Downtime
Substack 31
Substack 31
In England, it’s eight minutes past two in the afternoon and already the beginning of dusk. Soon the sun will be setting, a couple of minutes later than yesterday, as we now start the slow climb on the other side of the year in a gentle ascent towards that other, lighter solstice.
And here I sit by my little fireplace in my cosy slipper socks and leggings, typing to you about downtime. Because that’s what I have here on my hands. Downtime. The gigs are all done for 2025, the term is over and the essays to be marked have not yet been delivered, and all I have to do is sit here and ponder on things, on how things are, on how things were, on how things might be. My own private visitation of Christmas ghosts.
I haven’t had much time for this kind of reflection recently; it feels unnerving to be able to just breathe. It is hard as a creative not to feel guilty for doing nothing. But if I’m really honest with you, dear reader, I feel pretty empty right now. The push of a big creative project is something like having a baby and it’s over now, for the most part. I’ll have some last shows to play in March with Jon and an unnamable-for-pr-reasons third member who played piano on the record, if you know who that is. The album that has had me round the throat for three years has released her grip on me, and there she sits, complete.
I’ve been writing new somethings. New songs I guess. But they feel to me like soggy biscuits in comparison. They feel like apologies. On one particular day one can write a song and be held captive by it, a crisp firm real song with true energy and bristling internal logic, and the feelings might be pure and healthy or they might be perverse, the kind of feelings to be ashamed of, locked in a bottom drawer and the key thrown away, but in the song they are ‘right’ in the sense that they are the truth, they are the feelings that occupy your every waking moment, and you can’t lie about them, and you don’t have to. And then on another day you can write a song and it bores you almost instantly, it’s a limp soggy lie of a song with no compass point, no real intention, no common thread, and the feelings might be pure or they might be sinful but it doesn’t really matter because they are not true. Is it because you feel nothing? No, that’s not true either. It’s more that you’re not really allowing yourself to show anything any more because you’ve beaten yourself around the head with your own interminable showing, the endless showing, the endless truth. You’ve exhausted yourself. And also, I am the worst judge of my own material. How the hell do I know what I’m doing?
So. Here is my downtime. And honestly I just have to sit here and take it.
When I feel songs are not coming on the way they should, when I feel like a bleached, faded sign for some long-ago circus in a chippy window, I know my old wisdom. Reading is good for my inner songwriter, when she feels like this. Reading lots of beautiful things. It’s like taking her back to that circus. So I’m going to heed it this holiday season. I’ve been reading John Burnside’s incredible The Music of Time but afterwards I might move on to some fiction, or some Romantic poetry, that always feeds this lightning word-brain. Some people go look at art or dance. That can help me as well but my little internal combustion engines are more sparked by words than images.
What do you do to feed the well? Do share in the comments….
Here’s the truth: sometimes I am not on fire. Right now, I’m more in deep sleep mode. The crop rotation has landed on the fallow field. I need it. I know in my brain that deep sleep and fallow are necessary parts of the process, but even though I’ve been through this cycle many times, the deep sleep and the fallow field never stop being terrifying. I never stop wondering: is this it? maybe I’ll never write again, maybe it’s leaving me, maybe the birds won’t stop at my windowsill any more, maybe I’ve done my best work, maybe it’ll never come again, maybe it’s time to hang up my guitar, shut the lid on the piano and close the window. The fear never leaves. But then again, I don’t think it should: I think it’s a part of the act of making. It’s the spark of danger in the ignition.
Another way to help with this emptiness and fear of insincerity is writing with prompts. There’s something about fast writing to prompts that stops me thinking about what I’m writing until after I’ve written it.
This coming January I will join The Writing Hours with poets Kim Moore and Clare Shaw for at least one week, probably the first week. Join me?
Here I am, at the bottom of the creative wheel, the winter solstice of my making life, but I feel a couple of minutes different to yesterday, and I will feel a couple of minutes different tomorrow, when I will start the slow climb up the other side of myself, in a gentle ascent towards the light.
Wishing you a very restful, healthy, peaceful holiday season, and all the good things in the new year.
Please do feel free to share this page with anyone creative you know who is looking for company on the creative journey. I look forward to sharing more of my journey with you in 2026.
Please do send me any questions you may have about songs, songwriting, recording, process, or any other topics you are interested. I am always happy to try to answer them.
Thank you so much for supporting and reading.
Polly Paulusma is a recording artist releasing records with legendary label and home to Björk One Little Independent Records.
Her album WILDFIRES was released in February 2025 to critical acclaim. MOJO ★★★★ “a marvel of subtly nuanced longform art in a world perma-geared towards instant gratification.” CLASH “A quite remarkable thing” “Arguably her masterpiece”.
She teaches at Cambridge University where she is a Bye Fellow in Literature at Murray Edwards College, and at The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance in London, where she is Associate Professor of Song & Literature.
She releases albums and publishes academic writing on literature, song, songwriting and practice as research.
For up-to-date news of her gigs and releases, please join her artist mailing list.
For more about her journey as an artist and a human, join her community at Patreon.