on being with desire
Think of desire as an invisible thread, intimately binding our inner and outer realities, weaving together feelings of longing, experiences of wonder, and impulses for creation. Untethered to a specific object, desire also isn't confined to a singular form; instead, it lives in the pulse that compels us to seek, to move, to make. Fluid, it runs endlessly from the personal to the collective, from the sensual to the cerebral, and still, always maintains its inherently generative force. This energy isn't something to be captured nor possessed, but embodied and transfigured, an experiential evidence that desiring alone can be as fulfilling as the object of desire itself.
Now, think of what it's like to have a crush. Crushes, seemingly superficial in their initial lack of information, are among the purest expressions of desire energy. They arrive unbidden, riding astride the dizzying thrill that has less to do with the person who inspires it and everything to do with the possibilities they offer. For all this attraction it awakens, a crush is no demand for completion, but an invitation to revel in the exhilarating tension of potential, a mirror for our own longing and the many portals it might open. While communing with a crush can be an experience of intense pleasure-even if short-lived-there is also much satisfaction in the expansion offered by the act of longing, the arousing experience of being someone who can hold that kind of excitement. And just like all crushes need not be acted upon, ideas born of desire energy do not always require execution. They may exist as a rumour of indistinct chatter in the mind, potent but passing, stretching our ability to feel and reflect, arising solely to remind us of the vastness of our inner realms.
The life force that is desire enlivens both the essence and the process of creation, evolving through cycles of stillness and movement. In its rise, desire entices, animating us with the electric current of a new idea. In its fall, it distills, refining the urge into the clarity needed to give it form. Coming down from the high of desire is like a little death of sorts, or heartbreak perhaps, as the recognition of the transience within each surge brings with it a bittersweetness. This tender grief is inevitable and a crucial part of the cycle, in turn giving us a salient offering to make up for the one it takes away: the gift of alchemy, a chance to turn this now mellow, subtler yet focused form of desire into meaning and beauty. As for the soreness of the fall, it also serves as the promise of yet another rush. Because there is always another rush. Desire energy never truly departs; it shapeshifts, once untameable, now compliant, and back, and forth, forever.
Art is desire energy in its alchemised state: through creativity, or simply through intentional existence in this transient house of flesh and bones—a creative act, in and of itself-the formless force of desire finds a shape to inhabit. A muse-could be a crush, a song, or a passing moment of beauty—is no endpoint nor abode to settle in, it is a vehicle for creative expression to travel. In close dialogue with the muse, desire fuels creation, metamorphosing into something tangible, visible, audible. This encounter of longing and form is the scenery of a divine unfolding in which the maker endlessly meets themselves through the act of creating something that exists outside of their own mind and body. Transforming desire into art isn't only about personal fulfilment, but also about sustaining the mystery, the unknowable allure that keeps us reaching beyond ourselves.
In its most profound sense, desire is the game of seduction played by the visible and the unseen. It is the ephemeral teasing the timeless with prolonged eye contact from across the room. Rules are simple: welcome both the rush and its aftermath, surrender to the energy but remember how to guide it, without ever forcing its direction. And despite the searing heat of its surface, desire, at its core, offers a temperate equilibrium wrapped in a delicious paradox: the ability to exist in a bottomless, yet fully satiated state of longing.
