Listening to Richie Havens sing “Helplessly Hoping,” New Year’s Day, 2022

Creative inspiration often takes its time meandering over multiple paths around my consciousness—certainly more often than it arrives quickly on a straight path from desire. After any angsty, confusing search, when I finally get to the idea I was looking for, I usually am certain that I benefited from a slower, richer process and am grateful for what I saw along the way.

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I woke up New Year’s Day after my first good night’s sleep since a terrible head cold had taken over my body. I stayed in bed for awhile, a tangle of thoughts swirling around my brain. I was annoyed to be musing about new creative project ideas when I clearly needed to be hyper-focused on finishing the one I am close to finishing, The Ancestor Project. Close, but not done, and I don’t want it to slip slide into something undone while I distract myself with shiny, new ideas.

What I need, I think, is a label and a container to put those new ideas in for safe keeping until I finish what must be finished. I need a concept, a phrase or words that will give a skeletal form to my nascent thoughts—and then an actual place—a box or a notebook—where I can quickly visit to leave notes or images without taking too much time away from the final framing and polishing of my ancestor project work.

The distracting ephemera that kept tapping at my consciousness was a vague notion of creating a photobook, an art form I have been studying and thinking about for the past year, even making a few samples of my own books as I try to decide how to combine images with text for my ancestor project. I have tried several ways of doing this and cannot quite settle on one way of using them across the full project. Is consistency the hobgoblins of little minds? Who knows? It certainly makes grant proposals simpler to write. The real distraction, however, has been ideas for photo books with images other than those I’ve been taking for my ancestor project.

While staying at home with my head cold, I had read all of Aperture’s most recent Photo-Book Review and was surprised to find no books on their awards short list related to climate collapse. This topic, not unrelated to my ancestor project, has been weighing heavily on me lately. And after noticing the absence of this in the PhotoBook Review, I begin wondering what a photo book calling people’s attention specifically to the climate crisis would even look like.

(Richie Havens will show up soon, I promise.)

The New-Year’s-Day-morning-swirling in my head of possible new photo projects includes many thoughts about what a climate crisis photo book would look like. Lush landscapes of the Earth I love might be too sentimental. The ugliness of the environmental degradation—I don’t have those images and do not want to go looking for them. Even the juxtaposition of both of these does not seem an interesting enough premise for a book. What does have more juice for me, however, is what is problematic for me. It is interior. It is the not knowing what to do about it myself. The questions about what I can do. I have already imagined a world without humans in it. I feel powerless on an individual level, but I also believe that I must keep acting like I can do something, that we all must do that or everything is lost. And the words, helplessly, hoping filter down from somewhere into my brain. They describe the exact place where I am stuck, somewhere between helplessness and hope. Everyone I know is in this same space.

I search for the Crosby, Stills, and Nash recording of Helplessly Hoping. I listen closely. I hear the beautiful harmonies, the plaintive lyrics. I feel a rush of relief as puzzle pieces describing the dilemma drop into place. With these two words, I can attract and hold ideas for my next work. I read the lyrics, then write them down in a notebook where I will continue to make notes about thoughts that arise—and where I can keep them until I am ready for them.

After I listen to the CSN recoding, I notice there also is a recording of Richie Havens singing Helplessly Hoping on his 1972 album, Live at the Cellar Door. 1972 was the year I was a junior in high school and three years after his unforgettable performance of the song Freedom at Woodstock. I listen to the long acoustic introduction to Havens’ slower, lusher version of Stephen Stills’ song about love and fear of loss. Yes, all of this still resonates with the mixture of desire to do something and paralysis in the face of an overwhelming counterforce inertia and resistance. My mood is buoyed, however, while listening to Haven’s rich voice and the energy of his guitar. My mood feels more expansive. I wonder, is it all so futile? I go to the beginning of the album and listen to all the songs on it. I can feel the good in a world where Richie Havens made music, even as sang of troubles in the world and as he chastened the rulers of the empire. I begin to feel that I might have energy for what’s coming. I can explore these contradictory feelings of despair and optimism. I don’t know what the insides of a book will look like, but I have a way to think about it, and that is what I needed. For now.

I listen to Havens’ album several times over the next several days. I notice that sometimes he changes the words of the songs he covers, and these intentional tweaks change their meaning. I realize that he changed the words “helplessly hoping” to “heartlessly hoping.” The words in the title! And not for no reason. Helplessly hoping versus heartlessly hoping? Are we really helpless? Does letting ourselves feel helpless in the face of climate change act as an excuse for the heartlessness of doing less than we can? Is our endless handwringing a cowardly, heartless response? These questions I write into my notebook and will inspire further inquiry.

Following a thought or action down one path led me to another, and I will have more unanticipated trails to follow. Each helps me answer some questions or ask new ones. Finding myself listening to Richie Havens on New Years Day was an unexpected gift, a place of respite from creative confusion and indecision, and a perfect way to dance into the new year.

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I’d love to hear from others about experiences that led you to unexpected creative inspiration — or how you process an overflow of creative ideas swirling in your daydreams.