A Whisper Across Time: For the Art That Waits for Its Listener
For the past month, I haven’t embroidered. I put my needle and thread aside not out of a deliberate choice, but because I felt lost.
Somewhere along the way, I had begun to lose the very passion that first drew me to this craft. I forgot why I first picked up a needle, why I poured so much of myself into these threads. That pure, simple love for creating seemed to have been replaced by a formless anxiety—an anxiety about being seen, about the numbers, about the metrics.
But this pause wasn’t entirely a bad thing. It was in this period of feeling adrift that I stumbled upon a poem by Su Shi, a Chinese poet from a thousand years ago. And in his words, something shifted within me.
What is life like, that it is everywhere?
It should be like a wild goose treading on snow-slush.
On the mud, it leaves a fleeting print of its claws;
The goose flies off, who knows to where, east or west?人生到处知何似？
应似飞鸿踏雪泥。
泥上偶然留指痕，
鸿飞那复计东西。——苏轼《和子由渑池怀旧》
The poem was a quiet reminder: our lives are like that goose’s footprint in the snow—a momentary trace, here and then gone. So many things happen and then vanish, including ourselves. It made me realize how accidental, how small, how utterly beyond our control our individual existence is in the face of time and the cosmos. And yet, we so often cling to results, to progress, to responses, as if those were the only proof of our being.
This meditation on impermanence forced me to ask a fundamental question: If everything eventually fades away, where does the meaning of creation truly lie?
I began to ask myself: Why do I create? Is it to meet some external standard? To chase engagement and seek validation? Or is there another reason?
Slowly, I realized the answer couldn’t be about pleasing an audience or satisfying an algorithm. But then, what was it? Was it to leave a mark? But marks, like footprints, eventually disappear. Was it to be seen? But who could guarantee that anyone in the future would ever see it?
The more I wrestled with these questions, the closer I came to that initial, primal impulse—the simple desire to write down, draw out, or stitch together a feeling. It was an impulse without a grand objective, one that didn’t ask, “For whom?” It was more like a tiny, personal response to the world I was hearing, seeing, and feeling.
Willows in the Wind, 2025, Lissyluo
The Source of Creation is Pure Curiosity
If you were to ask me why I started creating, I don’t think I could give you a clear answer. There wasn’t a single starting point, but rather a feeling that slowly accumulated, hidden in the fragments of my life.
Growing up, most of my clothes were hand-knitted by my mother. I remember watching her, completely absorbed. The needles would dance through the yarn, her fingers moving with a steady, unhurried rhythm. I couldn’t look away; there was a quiet magic in it.
I also remember a set of colorful modeling clay she bought me. One day, she used it to sculpt a swan, so elegant and delicate. I was stunned. How did she make something so beautiful? That question—”how is it done?”—became a source of deep fascination for me.
She once told me that when she was a girl, she’d have to go up the mountains to cut grass for the pigs. On her way, she would always look up at the clouds, wondering if one looked like a rabbit, or perhaps a hat.
I don’t know why these specific images have stayed with me, but I think it’s because they hold something incredibly pure. They weren’t about producing a finished product. They were born of simple curiosity, of a desire to just “wait and see.”
Looking back now, I see that these scattered memories are the true wellspring of my creativity. It wasn’t just these moments, but countless other small acts of just noticing, just daydreaming, just imagining. They quietly settled and gathered within me, eventually flowing into the language I use today.
Creation doesn’t have to be about actively making something. It can be the moment you stare out the window, feeling the wind rustle the leaves, or listening to the sound of rain meeting the earth. Those feelings are real, and they are the beginning of creation.
A butterfly I met during a walk in our neighborhood park. Photo by lissyluo.
To Be Alive is Already to Be Creating
I used to think that creativity was a special state of being—a moment when you sit at your desk, fully focused, completing a piece of work. But I’ve come to understand that creation isn’t confined to a finished artwork. It’s happening all the time.
Every choice we make, every conversation, every fleeting thought, even the sensation that arises when you see a falling leaf or smell a certain scent—these are all extensions of creation. As Rick Rubin writes in The Creative Act:
“Creativity is not a rare ability. It is not limited to the arts. We are all creators in our own lives.”
We may not realize it, but everything flows through us. The world collides with us, is filtered by us, is transformed by us, and ultimately becomes part of our experience. And that experience, in ways we rarely expect, becomes the raw material for our art.
Even when we do nothing, when we simply live and feel, we are “manufacturing” an experience, a reality that is uniquely our own. This is what I increasingly want to convey: embroidery is just one of my languages. It’s a form, not the only answer. I hope people see it as an experience, a dialogue with life, or perhaps, a conversation with a future version of themselves.
You don’t need to be constantly “producing” to be creating. You only need to allow yourself to feel honestly, to observe, to let the world flow through you. And then, slowly, to let it flow back out. That entire process is creation.
Creation is a Quiet Whisper with the World
For me, creating isn’t about demanding attention or urgently declaring a message. It’s more like a quiet whisper between myself and the world—subtle and intimate, but real and steady. It’s not a shout, nor is it a monologue. It is a language that flows naturally, a way for me to express myself, to listen to everything around me, and to try, in this noisy world, to leave a trace that is my own.
I love to embroider when it rains. As the rain patters softly on the ground outside, I sit inside, and the faint friction of the thread passing through the fabric weaves itself into the soundscape. In those moments, I become completely still. Time seems to stretch, and in the space between each stitch, I feel as if I can hear the world whispering back. Then, a child’s laugh from outside might pull me back to the present, reminding me that I am here, alive, coexisting with it all.
This is what I mean by a whisper. You’re not sure if anyone is listening, and perhaps you’ll never get a response. But you still want to speak. Because the act of creation is itself an act of sending something out: a message that might be opened years from now, a call from the heart.
I do long to be heard by someone—but not in the way we think of it now, not to be understood, liked, or consumed in an instant. I long for a day, far in the future, when another person sees my work and feels something. They are moved. And in their memory, the fact that I, this person with these thoughts, once existed, is enough. Even if I am long gone, even if the work itself has disappeared, that single moment of connection means I was not alone.
Creation is so deeply private, and yet so profoundly public. So free, and yet so desperate for connection.
So, I invite you to make something. Not for it to be beautiful, not for anyone to like or save it, but to experience that moment of a true “whisper.” To feel that instant when you and the world are drawn very close. It will remain quietly in your heart, waiting for the day it is heard by another you.
All Creation is a Signal to Another Self
The gentle tide and mossy rocks on the Shenzhen coast.
Photo by lissyluo.
I often wonder about the creations that seem to receive no response. Are they just words spoken to oneself? A futile effort? But whenever I think of Su Shi’s “footprints in the snow-slush,” my doubts dissolve.
His poem traveled across a thousand years to find me when I was lost. It wasn’t that I just happened to have time to read it; it was that in that precise moment, it responded perfectly to the state of my soul. When Su Shi wrote it, he could never have known with whom it would connect in the distant future. But because he left it behind, I received a reply in the silence.
I believe my own work should be like this. It is not to prove my existence, but to pass on the thoughts and sounds I have received from the universe, from everything. I am just a vessel, a respondent. In the moment of creation, I am feeling the world’s gentle whisper and translating it through my own hands. My work, then, is the vessel that carries these thoughts onward in their journey.
That person in the future—perhaps they are not coming to hear my voice. Perhaps they, too, have heard a similar whisper from the universe, and in my work, they just happen to find a familiar echo of that conversation. They are moved because they have heard the same sound that I heard, and this resonance allows us to brush against each other across the chasm of time. And then, perhaps, they will take that feeling and express it, passing it on once more.
In this way, all that has existed, and all that has yet to exist, truly “exists.”
I don’t know who this person is. I don’t know where or when or how they will appear. But I know we will meet.
My husband, trekking through the snowy mountains of Western Sichuan.
Photo by lissyluo.
The work must continue. The response is on its way.
“Hey, what did you hear?”
“Yes, what are you thinking right now?”
“Hello. It’s so good to meet you.”
