Attracting Opportunities for Play: Looking through Windows & Walking Through Doors
by Syon Davis
I am very influenced by the work of Pea the feary (Pea), whose worldview encompasses the ideology of viewing life as a video game with cheat codes. She talks a lot about character creation and leveling up into the character that you want to be by consciously choosing to experience the world and make decisions as that character would. Pea is an artist and self-described energetic strategist whose work supports creative business owners in actualizing their desired lived realities and successes.
Much like Pea’s video-gamefication of life, I see life and art as connecting worlds with an unlimited amount of windows and doors.
Looking through a window is when you see something from where you are and let it influence what you are currently doing.
Walking through a door is moving from what you are doing to something else entirely. Sometimes a door is a worthwhile pit stop, sometimes a door leads you to your final destination, sometimes a door is a dead end, but a door is always an adventure that has the capacity to alter your perception.
In order to walk through a door, you have to find one. There are doors everywhere, but you still have to look. Finding doors requires walking past the obvious and saying, hey, what’s that over there?
In a recent experiment with this, I was visiting Kingston, Jamaica, one of my ancestral homelands. This was the first time I’d had the opportunity to go by myself as an adult. I was there to manage some family business; outside of that I didn’t know what kind of experience I was seeking, but I had a feeling something was there for me. All I knew was that I wanted to spend time with other artists and find queer community. I knew to access this I would have to spend some time finding and opening doors.
I decided to get a tattoo.
I found my artist, @livityinkja on instagram (also known as Sash), a week before my trip. After looking through several accounts, the vibes just felt right with this person. Their studio was welcoming and colorful and their spirit felt the same. Together, we played with several ideas on their ipad until we arrived at something we both loved. As she skillfully etched the co-created design into my skin, we chatted about art and people and practice. It was a beautiful collaboration.
After I got my tattoo, my artist introduced me to a queer esthetician and skateboarder who happened to work in the same building. This person invited me to hang out with a bunch of other queer skateboarders - which was wild because I had recently started (and fallen in love with) learning how to skateboard. Engaging my desire around getting a tattoo, led me to satisfy an additional desire of skateboarding with queer community.
Much like Pea’s video-gamefication of life, I see life and art as connecting worlds with an unlimited amount of windows and doors.
Looking through a window is when you see something from where you are and let it influence what you are currently doing.
Walking through a door is moving from what you are doing to something else entirely. Sometimes a door is a worthwhile pit stop, sometimes a door leads you to your final destination, sometimes a door is a dead end, but a door is always an adventure that has the capacity to alter your perception.
In order to walk through a door, you have to find one. There are doors everywhere, but you still have to look. Finding doors requires walking past the obvious and saying, hey, what’s that over there?
In a recent experiment with this, I was visiting Kingston, Jamaica, one of my ancestral homelands. This was the first time I’d had the opportunity to go by myself as an adult. I was there to manage some family business; outside of that I didn’t know what kind of experience I was seeking, but I had a feeling something was there for me. All I knew was that I wanted to spend time with other artists and find queer community. I knew to access this I would have to spend some time finding and opening doors.
I decided to get a tattoo.
I found my artist, @livityinkja on instagram (also known as Sash), a week before my trip. After looking through several accounts, the vibes just felt right with this person. Their studio was welcoming and colorful and their spirit felt the same. Together, we played with several ideas on their ipad until we arrived at something we both loved. As she skillfully etched the co-created design into my skin, we chatted about art and people and practice. It was a beautiful collaboration.
After I got my tattoo, my artist introduced me to a queer esthetician and skateboarder who happened to work in the same building. This person invited me to hang out with a bunch of other queer skateboarders - which was wild because I had recently started (and fallen in love with) learning how to skateboard. Engaging my desire around getting a tattoo, led me to satisfy an additional desire of skateboarding with queer community.
Syon is a queer, Black, fat, neurodivergent multidisciplinary artist. Their work is made up of artifacts from their decolonization and rewilding process– an active practice of shifting away from colonialist, anti-black, patriarchal, cis-heteronormative, and human-supremacist ways of being and moving towards pleasure, balance, acceptance,and being in right relationship with nature.
Much of their work focuses on reclaiming their identity as a natural being and being in relationship with their body and other creatures as such. They are currently exploring the aforementioned ideas through the mediums of movement, collage, film, animation, textiles, & the written word and at the intersections of those things.
They are one of the founders of Experiments in Freedom, an art collective creating space for people to access and explore creativity, self-nourishment, and connection with nature. Syon was born and raised on stolen land in Pomona, California and resides on stolen land in Portland, Oregon.
Learn more about their work at syondavis.com or follow them @sighbaby_ on instagram & tiktok.