The Language of the Layers
A creative prompt for peeling back, removing, and adding.
Welcome to the weekend edition Creative Fuel! These weekend missives are for creative inspiration, sometimes through prompts, sometimes through other means. If you’re getting this it’s because you’re a paid subscriber, and you have full access to the archive of weekend prompts + inspiration.
The layering weather has begun.
A woman stopped me in the post office yesterday and exclaimed, “you match your bike!”
I looked down and realized that the orange and blue stripes of my down vest—which I only brought back out this week after its summer break—did in fact match the colors of my bicycle. Somehow I had never noticed.
“We all have our color palettes!” I happily noted.
I remember coming back to the Seattle airport one time when I was living in France. As I walked through the terminal, everyone seemed to look oddly familiar. I caught myself staring a little too long at several people, thinking that maybe I recognized them.
Then it occurred to me: they were just all dressed in PNW outfits. So many layers! It was a sartorial homecoming.
Layer. Such a beautiful word that can capture so many things.
Layers of a cake. Layers of an onion. Layers of the atmosphere. Layers of identity. Layers of reality.
There are the layers that we see, and the layers that we feel. There are analog ones and digital ones. There are layers that tell us stories of time—in trees, in rocks, and in the earth itself.