The Power of Cosy

Musing on the world and making it better

My initial response, when I was condescendingly told to run along and create something cosy, was to boil over and retort ‘you realize I got my start with noir? And horror?’ but I didn’t say anything. I retreated, retrenched, and ruminated. The dismissal hit me like a horse’s kick to the chest, and just like that time, I wound up lying on the ground staring at the sky feeling disoriented. It wasn’t just the dismissive tone, the assumption that only real value is in the darkness, the hardness, that anything soft must also be worthless. It was the irony of being told that only portraying edgy, sexy, lean and polished would result in being seen as worthwhile, that old-fashioned was invisible, by someone who clearly had no idea what my past work looked like in art or writing. It isn’t just one person’s opinion. There is an assumption that softness is synonymous with weakness or lack of imagination. It is commonly accepted that cosiness is a lesser category, a pastel diversion for people who can’t handle the “real” work of darkness.

Then, slowly, I began to think about the true value of the cosy world I’d created in Groundskeeper, in my cute art, in the comfort and encouragement I try to give not only here on the blog but in person to friends and those near to me. That world is not an escape from the dark. It is a deliberate counterweight. I’ve been dark places. Far darker than the person who felt they knew what badass was, and dismissed my art because it didn’t fit their version. I know the taste of the air when hope feels theoretical. I prefer not to dwell in the darkness. I hug hope, the thing with warm feathers, close to my soul and I know it’s shape. I know that it’s not all bleak edges. It’s round, and soft, and welcoming. It has bloody knees, bruised knuckles, and a fire in the eyes that cannot be quenched. All those things can be true at once.

That is the part the dismissive voice never seems to grasp: cosiness is not the absence of struggle. It is the refusal to let struggle have the final word. It is the decision to keep the kettle on, the lamp lit, the door unlocked for the people who need a place to set down their weight for a while. In the cosy worlds I spin from my imagination the gentleness is only on the surface, beneath everything is the undercurrent of what the characters have survived and what they continue to carry. The cosy surface is the visible part of a much deeper architecture. The same is true of the little drawings I make, the bread I bake for friends, the steady presence I try to offer. None of it is decorative. It is structural.

My version of cosy might include a bookstore, spiced coffee, and an inconvenient body, but it’s not what most will think of when they open the pages. The body is inconvenient because bodies often are; the coffee is spiced because pleasure is a form of resistance; the bookstore is a place where stories of every temperature can sit side by side without apology. Furthermore, I’m just getting started. I think I will create something cosy. Might be the loaf of bread I have rising, flavored with cardamom, orange peel, and black pepper. Complex sweetness with a bite at the end. Might be a twinkling of an idea I have about grandmothers who belong to a secret society of assassins because they are overlooked (and yes, I adored Mrs. Pollifax, why do you ask?) Those women move through the world as background noise until the moment they are not. Their strength is hidden in plain sight, wrapped in cardigans and practical shoes and the assumption that no one is looking.

Might be stories of a young woman rising to heroic interstellar espionage exploits while serving her apprenticeship to a tailor, a baker, and a shepherdess. The skills that keep people clothed, fed, and safe are the same skills that can dismantle an empire if applied with precision and patience. The possibilities are infinite.

Warm, welcoming, and relentless. Cosy is far more than it seems on the surface, and those are the very best characters, don’t you think? The ones who look soft until you notice the set of the jaw. The ones who offer you a cup of tea and, in the same breath, refuse to let you disappear into despair. The ones whose hope has been tested in the dark and came back carrying light: not the harsh, clinical kind, but the kind that fits in a pocket, that can be shared without diminishing.

I used to think the dark was the only place seriousness lived. I know better now. Seriousness also lives in the decision to keep making beauty when beauty feels frivolous. It lives in the quiet insistence that people deserve comfort even when the world is on fire. It lives in the hidden places, in the overlooked grandmothers, the apprentices who learn more than their trade, the hope that has bloody knees and still gets up. Cosiness, done honestly, is not a retreat. It is a form of strength that does not need to announce itself. And I am only beginning to map its full territory.