Tag Archives: #Resilience

The Universe Holds Its Breath

A Manifesto for the Spiritual Artist

There is a quiet but distinct terror in cracking the spine of a brand-new notebook. The paper sits there smooth and expectant and smells faintly of wood pulp and potential. It feels almost sacrilegious to mar that perfection with a smudge of ink or a hasty scribble. It reminds me of looking out at a garden covered in thick snow before anyone has walked across it. The whiteness is so absolute that you hesitate to ruin it with your boots. Yet we are here to make tracks. Leaving a trail is our art and it stands as the only true record of our humanity.

I define myself as a spiritual artist because that moment of hesitation before the first mark is made holds more divinity for me than any cathedral I have ever visited. This practice requires a distinctive kind of courage. It demands we look inward to find the spark rather than upwards to beg for it. We act as the vessel for something profound and entirely human.

Angels in the Trees

History is a treasure map if you know where to dig and I am certainly not the first to hold this compass. We stand on the shoulders of giants who understood that the power we attribute to the heavens actually hums within our own nervous systems. We cannot talk about the spirit of art without tipping our caps to the grandfather of British visionaries. William Blake walked the streets of London and saw angels in the trees at Peckham Rye not because he was delusional but because he was paying attention. He famously despised the “mind-forg’d manacles” of organized religion. Blake believed that the Imagination was the body of God and that everything that lives is holy. He understood two centuries ago that the divine is a matter of perception. To see a world in a grain of sand is not a poetic metaphor. It is a distinct instruction on how to use your eyes.

Wassily Kandinsky picked up this torch and ran with it. He saw the act of painting as a direct line to the soul and wrote about the spiritual vibration of art in the early twentieth century. He believed colour and form were a language capable of bypassing the intellect to strike the spirit directly. Hilma af Klint took this exploration into even deeper waters. She created her massive and esoteric works under the guidance of what she called “high masters.” We might interpret these figures today as manifestations of a collective human consciousness. She reframed spirituality as a secular and human-driven exploration of reality. The path she cleared leads us straight back to ourselves.

The Biology of Bliss

Anthropology offers a grounded perspective on why we look for gods in the clouds in the first place. Émile Durkheim argued that what we worship is often a projection of society itself. We create structures to manage the terrifying beauty of existence. Cultures build deities out of their specific needs and fears and hopes. Recognizing God as a cultural expression frees us to take responsibility for our own magic. We stop waiting for a miracle and start painting one. The realization hits you with the force of a breaking wave.

Scientific curiosity often leads us to the same conclusions as artistic intuition. Researchers in white coats have spent decades mapping the exact terrain I explore with paint. They offer empirical weight to the feeling that our spiritual experiences are homegrown rather than imported. Neuroscience reveals that the brain physically facilitates the sensation of oneness with the universe. We are hardwired for transcendence.

Psychology found a name for the state Blake lived in. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “Flow” to describe that optimum state of consciousness where we feel and perform our best. The ego takes a tea break during these moments. The prefrontal cortex quiets down and time creates its own strange elasticity. We do not need to attribute this trance to a muse or a ghost. It is the biology of total engagement. We become the channel simply by getting out of our own way.

Thinking With My Fingers

For me this communication with the divine arrives when I enter that flow state. Something strange happens. I become absorbed in the task. My intention amplifies but ceases to carry a heavy emotional charge. I am simply in the process. This manifests differently across the disciplines. In photography it takes the form of a strange dance where I physically move through space to find the geometry that sings. The editing phase becomes a rapid series of intuitive choices until the exact version of the image reveals itself through my hands rather than my conscious mind. It is playful and purposeful and unconscious.

Music offers a departure from the known into the unknown. I am lucky enough to play the hurdy-gurdy. The drone of the instrument opens the door to this state with startling ease. While solo play can sustain this for hours the experience transforms when shared. My band Celtarabia is built on this specific idea. We generate wild and life-affirming dance music where the gig becomes a performance for the crowd and a ritual for the players.

This process takes on a different shape with my music collaboration Agent Starling. I am given a set of instructions that include a feeling or a theme. I reflect on this to choose a fitting key and mode and time signature. Then I explore that territory whilst the recording happens. I am thinking with my fingers not my head. I have set the parameters and a playing space for musical exploration. The results are recorded raw and I return later to edit them in a second session. Even the quiet hours hold this power. I often wake early to listen to the inner voice talking. Once the writing begins the ideas flow and new paths appear to be explored.

The Paradox of Mistakes

This willingness to make a mess brings us to a vital paradox. We often find the right path only by exploring the wrong ones. The fear of error paralyzes the spirit but the embrace of the mistake liberates it. A wrong note or a stray brushstroke is not a failure. It is data. It is the universe telling you that the edge is here and not there. When I am improvising and my fingers slip they often land on a chord I would never have chosen consciously. That dissonance forces me to resolve the melody in a new way. It pushes the work into territory I could not have planned. We know we are right specifically because we have been brave enough to get it wrong. The mistake proves we are pushing against the boundaries of the known rather than simply repeating what is safe. We find our true north only by getting thoroughly lost first.

This is where the sheer frequency of the practice becomes transformative. When you show up to the page or the instrument every day you strip away the preciousness of the art. You stop treating every creation like it has to be a masterpiece and you start chasing the flow itself. We shift from a state of doing to a state of being. The practice ceases to be a chore and becomes a way to inhabit the world. It allows us to explore our inner and outer landscapes with a playful lack of judgment. In a world that worships efficiency and deliverables and bottom lines insisting on the primacy of process is an act of rebellion. We are not machines designed for output. We are gardens designed to grow.

Reclaiming the Divine

Philosophers have spent centuries trying to reclaim these treasures we mistakenly cast into the sky. Ludwig Feuerbach argued with great conviction that theology is essentially anthropology. He believed that what we call God is actually a projection of our own highest nature. We take our best qualities like love and wisdom and alienate them from ourselves by assigning them to a deity. Feuerbach urged us to take those attributes back. Friedrich Nietzsche picked up a hammer to drive this point home. His famous declaration that God is dead was a challenge rather than an ending. He wanted us to realize the “will to power” within us. The “Übermensch” is essentially a human who has realized their own potential to create values and affirm life without supernatural crutches.

Baruch Spinoza offered a perspective that feels particularly resonant for an artist who loves the natural world. He saw God and Nature as two names for the same infinite substance. This pantheistic view suggests we do not need to look up to find the divine because we are already standing in it. Paul Tillich reframed the conversation by describing the divine not as a being but as the “Ground of Being.” This shifts the focus from a beard in the sky to the raw act of existing with courage. Carl Jung mapped the internal landscape by describing gods as archetypes in the collective unconscious. He viewed spirituality as a process of individuation where we integrate the hidden parts of our psyche to achieve wholeness. These thinkers provide the intellectual bedrock for believing in our own magic.

Building Cathedrals

Contemporary visual artists continue to fan these flames. Marina Abramović uses her own body to demonstrate the sheer scale of human resilience and energy. Her performance pieces like The Artist Is Present strip away the noise to reveal the raw power of human connection. She proves that our ability to hold space for one another is a spiritual act. We must also acknowledge that the viewer is as much a part of the spiritual equation as the artist. Mark Rothko understood this perfectly. He stripped his paintings of figures and landscapes until only raw emotion remained. The Rothko Chapel stands as a testament to this power. It is a sanctuary without a dogma where massive dark canvases invite people to sit in silence. Visitors often find themselves weeping before these blocks of colour. They are having a religious experience facilitated entirely by pigment and presence. It proves we can build cathedrals out of canvas.

We can also build them out of ice and leaves. The Land Art movement reminds us that the earth itself is the ultimate studio. Artists like Andy Goldsworthy go out into the wind and the rain to stitch together leaves or balance stones. They create works of breathtaking beauty knowing full well the tide will wash them away by lunch. This is a profound spiritual stance. It embraces impermanence. It finds the sacred in the mud and the moss. It reminds us that we do not need to preserve something for it to matter. The act of creation is the prayer and the dissolving is the ‘Amen’.

A Frequency Inside Us

Music amplifies this concept by turning the vibration of the human spirit into something we can physically feel rattling our ribcages. Jimi Hendrix treated the electric guitar less like an instrument and more like a dowsing rod for the soul. He spoke of music as his religion and a way to connect with universal vibrations that bypass cultural dogma entirely. John Lennon picked up a similar thread with a quieter intensity, stripping away the divine hierarchy to reveal a humanistic unity. But for me this connection is far more personal and immediate.

The sense of timelessness and security the drone provides when I practice the hurdy-gurdy is unlike anything else. When it is strapped closely to my stomach I feel the instrument as much as I play it. It acts as an anchor and a platform that allows me to leap into the unknown. This vibration connects me to a specific lineage of sound that has always moved me. I remember the visceral bass of dub hitting deep in the stomach and making my trousers flap when I played with Suns of Arqa. I recall the trance-inducing acid house vibes of The Orb and System 7 that I heard at my first rave. I think of the soaring joyful journey of Indian ragas played by Shiv Kumar Sharma on the Santoor. These experiences are not about worshipping a distant god. They are about accessing a frequency that already lives inside us.

The Final Breath

It is hard to name that strange fluttering expectant excitement that courses through our body in the moments before starting to create. The ancients looked inward and found something that felt too vast to be entirely their own. You see this in the Christian concept of Imago Dei or the notion that we are crafted in the image of the divine. Eastern traditions like Advaita Vedanta suggest the individual soul and the universal reality are identical. These ancient maps of the spirit point to a singular truth. We are not empty vessels waiting to be filled. We are already brimming with the precise essence we search for. It forces us to ask where the line between the human and the holy actually sits.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin famously suggested we are spiritual beings having a human experience. I take that to heart. It means the messy and chaotic and sometimes painful process of being alive is the point. Resilience becomes a spiritual practice in this light. When a painting goes wrong or life throws a curveball that knocks the wind out of you the response is the same. We wipe the palette clean. We dig deep into that steely grit and we shout “Next!” with a grin. The ability to create again after destruction is the truest evidence of our power.

Recognizing these qualities within ourselves changes the game completely for a creative practice. It transforms art from a mimicry of creation into an act of pure genesis. We tap into that boundless energy to heal and to build and to make sense of the chaos. The divine is not a destination we travel to. It is the place we are speaking from. As I turn the wheel of my hurdy-gurdy the entire universe holds its breath.

The Digital Panopticon: How Social Media Fuels Informational Autocracy

Modern authoritarianism has evolved. No longer solely reliant on the brute force of the 20th century, a new model of control has emerged: informational autocracy. This contemporary form of rule prioritises the sophisticated management of information flows over overt repression, manufacturing legitimacy by curating a reality where the regime is competent and opposition is illegitimate. While these autocrats maintain the façade of democracy through managed elections and hollowed-out institutions, their true power lies in dominating the narrative. In this digital age, social media platforms have become the principal arena and accelerator for this strategy, fundamentally transforming the complex relationship between the state, a knowledgeable “informed elite,” and the general populace. Social media acts as both a tool of co-optation and a vector for chaos, enabling autocrats to silence dissent while exporting tactics that actively erode democratic foundations worldwide.

At the heart of informational autocracy lies the strategic management of the “informed elite”—a segment of society comprising intellectuals, journalists, and professionals who possess the critical capacity to recognise and expose the regime’s flaws. Traditionally, this group poses the greatest threat to authoritarian stability, and social media presents a dual-edged sword for their neutralisation. On one edge, platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and WeChat serve as tools for surveillance and control, allowing regimes to monitor the elite’s online activities, identify dissenters for targeted repression, and deploy subtle censorship through algorithmic demotion or shadow-banning. On the other, these same platforms are used for co-optation, recruiting influential figures to amplify state-approved narratives and lending a veneer of credibility to propaganda. In Turkey and Hungary, for instance, allied influencers and troll farms are leveraged to dominate online discourse, effectively turning a portion of the informed elite into digital mouthpieces for the state.

This capacity for control, however, is not absolute. The democratising nature of social media simultaneously threatens to disrupt the informational asymmetry that autocrats depend on. By allowing information to bypass state-controlled media, these platforms can potentially expand the informed elite, making it too large to co-opt or silence entirely. This forces regimes to intensify their grip on the broader information ecosystem, often through outright media monopolisation. This tension reveals the core paradox for modern authoritarians: the very platforms that offer unprecedented control also carry the seeds of their potential undoing. They fracture the elite’s traditional role as gatekeepers of information while simultaneously empowering grassroots dissent.

The very architecture of social media is uniquely suited to advancing the goals of informational autocracy. Platforms’ business models, predicated on maximising engagement, inadvertently favour the sensational, divisive, and emotionally charged content on which autocrats thrive. Algorithms designed for virality rather than veracity create echo chambers that reinforce regime propaganda and shield citizens from dissenting views. This allows rulers to “flood the zone” with disinformation, blurring the lines between fact and fiction until the public becomes cynical and disengaged. False political narratives, as studies have shown, spread significantly faster than truth, creating a “post-truth” environment where objective reality is secondary to partisan identity. This systematic degradation of trust in institutions—from the media to the electoral process—is not merely a byproduct of social media; it is a central objective of informational autocracy, and platforms provide the most efficient means to achieve it.

Perhaps most insidiously, the tactics of informational autocracy are no longer confined to authoritarian states. Social media has created a borderless information environment where these strategies are exported globally, seeping into and poisoning democratic societies. Autocrats have learned to weaponise the very freedoms that define democracies, using the openness of platforms to interfere in elections, amplify social divisions, and discredit liberal values as chaotic and weak. State-backed actors from Russia and China have perfected the art of cross-border disinformation, creating what can be seen as a “disinfo axis” that coordinates to undermine democratic solidarity on the world stage. In response, threatened democracies may find themselves adopting autocratic tools—such as increased censorship or surveillance—to combat these hybrid threats, risking an erosion of the very principles they seek to protect. This global spillover normalises autocratic practices and accelerates a worldwide trend of democratic backsliding.

In conclusion, informational autocracy represents a pernicious and adaptable evolution of authoritarian rule, and social media serves as its central nervous system. These platforms have revolutionised the autocrat’s toolkit, enabling a subtle yet pervasive form of control built on narrative dominance rather than physical coercion. By transforming the role of the informed elite into a dynamic contest of control and resistance, and by leveraging algorithms that prioritise engagement over truth, social media directly fuels the erosion of public trust and institutional legitimacy. This model is no longer a distant threat but a clear and present danger to established democracies, which now face an onslaught of digitally-native autocratic tactics designed to turn their own open systems against them. The struggle for the future of democracy is therefore inextricably linked to the battle for the digital public square, demanding a new focus on platform accountability, digital literacy, and the cultivation of an “info hygiene” resilient enough to withstand this slow-acting poison.

Autocracy in the digital space.

We were all raised on stories of obvious tyranny. We were taught to look for the book burnings and the public shamings. We were told to listen for the sound of the cage door slamming shut. But what happens when the cage has no bars? What happens when the prison isn’t a place, but a state of mind, meticulously constructed to feel like freedom?

This is the world of informational autocracy. It’s a far slicker, more sophisticated beast than the clumsy dictatorships of the last century. It doesn’t need to rule by fear when it can rule by manufactured consent. This new model of power doesn’t abolish elections; it mimics them, ensuring the outcome is a foregone conclusion while maintaining a veneer of legitimacy. It doesn’t ban the free press; it buys it, starves it of advertising, or floods the zone with so much state-sponsored noise that the truth is simply drowned out. Look at Putin’s Russia, Orbán’s Hungary, or Erdoğan’s Turkey. The playbook is the same: project an image of competence and stability, paint all opposition as chaotic or treacherous, and ensure the majority of the public never gets a clear enough signal to know the difference. The primary goal is not to terrorise the population, but to convince them. And the engine room of this entire operation is the device in your pocket.

Enter the social media platform: the greatest accelerator of informational autocracy ever invented. These systems are not neutral tools; they are battlegrounds designed for a very specific kind of warfare. Their algorithms, built not for truth but for traffic, are perfectly tuned to reward the divisive, the sensational, and the outrageous. It’s no accident that, on platforms like X, false political stories are proven to spread 70% faster than the truth. Outrage is profitable. Division drives engagement. In this environment, an autocrat’s propaganda isn’t just another post—it’s premium fuel for a machine designed to run on it. We are not just the audience; we are the unwitting foot soldiers, sharing and amplifying narratives that fracture our own societies. But this battle isn’t just for the hearts and minds of the masses. There’s a more specific, more strategic target in its sights.

Every society has an “informed elite”—that small but crucial group of journalists, academics, professionals, and artists who have the access and the training to see through the noise. In the old world, an autocrat had to arrest or exile them. In the new world, the strategy is far more subtle. Social media allows the regime to monitor them, identifying dissenters for a quiet campaign of shadow-banning, legal threats, or professional exclusion. Even more effectively, it allows them to be co-opted. A slice of the elite is turned into well-paid influencers, their credibility used to launder regime propaganda. The very tool that could expand the ranks of the informed by democratizing information also shatters their authority, turning public discourse into a chaotic free-for-all where a verified expert has the same algorithmic weight as a state-funded troll farm.

It leaves us in the crossfire of a silent, borderless war. The tactics perfected in Moscow and Beijing are now exported globally, seeping into the bedrock of democracies. This is the slow poison: the erosion of public trust, the exhaustion of civic life, and the creeping sense that objective truth no longer exists. This is the ultimate goal. The aim isn’t just to win an argument; it’s to create an environment where the very idea of a shared reality seems naive. It is to foster a deep, weary cynicism that leads to democratic fatigue, where we disengage not because we are forced to, but because we are too tired to continue.

So, what is the way out? It is not to find a mythical, uncompromised platform or to wait for a single heroic leader. The resistance begins with a conscious and deliberate act of what can only be called informational hygiene. It starts with us. We must become fierce curators of our own information, deliberately seeking out and paying for quality, independent journalism. We must take our conversations offline and into the real world, rebuilding the connective tissue of society in our own communities. And above all, we must build our own resilience as if it were armour. They are counting on our burnout. An exhausted, cynical public is their ideal political landscape.

This is the work. It is not glamorous. It is not easy. But it is real. The most radical act in an age of quiet persuasion is a loud and curious mind. Keep yours sharp. Keep it open. And never, ever let them convince you to close it.

Your Burnout Is Their Political Strategy

Fascism has changed, as kids we were taught to look out for the jackboots and salutes now the bars aren’t made of iron anymore; they’re made of information, and the prison isn’t a place, but a state of mind. It’s one thing to see the shape of this new cage, but another thing entirely to know how to unlock the door. The sheer scale of it all can feel paralysing. That is precisely what they are counting on. But the antidote isn’t a single, heroic act of rebellion. It’s the small, consistent, and deliberate practice of clear-headed defiance. These individual acts aren’t the endgame, though. They are the training ground for rebuilding public trust and collective power from the ground up.

So here’s what you do.

First, become a fierce curator of your information and a trusted amplifier of the truth. Stop doomscrolling. Stop passively accepting the algorithm’s feed as reality. Deliberately seek out independent voices, local journalists, and long-form content. If you can afford it, pay for quality journalism; it is the last line of defence. And once you find a piece of solid reporting or a vital local story, your job is to share it. Not by screaming into the void online, but by sending it directly to three or five people in your life who you know will take it seriously. Be the signal, not the noise.

Second, take your conversations from the social sphere into the civic one. Breaking your echo chamber is vital, but it cannot end with a chat over a pint. You must take that renewed understanding offline and into the real world. Join something. A local library, a school parents’ association, a tenants’ union, a conservation group. Find the most boring-sounding local committee you can. Power abhors a vacuum, and these hyper-local spaces have been abandoned, left to those with narrow agendas. Go and fill them. This is where the connective tissue of society is either woven or unravels. This is the difference between talking about politics and doing politics.

Finally, build your resilience as if it were armour, because it is. Recognise that this fight is a marathon, not a sprint. They are counting on your burnout. An exhausted, cynical, and overwhelmed public is their ideal political climate. Every time you log off, go for a walk, and come back clear-headed, you are actively thwarting a political strategy. Replenish your spirit not as an escape, but as a necessary act of training for the long road ahead. A resilient, clear-headed, and good-humoured citizen is a nightmare for those who rely on our exhaustion.

This is the work. It is not glamorous. It is not easy. But it is real. The most radical act in an age of quiet persuasion is a loud and curious mind. Keep yours sharp. Keep it open. And never, ever let them convince you to close it.

Above all, choose hope and vote Green.