Iva: I start the day with rituals. This involves meditation, some physical exercise, a bit of reflective writing, and Pharoah Sanders, or Lonnie Liston Smith, or Milton Nascimento. That gets me in the zone, and ready to work.
How do you conquer a creative block?
Iva: Reading. I’m always looking for new ways to communicate. When I feel like my mind is stuck in repeating patterns, when I overuse words, or when my own thoughts become stale…it’s an indication to pick up a book. This tends to happen when time gets consumed by writing, or editing, or work in general. When I find a free moment and pick up a book, I go on extended reading sprees. At times, I’ll read one book a day, at other times it’s three a month… When I start on a new project there is usually a word or a phrase that assigns the theme for the project. I then proceed to read around that word. Let’s say, the theme is “memory”... the spectrum would oscillate from The Queerness of Memory to Understanding Non Linear Time to The Future of Nostalgia. Rabbit holes, of sorts, that are productive and generative. Soon ideas start to pile and dance around. Expansion.
Reading. I’m always looking for new ways to communicate. When I feel like my mind is stuck in repeating patterns, when I overuse words, or when my own thoughts become stale…it’s an indication to pick up a book.
In a parallel universe, what would your life be like?
Iva: I’d be a bird, a hawk. That lives by the sea.
What is your favorite time of day? Why?
Iva: Mornings are purely for myself. Morning light is like divine energy. Until 11am, the world, the day, is full of potential. It’s ritual time, to set things right. But then night time...after 11pm, is when mysteriousness creeps in, and life has a whole new and unpredictable set of possibilities. The night is like a womb. The unknown.
Share something that’s meaningful to you or offers a window into your life.
Iva: I’ve been moving for a long time, since I was twelve years old. At this point, it feels like something I can’t suspend. The motion feels like an eternal state of in-betweenness, being neither here nor there. A constant coming and going. I collect snippets of that fluid space. Somewhere in the background of my psyche, I’m assembling a utopian sapphic film. These are some of the visions.
What makes your pulse quicken? What makes you feel alive?
