Notes: Liminal Festival 2024

Herein you'll find my notes from attending the inaugural Liminal Festival, hosted by the magazine of the same name, held in Melbourne, Australia (live and online.)

Table Of Contents

• Little Fates
• Linework

Session #1: Little Fates

Featuring Danny Soberano & Yanyi.

"Yanyi and Danny examine poetic form as a tool for untangling the self and our surrounds. How is a person known? Perhaps in the way their coffee cools; as Danny Soberano writes: 'I knew even then / that I was changed'. Or perhaps, as Yanyi writes, it is in the hanging of a poster, or the stringing of lights across the wall. In poetry, each detail matters tenfold and weighs a tonne, but still floats easy, steam off hot coffee. In this conversation, Yanyi and Danny examine the poetic form as a tool for untangling the self and our surrounds."

• Cooking is a renewable skill: it keeps on giving.
• When trying to make a positive contribution to a community, intentionality and focus is as important as it is in writing. The tinner you spread yourself, the less impact you'll have.
• Write when no one can disturb you.
• Concentrating for blocks of time makes space for creativity. Carve it out.
• Write first drafts in long form prose regardless of the desired finished format to work out what you want to say and get the thoughts out.
• Treat firsts drafts ass ideation to spark future works. Don't expect too much and let the work breathe.
• Experiment with poetic forms to break them for powerful endings.
• Poems are life companions.
• Doubt is scary yet embracing it gives us rick soil to explore in our work.
• When you write to discover what you think, it's an exciting yet uncertain process. That's what makes it so rewarding yet terrifying.
• There's so much we don't and will never know. Poetry and prose are a chance to discover our truth.
• Institutions and belief systems don't allow for doubt as it threatens their existence.
• The longer you live, the less surprised you feel when trying something different.
• Creativity goes through seasons.
• Expressing doubt is a statement of being a free-thinking individual.
• Reading is the only way to experience another life as if it were yours.
• If anything you want doesn't exist, create it.
• Archives are a community strengthener and preserver of literary history.
• Experiences come direct from the body to the page.
• Books as archives.
• A weekly reflection creates a record of your existence, memories kept you'd otherwise lose.
• Literature isn't the point. Human connection is.
• Through reading, you connect to the dead, and the living who no longer exist.
• Read the collected correspondence of writers for beautiful insights and turns of phrase.
• Poetry helps us process experiences.
• There's no such thing as a singular history.
• Poetry's rhythm has sped up as society has.
• Write in the voice of those you adore until there's nothing left but yours.
• When you love the work, the separation between life and it disappears.

Session #2: Linework

Featuring Lee Lai and Jillian Tamaki.

In this conversation, Lee Lai and Jillian Tamaki examine the tactile and embodied nature of comics.

• Promoting a creative work is a signal that project and life stage has finished.
• It's okay to not be happy with past work, it shows you're improving. But let it be.
• Dissatisfaction is a great motivator.
• Being a beginner is a beautiful state of mind when creating. You're unencumbered.
• Finishing things is one of the best things you can do for yourself as a maker. Get to good enough.
• Books are eras of your existence.
• The more you start and end the creative process, there less you have to fear.
• Goals forever need remaking. Otherwise you're stuck in a loop of asking 'what now?'
• You think the most satisfying thing about making stuff is the finished result, but if you want it to be a lifelong practice, you need to fall in love with the process.
• Art doesn't have to perform usefulness. Your artmaking is one facet of your skills, many of which you possess in being able to make a positive contribution.
• You have no obligation to speak to the moment through what you make.
• Think of the studio as a laboratory, not a factory.
• Strategic thinking based on the old way of doing things quickly falls apart. To survive in an ever-changing world, you also need flexibility.
• Life is uncertainty. If you can't accept that, everything is hard.
• When the tools available rise everyone to the same level, to stand out means being extraordinary.
• When algorithms don't introduce you to the art you want, you need to seek it out. It's still there.
• Embrace your fixations and learn all you can.
• There's no one right way to appreciating art. Learn, and be inspired.
• A work's medium and the ways of presenting it create a world of possibilities.
• Something's execution doesn't matter as much as the intention and the meaning the audience is left with.
• When attention is scattered and short-lived, the highest compliment is sustained, careful noticing.

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