Book Review: Birds Art Life by Kyo MacLear
“If the wind is going the right way, some birds like to spread their wings and hang in the air, appearing not to move a bit. It is a subtle skill, to remain appreciably steady amid the forces of drift and gravity, to be neither rising nor falling.”
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find a book that matches your particular mood or state of being. The realization of this simpatico starts as a simmer—a reverberation in your chest signaling recognition and relief. “That’s me,” you shout (hopefully in your head.) “That’s exactly how I feel!” And a nugget of gratitude lands in your throat. This is how Kyo McLear’s Birds Art Life found me: Stranded. Aching. Adrift. Just like her.
Amidst the demands of parenthood, ailing parents, and the loneliness of the everyday, McLear considers what it means to be fully alive: living gently within unpredictability, struggling through liminality, discovering a calm beneath the turbulence. Birds Art Life takes a deep dive into simplicity, exploring the quietude that comes with drawing, birding, and being present. It is a love letter to mindfulness. But what makes this memoir so readable and relatable is McLear’s unabashed and frequent frustration with “the process.” She is sometimes bored when talking with a friend, sometimes distracted or lackadaisical with her practice. Her experience of mindfulness is hewn with honesty and humour. Yet, whenever McLear does become still, she finds herself irrisitably enchanted with the beauty around her. And so are we.
Birds Art Life is particularly nourishing if you are in a time of transition, as I was. Or if your creativity is lying fallow, in need of a reboot. Consider reading it in bite-sized chunks, one section at a time—a few paragraphs first thing in the morning when you are at your freshest, then return to it later in the day when you need to refocus. This book is a meditation and this is how it left me: Comforted. Acknowledged. Stirred.
My only complaint is that it was over too soon. But even as I write this, I know I’ll return to McLear’s words again. Perhaps when life takes another shift, as it inevitably will, and I need to be reminded of the quiet beauty around me.
You can learn more about Kyo McLear at: https://www.kyomaclear.com
Birds Art Life by Kyo McLear Anchor Canada, a division of Penguin Random House, 2017. 272 p.p.