What is your word for 2021? That is the question I usually ask friends, students, and colleagues this time of year. Instead of making resolutions, I find that searching for and choosing one word can be an incredibly powerful way of setting your tone and intention for the year.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also very drawn to conceptual and word art, the kind that has been popularized by artists such as Ed Ruscha since the 1960s. Ruscha understood the power of semiotics and the way we connect words, images, and ideas into rich landscapes of thought and action. Ruscha’s many paintings of single words and short phrases are provocative and compelling in ways that are not always easy to understand or unpack (see gallery below). Still, as Ruscha explains, when the right word is apprehended, there is a knowing: “Words have temperatures to me. When they reach a certain point and become hot words, then they appeal to me…Sometimes I have a dream that if a word gets too hot and too appealing, it will boil apart, and I won’t be able to read or think of it. Usually I catch them before they get too hot.”
For the record, my 2020 word was “FEARLESS” and little did I know how much that word would resonate and find new kinds of importance during the global pandemic. And my 2021 word? I have chosen “AUDACIOUS” Yeah, I know… watch out world!
A few more things before the round up:
Ever since I was a kid, I have enjoyed buying books or desk calendars that provide a once a day reading or short fix. There is something grounding in the ritual of reading a body of work one day at a time over the year. I haven’t done this in a while, so a few weeks ago I went searching and picked up Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic: 365 Mediations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living as my 2021 companion. When I was in my first year of university, I was enrolled in a special Classical Studies themed seminar through UBC’s Arts One Program and read copious amounts of ancient philosophy. Much of what I learned was intensive and quite overwhelming to take in as an 18 year old, but I never forgot the power of stoicism and its call for self-control and resiliency. I figured this would be an important set of ideas to revisit in 2021, and I look forward to gaining daily insights this year.
Over the holidays, I decided it was finally time to find a pandemic hobby and I turned my attention to knitting. In the past, I have been known to crochet and even do some macrame and needle point, but I was drawn to the challenge of knitting for the therapeutic benefits (getting out of my head), the aesthetics and design aspects of the finished products, and also by the challenge of trying increasingly more difficult projects and patterns. I started very easy with a scarf knitting kit from Wool and the Gang using chunky wool and large needles, and have now graduated to some smaller needles and more intricate techniques using patterns found via the online Ravelry community. I am definitely hooked and can understand why so many people become obsessed with the craft.
