Befriending desire

Wheel of Fortune

Jan 07, 2025

1×

0:00

-1:12

My darlings,

To kick off the new year I am sending you a poem called “Wheel of fortune”, inspired by the wheel of fortune in the tarot deck.

Life can throw us about, right? I can’t remember where I read this and I paraphrase, but I do believe that our highs are only as high as our lows are low. In tarot, when you pull the wheel of fortune, the message is to attach yourself to the inner circle of the wheel which of course doesn’t spin. When life starts spinning, my goal is therefore to move into the quiet place within me. I don’t always manage, but often I do.

A still from this week’s poetry film shot by Julie Kristiansen Kvamme

I write frequently of desire, and spend much creative energy trying to reconcile myself and life with my wants. Previously, I have repressed desires only to find they tend to express themselves subconsciously instead. For instance, I have a great desire and need to be “witnessed” for my creativity. Now that I have acknowledged this, I have been able to channel that desire into creating shows and short films, as well as writing these posts.

Previously that wish to be seen expressed itself in less healthy ways. Nowadays, these projects bring joy into my life, and into the lives of those around me.

I ask myself, how can I pursue the things I want without causing harm? As Khalil Gibran wrote of the pursuit of pleasure:

“May your pleasures be like the flowers and the bees.”

I think this is a wonderful idea: that we can consciously shape our wants to be reciprocal processes.

Another still from this week’s poetry film.

Could befriending desire be a key to loving ourselves and one another better? Last year, I read The Seven Day Love Prescription by Dr Julie & John Gottman - the ultimate love doctors. The book is all about building and maintaining healthy romantic relationships and I highly recommend it. A lot of the tools in there are easy to implement and my husband and I really enjoyed incorporating them into our marriage. In our society we aren’t taught how to love, not really. It turns out that love is a learned art.

In the book, the Gottmans describe desires as being equally important to acknowledge as needs, and this was groundbreaking for me to learn. Of course, we all have needs: food, water, shelter etc, but desires are often seen as a bonus. This idea really helped us, as a couple, to start talking about our wants as well as our needs. I began to see how my desires were, instead of being a burden and a symptom of greed & dissatisfaction, in fact a dazzling road map to my character. I love beauty, fine clothes, opulent art, rich melodies and decadent scents. I always felt embarrassed of my materialistic tendencies, before I realised that these are gifts unique to the patchwork of my personality.

For instance, I can’t buy Vivienne Westwood clothes (yet), but I can write and perform whole operatic odes to her as an artist - and I did last February in my poetic opera “Shopping for God”. Previously, I might have soothed my wanting with a credit card, now I bear my desires like trophies and put them on display for the world to see. They glisten when you hold them up to the light.

Of course, befriending your desires need not necessitate you act upon them. There are things I fantasize about that I doubt I’ll ever pursue: I might not open that cafe or hat shop, and there’s at least 2 operas I’ve dreamed up I don’t think will come to life. OK, maybe the hat shop. But whether you want to make your dream come true or not, you might as well enjoy the dream itself. Trust me, when you actually start putting the dream to work it feels exactly like that: work. Dreams lose their shine when they become real; they become accounting, pitching and, for me, drilling lines. Your life won’t magically be perfect once your desires have been ushered into the world. In all likelihood, it might be more complicated. More fulfilled, yes, but probably deliciously challenging.

Additionally, acknowledging subconscious desires can help make you less vulnerable. If I know I like to perform and how to channel this productively, I’m less likely to fall for charlatans who promise me instant, ill-gotten fame and success (and believe me, a few tricksters have tried make me such useless offers).

And sometimes my desires hurt me. They do. Sometimes I want things and experiences so badly I can’t sleep. And so I rouse myself the next day, however exhausted and step by step, I get to work. Sometimes a treasure chest is chanced upon, but more often than not, the artisan has to build her own box and, one-by-one, collect her treasures with which to fill it.

I have made my box, now all I have to do is go out there and seek my treasures. Gold and diamonds, perhaps, but even better: more love and dresses.

Don’t be afraid to dream loved ones.

Here it is. My poem “Wheel of fortune”.