My main creative focus right now is my institution, Nostalgic Remembrance: Art in Memoirs (NR), that I founded in 2018, with a mission statement to focus on the sacred dimensions of the creative process and contemporary culture and the creative dimensions of the Sacred. Since founding this project two years ago, we have put together retreats, book talks, events and publications situated squarely within this focus. These include retreats on the spirituality of Star Wars, the Sufi principles of the creative process, the mysticism of Khalil Gibran and the Sufi metaphysics of imagination. Alongside this educational tract, I continue to self-publish various works, some of which may be considered "performance" (i.e. creative writing) while others fall under the category of academic research.
In the former category, I include works like Art in Memoirs: Setting Forth, The Souk of Nostalgia: A Childhood Between Rivers and Mountains, Mystical Musings of a Contemporary Dervish and several blogs on the HuffingtonPost. In the latter category, I include my articles such as "The Metaphysics of Creativity: Imagination in Sufism" which was published in a Brill volume titled: Imagination and Art: Explorations in Contemporary Theory and "Ibn al-'Arabi and Joseph Campbell: Akbarian Mythology and the Metaphysics of Contemporary Art". Altogether, these three tracts: education, performance and research, form the spirit and movement of NR.
My plans for the future are to continue to grow my artistic self and NR in these three pivots, with an emphasis first on performance, education then research. A dimension that I would like to introduce, as an interstice between performance and education is conversations, very much akin to the podcast medium that The Creative Process has pursued. In this regard, I'm influenced and drawn not only to The Creative Process podcast but also similar endeavors, most importantly James Lipton's brilliant Inside the Actor's Studio, Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, Krista Tippett's On Being podcast or even more academically flavored alternatives such as UC Berkeley's Conversations With History and perhaps more culturally popular forms, such as Bill Moyers celebrated sitdown with Joseph Campbell that eventually become immortalized in The Power of Myth.
I'm happy to have already begun this journey of creative conversations on my Instagram page (@dr.ali.hussain) in a weekly program titled "Art n' Motion", where I interview a different artist every session and speak with them about the sacred - and profane - dimensions of their creative process. I have completed 7 episodes so far, before taking a short break. I hope to reinvigorate the series again soon, with the energy I hope to harness from collaborating and working with The Creative Process.
My mantra in this regard is a Qur'anic imperative: "Tell stories so that people might reflect". My entire work and journey as an artist essentially revolves around two themes: a) the co-incidence of the mystical experience and creative process. The source where Shakespeare and Al Pacino derive their inspiration is the same spring from which Ibn Arabi and Rumi also drink into their poetry. This renders the artist as a translator, someone who travels and fluctuates in an interstice, between the ineffable and tangible. We, since I'd like to consider myself an artist, try to capture an ocean of meaning in a captivating drop, recognizing the immense responsibility that comes with this journey, yet jumping into it blindly, like embracing an abyss.
At the intersection of this creative process of translation, we artists are also unfolding the mechanisms of storytelling and what it means to tell a story. It means to externalize a meaning residing in the soul into infinite words, colors, sounds, or images, in a procession. One of the most memorable descriptions of this process that I heard - or so I think - Steven Spielberg paint is that all of his films represent either his inner fears (e.g. Jaws) or fascinations (E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind). By making movies about these fears or fascinations, he externalizes a dormant story and shares it with an audience, whence his fears dissipate and fascinations grow. I remember - or, again, I hope - he said: "I feel like a gladiator and my audience is an army of gladiators and we are going to fight and conquer my fears".
In my own work, I envision a narrative unfolding where we can host Sufi metaphysics - for me personally - and the creative process in conversations rendered in a universal breath, so as to decipher what it means to be creative and artistic in life, not only in the totality of our vocations and crafts, but also just as human beings, as a medium for inner and outer healing. In this regard, I hope to receive insights in all these areas throughout my collaboration with The Creative Process, through conversations and most importantly, to internalize Chuck Close's maxim, that has been my shortcoming in many ways as an artist: "Inspiration is for amateurs, the rest of us just show up and get to work!" Although I believe inspiration is indispensable, work - I also believe - is the gratitude we show for the inspiration, when it comes, from wherever one believes it comes. Work is like a shaman dance, asking heavens for more inspiration.
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My first serious attempt at creative writing evolved serendipitously in 2012, during a crazy summer when I was applying for doctoral studies. I was transitioning from completing a masters in the sciences to a PhD in the humanities and had to read about 400 books and articles to acquaint myself with how to 'academically' discuss and dissect my own faith of birth, Islam. Little did I know that the real reward of this massive undertaking was an underlying creative storm that had brewed inside. I found myself elated at the prospect of meditating at the interstice between Arabic and English, a threshold that I continue to explore in all my creative writings.
And so, I began my creative journey by writing The Khayal [Imagination] of a Coffee Cup, first in Arabic then English. This two part short story I published in my first collection, Mystical Musings of a Contemporary Dervish. The story slows down time immensely to focus on a cup of coffee in the hand of Spectre, the protagonist. Quickly, however, the movement of the story begins to connect imaginal threads from the aroma and texture of the coffee to the scenic winter outside his window and the memory of autumn that had just passed a few months prior.
This is when I realized that my relationship with nature is very awkward, to word it aptly. I do not consciously do enough 'active' work to protect the environment, but also subconsciously hope that the significant place which nature occupies in my writing counts as a contribution in this regard. For me, Autumn is a deeply creative season. I can almost smell inspiration in the texture of falling leaves and their lingering indecisive imminent death combined with pure life/rebirth. I discovered during the process of writing my imaginative autobiography, The Souk of Nostalgia: A Childhood Between Rivers and Mountains that I remember and am more interested in places and textures from my past than people and characters.
In this light, nature for me holds a quintessential importance as a creative catalyst. Its protection and preservation is not merely an attempt to save our present moment, but our memories and nostalgic traces that breathe our forthcoming imminent creative inspirations. Nature is a fragile thread interweaved within our identity...
This is a montage of works by artists who enrolled in the first online workshop I taught on the metaphysics of the creative process titled: "The Art of God" in 2018: https://youtu.be/MWQJmrmWB-0
This is a very recent short experiment of amateur filmmaking - an old passion of mine - with my own writing narrated in my voice in the background: https://youtu.be/wlEz6TifacY
All 7 episodes of my video podcast interviews with artists can be found on the IGTV playlist "Art n' Motion" of my Instagram page (@dr.ali.hussain).
Some attached pdfs of my writings:
Mystical Musings of a Contemporary Dervish
Art in Memoirs: Setting Forth
The Souk of Nostalgia: A Childhood Between Rivers and Mountains
Ibn Arabi and the Art of Being. This is an interview that I participated in with art journalist Vittoria Benezine, as part of an artist collective that I'm a part of called Raise Karma. https://www.raisekarma.com/blog/2021-02-13-ibn-arabi-and-the-art-of-being/ I'm very happy also that this interview was published in Raise Karma's one-time-only art journal SONDER (photos attached).
Academic article: The Metaphysics of Creativity
Academic article: Ibn Arabi and Joseph Campbell
My blogs at HuffingtonPost: https://www.huffpost.com/author/ali-z-hussain
