The Message In The Mud

Understanding the Hidden Message in the Mud

Not around it. Not on the other side of it. In the message in the mud.

There is a painting in my studio called Messages in Your Mud. It's part of The Becoming Collection, earlier works that tell stories. This one has been telling this particular story for longer than I realised.

If you look at the word written across the top of the painting, "Visionary," the second i is missing. That's deliberate, because the I — the self, the one doing the seeing, has to find itself in the mud. It must do this before the vision becomes clear. You cannot see what you are moving toward until you know who is doing the looking. Most of the time, we spend enormous energy trying to get out of the difficult terrain. We do this rather than being still enough inside it to find what it's holding for us.

The lotus flower doesn't grow despite the mud. It grows because of it.

And in the painting, the lotus flowers aren't decorating the figure. They're growing through it. Through the body. Through the skin. Rooted in the same place where the words live, forgiveness, healing, growth, movement, joy, believe, release, blossom, letting go. Not a list of things to aspire to. Things are being processed, in motion, and that only become visible when you stop fighting the terrain you're standing in.

The i isn't lost. It's in the mud. Waiting to be found.

This week handed me the mud directly.  Not dramatically. Not in a way I could have predicted. But in the particular way that structures, organisations, systems, and processes can sometimes move. Slowly. Carefully. In ways that protect themselves from the discomfort of a truth they'd rather not name aloud.

There's a specific texture to being on the receiving end of that. It doesn't announce itself as avoidance. It arrives dressed as process. As procedure. As the careful language of institutions that have learned to say a great deal while committing to very little.

And you know it. The body knows it before the mind catches up. Something in you registers the distance between what is being said and what is actually happening. That gap has a particular weight.

I've written about that gap often. I work inside it professionally. But this week, I was living it personally, and there's something clarifying about that. About being the individual in the piece rather than the translator of it.

What I notice, both in the work and in lived experience, is that organisations rarely avoid difficult conversations. They do not avoid them because they are cruel. They avoid them because the structures they operate within were never designed to hold the discomfort of truth-telling. The systems were built for consistency and defensibility, not clarity or dialogue.

And so when something uncomfortable needs to be named, the machinery tends to move in a particular direction. When someone's lived experience doesn't align with what the institution says about itself, the machinery starts moving too. It does not move toward the conversation. It moves away from it. Everything gets wrapped in process. The truth is protected by the procedure.

This is not cynicism. It's pattern recognition. And the pattern has a cost. Not just for the individual holding the truth that isn't being received. It also costs the organisation that keeps choosing the story over the reality. Eventually, the gap between the two becomes impossible to manage.

I've been watching another piece take shape in the studio through fragments and process shots, glimpses only. It's not the full picture yet. There's something about that work that speaks to this moment, too.

Because the ring, or any arena where you have to show up and be present, is not a place of defeat. It is any arena where you take the pressure of the moment and think strategically. It's a place of strategy. You don't stand still and take hits; instead, work it by pivoting, protecting yourself, and, when necessary, creating distance. Then you come back in, not because the terrain has changed. You return because you haven't lost sight of what you're there for.

That's what clarity looks like inside difficult terrain. It is not the absence of pressure, and it's not waiting for the system to move at the pace of the work. It is knowing what you're there for, and holding that. You do this while navigating everything the moment is asking of you.

The vision holds. Not because everything is resolved. Because you haven't let go of it.

And here is what the art teaches me, every time.

The canvas doesn't ask permission to hold a truth. It doesn't require the room to be ready. Nor does it wait for the institution to catch up. It says what it needs to say, and the person who is ready to receive it will find it there, waiting.

That's why the art has always been the research and development in the most expressive creative form. It is not just an illustration, decoration, or a metaphor applied after the thinking is done. The art is where the thinking begins. It holds what the conversation can't carry yet. It does so without extraction or demanding anyone to disclose more than they're ready to give.

Message in Your Mud was always going to belong to this week. I just didn't know why when I made it.

The i in visionary isn't lost. It's in the mud. Waiting to be found.

And finding it, really finding it, not performing the finding of it, is what makes the vision yours.

Not borrowed. Not performed. Yours.

This week's Unabashed Conversation, Episode 10, explores this live.

Because here is where art becomes your strategy.

Reflecting on this, without shame or blame. Where are you right now, in the mud, or trying to get out of it? And is there a difference between those two things that's worth sitting with?