. It just effortlessly pours out of me, so I have no expectation of where it's going. In the moment when I need to express my ideas, my observations and learnings of the world I find a medium for them within my writing. So when books came along, it fit perfectly. I was already obsessed with books. I didn't even realize that my whole life, I was analyzing and breaking down the materiality and the book is an object in itself. Always pulling the pages too much, trying to check out the spine, or just fascinated by the design of different books and its beauty more than its actual content. Then when I'd find a book that brought it all together, when the content had an essence, it was speaking the language of the heart, and it was a beautiful object that reflected the essence. That's when I was able to tap into a large, large portion of my heart, and through that, through the experimenting, self learning, I learned so much about myself and my own practice. I truly began to feel a sense of purpose and clarity on what I'm doing. 

Because really, that's what we're all looking for, isn't it? Looking for some clues that tell us we’re on the right path. Because as much as we can ask our parents or our friends for help and guidance, it's really only us that we need to prove it to and that we can confirm with ourselves, yeah, this feels right. Doesn't feel perfect, but it feels right. I feel like I have something that I'm going towards, and it fits within the rhythm of my heart.

With my ear to my heart, and I hear there's art, then I'm on the right path. 

Yeah, I'd never made a book before, and it simply came out of curiosity. Okay, I've got this cool stuff I like learning about. I enjoy teaching people what I've learned. And I get some feedback from that, that it's also an enjoyable experience. So let's try to make the simplest form of a book. Fold an a4 sheet of paper. Put something about ikigai, which is, weirdly, what I'm doing now, and then give it to people. I did not even think about money for a second when I first started doing it. I just wanted to give this stuff out to people, because I knew it could help. It helped me, and I wanted the chance that I could hand someone an object that they could go away with and absorb in whatever time it takes them, just with the hope of it serving them and helping them understand themselves more. 

That is my whole mission through all of this, is to help people gain knowledge of themselves and to understand themselves. If we understand ourselves, we can understand each other, and we can have a little bit more compassion and unity in the world (community) and a little bit less division. 

Then came the books and the writing, particularly poetry, which I found most enjoyable to transform into a book. Through this process, I developed my own design style, heavily inspired by ancient Chinese aesthetics of "less is more" and the minimalist approach of Blackmass Publishing. I discovered that simple, pared-down designs and art pieces could communicate profoundly through their emptiness.

That's what poetry tries to do. It's what music tries to do is what I was alluding to at the beginning of feeling the silence. Those moments and those pauses in between speaking, in between noise allow us to understand there is a balance that needs to happen between form and void, object and no object, speech and no speech, talking and silence. Because in that expanse of the void of nothingness, we then get a true sense of who we are, and we can actually feel the importance of that Other thing that was trying to be said. 

So then I had this beautiful object, poems I've written myself that come straight from my heart. I didn't even know they were poems. I was simply expressing. I had this beautifully handmade zine from my first poems. Then this opportunity comes along through FuseBox for me to take a next step in terms of self expression and to take it from written word to printed word to spoken word. Where I have now done several spoken word and poetry performances that have taught me more about myself than anything else. They've allowed me to tap into this spoken art practice that I never, ever would have believed I could do as a kid. Obviously, I did as a kid. But as I grew into my teenage years and started to believe in myself a little bit less, because the world is telling you, don't follow your dreams. Don't listen to your heart. Get real. Listen to your head. 

Think about it, don't feel. 

Now, I've reached a point where my heart is open and it's not looking to close anytime soon. It hasn't made any of this any easier. It just means I can do it with more ease because I'm feeling the flow. I'm not trying to think about the flow. Flow does not exist in the head. It comes from the heart. Comes from when you let go, thinking about what you might need to do, what career, what job can get you to where you think you want to be. It comes from letting go of everything you ever thought you needed to do. It comes from feeling the rhythms of your heart, listening to your gut, listening to where you're being taken. Where you're not being taken. Stuff that doesn't feel right intuitively. It's not very easy of a language to understand at first but the more you do these things that allow you to be in moments of flow, the more you can understand the silent language, and the more you can find other ways of growing and expressing your heart. From purely wondering, wandering around, wondering, What if I could do this? 

I've reached a point where that is the most important thing in my life is protecting my heart, protecting the self that I normally would have hidden on a shelf far away, allowed to collect dust. Now every day, every morning, I take it off, I polish it or refine it, turn it upside down if I need to, take it apart, put it back together. But I am at least in contact with my heart. Some of this may not be easy to understand, but it starts with each one of you 

and having the courage and willingness to be curious about a world that existed before, you ever thought about university, or ever thought about what job you should get, and you were simply being a kid, lost in the World of play. 

So how can you get back to that world of flow? 

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