Tišina
…the word that attracted Ivana to the cover of the book and which she fell in love with. The original name of that book is Svartstilla, written by Susanne Skogstad, translated by Tereza Blatná.
Our Tišina is being born in Mariz. The local genius loci has enchanted a number of creative souls.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
We’re building the place we have been dreaming of.
Tišina.
A haven that will offer creative souls the necessary space for reshaping a life that feels unbearable. A place that will provide the source of the creativity that usually springs from darkness and pain and flows into a fountain of beauty and joy.
As weird sisters and wardens, we shall keep an eye on this magical place. Slowing down, dawdling, guarding the space. We plan to work on profitable projects that will nourish Tišina and keep it going.
No more escapes into glass menageries. We hope to gradually break the obstructing glass ceilings with love and compasion. But we do offer non-glass animal symbolism.
Imagine three different dolls - one of glass, one of plastic and the last one of steel. If I hit them with a hammer, the glass one breaks, the plastic one gets damaged, but the steel one stays almost intact.
We use animal symbolism. However, those animals are not fragile or easily broken. They are not idealized, nor do they inspire the escape. We hope that they will bring refuge, comfort and wonder. Even to humans.
A piece of every animal is hidden in all of us.
Murenas represent the timid ones. Those who test their voices. For them, we create Creació. A safe space where they can choose between visibility and invisibility on their own terms. We do not force them to do otherwise.
Otters symbolize those who seek community. No matter whether in the form of walks in silence or creative dialogues. They allow us to indulge in both, solitude and warm embrace. To wait for the right time and the impulse to create. For them, we create Tišina.
Nightjars stand for the brave ones. Those who want to give their creative projects wings and let them fly to the right audience. For them, we create Lelkárna.
There used to be times when the world spinned in a slower pace. People weren’t in such a hurry. They knew how to tell late nights stories while sitting around a campfire or in front of a fireplace. They knew how to wait for the good and hold on through the bad by meeting each other regularly, laughing and crying together.
The world that once existed, still lingers around. We just stopped to believe it could be real. Instead of the strenght of community, we’ve retreated into the cold embrace of virtual social boards. Storytelling was stolen by TV shows and movie makers. The clocks and phones took over our lifes, measuring our every move and every step.
Man has the courage to destroy, but it will take time for him to have the courage to create.
'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo. 'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
It feels totally normal to us. But Wonderland is slowly closing its door. It’s giving us the last chance. We have to make a haste as one day, it will close the entrance for good. And the next time we’ll want to walk through the wardrobe into the magic land, we hit a wooden plank instead. We might find our way back to that mesmerizing place only the moment when we loose what we desperately (and blindly) clinged on for years spent in the world ruled by power and success.
Looking at the void and rubble of our crumbled life, we realize what we have become and we start to reshape ourselves. Then the creative words and images begin to come back to us like the long-silenced cry of our soul.
Every child has built-in creativity. Every third child has the ability to listen deeply to the world around them. And yet only a fraction of us carry these gifts into adulthood. In our eagerness to fit in and survive, we put away pieces of ourselves, renounce them, and extinguish them. So that we survive. But do we truly enjoy such a life?
To find and follow our Star is challenging. Misunderstanding and struggle with the fear of rejection became full-time companions. We learnt to dissolve the fears in movement. Little by little, moving away from feeling of not being enought to feeling the strenght of acceptance by a tribe in which we belong to.
We know the taste of being lost and alone, as well as the taste of joy when being heard and seen. The warmth of moments when others keep us silent company, embrace us and remind us that we are special even though we’ve long forgotten it.
O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
But slowly, slowly!
So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding.
Creative people experience fragile moments and we are ready to offer a helping hand. That’s why we are building a community. A village. A tribe. A network to hold, to cradle, to help stand up with dignity. For ups and downs are inevitable parts our lives. There is no need to run or be scared.
Speak Friend and Enter. Into the world that once was and once will be again. To the world without a timer, where people look into each other’s eyes, tell stories to each other and listen. Be themselves without the need to apologize for the way they are. Share values and dreams and shape them into extraordinary collaborations.
We care about who you are, what you enjoy and what weighs you down. Fear not, as you are not alone.
Into the Tišina
