TRANSCRIPT: Notes From Dunfanaghy 11 – Intimacy
Hi, it’s Megan. Welcome to today’s Notes from Dunfanaghy. There’s a bit of a breeze, I hope it doesn’t interfere with the sound too much.
I’m coming to you today from my favourite park in South East London. I used to live just around the corner from it until a couple of years ago, and we moved, and now we’re a bit of a walk from it. But I’m still here most weeks. My daughter goes to school just next to it. And it’s not a fancy park, it’s not a massive park, but I just really like it. I like the lay of the land, the perspective from here.
And one of the things that I like a lot about it is what I want to talk about today. It’s intimacy. I just know this place really well, you know, we lived next to it for seven years, maybe. And now our kids know it really well, we come here after school. And we have this intimacy with the place — like, the kids, all of the school kids, really — it’s not a big school, but it’s quite a regular thing for kids to come here after school, and they have a language for this park that is unique to them. There are parts of the park that don’t officially have names that the kids have named, and the naming is passed down from the older kids at school to whenever new kids start.
Which — I don’t know, I wonder how much of what we love about a place, over time, is intimacy, and just the knowing of all of the nooks and crannies, and all of the little secret areas. The kids know all the secret paths, the hedges they can squeeze behind and run trails along. So I think that is a big part of the experience of this place for me — is now just the familiarity with it and the intimacy with it.
And I’ve been thinking about intimacy over the weekend, for a few reasons. I had a conversation with someone who was asking how many people I bring on the Dunfanaghy retreat, and they were surprised to find out that the maximum is 10, the group will never be bigger than 10. And they thought it might have been bigger. And one of the reasons for that is, I think, intimacy is key to a lot of things.
So, well, for one — I’m not a huge fan of standing at the front of a room and teaching at people. I’m always interested in conversation. I show up with ideas to share, but I want to know who’s in the room, who are you, where are you at, what can we use that is helpful for you. And the exercises that I offer are always conversation starters, really. And sometimes, you know, I’ll give people things to do that are private, and they’ll take them away, and it’s just for them to think about and ponder on. But most of the time it’s about beginning a conversation. It’s about going a layer deeper, and a layer deeper, and a layer deeper.
So any live event that I do, the group is always small enough that I can get to know who is in the room, and we can get to know each other and each other’s stories, and work very directly on where you’re at and what you need. So that’s one thing — that intimacy is kind of core to my work in general.
But also, I think that when we are doing our real work, what we are getting paid for is intimacy, whether we’re aware of that or not, whether our customers are aware of that or not.
I’ve got a little playmate here who’s just joining me. Let me pause.
My playmate has moved along. So, yeah, whether we’re aware of it — when we’re doing our real work, we’re getting paid for intimacy. I think that when we engage with the work of an artist, whether it’s someone who identifies as an artist or markets themselves as an artist or not, if we engage with someone who’s doing their real work, what we are after, consciously or subconsciously, is some experience of intimacy. We want an intimacy with the work, with the artist, and ultimately we’re seeking intimacy with ourselves. Like, we engage with other people’s real work in order to know ourselves better.
And so I think that is one of the reasons why doing things in a way that allows for that intimacy has to be core to my work, it has to be core to the retreat.
I think that whatever — if you’re interested in the retreat or you’re drawn to thinking about this stuff in general, whether you’re interested in the retreat or not — whatever the specific question you have, or wherever you’re at, I think somewhere deeper down, we are all seeking an experience of ourselves. We’re seeking more intimacy with ourselves, whether we want to understand our work better, our direction in the world better, our story better, whether we want to know what steps should we take next, what should we move away from, what should we move in the direction of. All of these things are about, ultimately, having an experience — like a really rooted, grounded experience of ourselves. And our work acts as this expression of ourselves.
So, you know, it can be very easy in the business paradigm to get caught up in conversations about what do people want from your work, and what’s your offer, and what’s your unique selling proposition, and what problem are you solving in the market, and all of that kind of stuff. And sometimes those conversations can be helpful, but I think only if we hold in our minds that, actually, when we’re doing our real work, the thing that we are really selling is intimacy. It’s not even, like, selling, that maybe isn’t even the right word there, but the thing that people get from our work, and the thing that we get from our work, is some experience of intimacy.
That idea grounds me whenever — especially whenever I think about the creative process of making money, and how that relates to my work, and where that comes in, and what am I offering for sale, and all of those things. It’s just remembering — it’s really all about human connection. It’s about intimacy. It’s about understanding who we are and experiencing who we are.
That’s my thoughts for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.