reading Simone Weil's Gravity & Grace

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the chapter "Attention and Will" has got me by the hair. in fistfuls. i cannot look away. i cannot look away from my own face in the mirror. the indictment. the lesson.

"We have to cure our faults by attention and not by will." (p.169)

"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love." (p.170)

"Love is the teacher of gods and men, for no one learned anything without desiring to learn. Truth is sought not because it is truth, but because it is good.
Attention is bound up with desire. Not with the will but with desire. Or, more exactly, with consent." (p.171)

like 3 gunshots right in a row. boom. boom. boom. or my face slapped. or maybe kissed? 3 kisses on the cheek. and then that fist in the hair that holds my head immobile and forces me to take a better, closer, longer look at what i assumed Attention and Will (and Love) are.

i have known that place. i have been there. that place, akin to prayer, that raises itself up (and my self along with it) when i am truly attentive. when i am absolutely engaged. the wonderment that courses through a body. i have experienced this while reading, drawing, running. i have felt it while singing in the shower. i have felt it in so many classrooms and while scribbling away in my notebooks.

but also: the result of heart break. the result of brutality. the result of devastation. just as wonderment has coursed through my body, so has an amazing despair. not all exaltation is pleasurable.

good does not always equal fun.

i say that to myself and see that there have been so many times when i have been a spoiled brat, kicking a screaming, because the Good Work i needed to do was also Hard Work and not fun at all. and i only see that, now, that i have been questioned about Attention and Will. i see that i have not been as attentive to myself as i thought. it is not the same thing as self-indulgence and it is not the same thing as self-abasement.

how to turn that focus, that attentiveness, toward myself in the way it is called for in the first quote?

thinking along these lines, this switch in lingo, gives me a new perspective on how to think of struggle and learning. i must pay attention to myself, see exactly what i am focusing on, discern if it is "good" and, if it isn't, (if it is horrible for me, wounding me, if i am only beating myself up) to refocus (attend) to the Good. the good i haven't given myself because it comes in a package i do not recognize or do not like. the good that finds me only through hard work. the good that is hard work itself. i must somehow love myself enough to learn how to do this... how to break the old, bitter habits.

i think that even something as horrible as self-hate is a habit. that malicious routine of pick pick pick and point point point: berating the self, attacking, snarling. as routine as brushing your teeth. it signals a corrupt notion of love.

maybe practicing Attention can teach me a new notion of love? a new notion of faith? maybe i have not yet truly "consented" to learning certain things? i have feared the lesson. maybe i have been afraid of looking at particular realities? seeing them, as they truly are and without any consolation, the realities alive in me.

tuesday morning art and politics with William Kentridge and Riot Grrl

William Kentridge: charcoal and torn paper and opera... the man is amazing. i fell in love with his work, with his mind, the very first time i saw it. i am lucky that my first experience with his work was in the flesh, face to face at LACMA. i was 20 at the time, i think. my mother and i decided to drive out to LA and see what was going on one day, completely spur of the moment, and that's when i learned of William Kentridge. immediately, i was at home with his images and aesthetic. i was working primarily in charcoal at the time. black charcoal and white acrylic together on a page- ghostly swirls of grey. and the second i saw Kentridge's work, i looked at my mom and said: SEE! someone else who loves charcoal! art can be made this way, it doesn't have to be oil paint! i was so excited! overjoyed! and then when my friend Daniela and i accidentily stumbled across his show in San Francisco when she was up here visiting a few months ago. gorgeous etchings based on Gogol's short-story The Nose.

over the weekend i watched the new Art:21 documentary about his current work and he seems like such a playful man. seeing his work is an experience that i can only really describe as Home Coming and it's so heart-warming to watch him in the studio. in the documentary, he speaks briefly about "the seriousness of play" and it reminds me of what poet Rebecca Loudon stresses- finding the site of deep play and there is where the poetry grows. and then later in the film, he says (and i am paraphrasing), "my life and work changed when i started seeing the world as Process rather than Fact". something about that statement hit me so hard. in the face, in the heart. it is still hitting me hard. it's so damn smart it makes my head spin. and i try to catch it so that i can hold it, apply it, trust it, such a brilliant tool! and of course, when i think i've managed to catch it i lose it again. isn't that always the way. ha! but there is something in that statement that is so inviting, so opposite what dominant american culture espouses... process rather than product. the Means rather than the End. a life's work, always UP UP UP. not climbing in the hopes of finding a pleasing plateau, but climbing because that is the job... to climb. and i know this is all romantic and beautiful and so i run to it as fast as i can! these kinds of ideas are so attractive to me. the idealist in me flings her arms wide open to embrace all this beauty of thought and action. my americanism snaps me back and squeezes my face, forces me to look at the goals that are permissible for me to have, the desires i am supposed to chase. the money plateau. green and leisurely. and then just sit there, just coast, do nothing but spend...

it is uncomfortable and lonely to be Outside but i must be Outside. i must remain Outside. in my sketch book, i have a quote written and i have no clue who said it but here it is: Becoming aware of your power to make choices and not go with the status quo is a huge first step.

last night before bed i read Joanne Gottlieb's and Gayle Wald's essay "Smells Like Teen Spirit: Riot Grrls, Revolution and Women in Independent Rock" about zines and music, power, how girls can create their own agency by resisting the cultural allure to stay inside, stay quiet, sit down, and continue the practice of minimization and silence within themselves... that something as seemingly simple as making a zine or t-shirt or stitching your own scarf is an act of resistance to the Status Quo... a dominant culture that still, right now, prefers everyone to fall in line, do what they're told, and do not make waves. this is definitely still the case. and right now, with all the economic worry and hardship and fear, i think it's an even scary proposition i'm making to ask myself (or anyone else) to ignore the status quo, basically forgo safety and security, in order to establish a bit of freedom for myself; a bit of agency, a bit of happiness. but look where the Status Quo got us! i mean... come on! the president cannot do a damn thing about individual levels of greed and feelings of entitlement. he just can't. that's my job and that's your job. it comes down to not only a re-evaluation of what we hold dear culturally, but also individually within our own homes and families. i simply cannot fall in line with the practices that led us to this place of completely unethical levels of spending and wanting and grabbing and enslaving others to our desire to collect as many status symbols as possible. i just can't do it. and ofcourse the temptation is there. it always will be. yes, money is a necessity in this era... but does the necessity of money mean it must be worshipped as a God?

in the William Kentridge documentary he relays a funny story about a friend of his who basically made fun of him for always trying to figure out what he should do, like, for a job. ha! and the friend told him, look, you're 28 and you're unemplyable. no one is going to give you a job. so stop arguing with your trajectory. success or failure, you're an artist. that's when William Kentridge decided to say fuck it and just be himself.

and so i had a hard time falling asleep because i was so excited and encouraged by the film and by what i had just read, but also a bit afraid. it's hard not to feel afraid once realizing that i am completely in control of my own life and it's really just a matter of what i'm willing to put myself through in order to build a life that feels right for me and is respectful of who i am. this comes back to what Kentridge said about seeing the world as Process rather than Fact: that the world is malleable, changeable, able to shift. and so i must somehow become ready to make a shift as well. it is the world in me that must change first. my body and all that it contains. my perceptions must shift. i must identify them as process, not as fact, and establish my agnecy through acts of art-making and writing and crocheting my own sweaters and running along the highway regardless of the perceptions of others. and somehow i must become okay with all this... to stop worrying about whether or not anyone understands what i'm doing and why it is relevant.

life's work

i've been thinking a lot about limits lately. and art.

perceived limits.

how all the artists and writers i admire have highly multi-faceted practices. they don't just write or just paint. they embrace a wide definition of what art is and can be. and what it can be made with. and i'm so attracted to that. i'm so compelled. just turned ON but that expansive, inclusive, generous view.

and then a few nay-sayers arrive and start trying to infect me with all sorts of dualities that i simply don't agree with, that i find no real foundation for. the nay-sayers that shout oil paintings are better than drawings and why would you waste time crocheting when you could be painting and writing? i thought you were a painter?

for awhile, these interferences accomplished just that: interference. but i've decided that part of being an artists is simply being yourself and ignoring all that chatter. because those nay-saying remarks, those limits, those expectations are not critique. and therefore need to be thrown out and turned a blind eye.

the really wonderful, happy circumstance of my life at present is that i have no one to answer to, no one to argue with about these things, no one to sell my ideas about art to. i can sit, alone and quiet, and hear the crunch of the road i'm on. i can find a site of stillness where i know, beyond any doubt, that i am moving in the right direction for me, for my practice. and it's become important to track down like-minded people who really do truly care about the job artists do and believe in its relevance. this blog has been absolutely wonderful in that regard. completely. my instances of fear and doubt are becoming less and less frequent as a result of this practice, this weird electronic landscape.

but is it weird? it doesn't feel weird. i take it back. it feels good. it feels happy.

thank you for travelling over to Gaga Stigmata yesterday. i hope you liked the work. i hope they are good images regardless of what your art opinion is of Lady Gaga. she's become very interesting to me in the passed few months. very compelling. the image she's made. the images she continues to make. and there's just something about that Hair Bow.

also, when it comes to music, anytime someone gets labeled "poison for the minds of our youth", you can be sure i'm going to take a better look at what they're up to. ;) and it's especially scary to me that she's been labeled as such when her dominant message is to love oneself.

but i guess that is a dangerous message somehow... if we all loved ourselves a little bit more (love, the opposite of indulgence) we probably wouldn't waste time caring about the kind of car we drive or who has the hottest boyfriend or how thick our wallets are. if we all loved ourselves a little bit more, our social values would definitely begin to shift. education and culture and walking through life with respect and kindness... ethics... would become much more prevalent and important within our society. maybe even come to be viewed as necessities?

somehow this all leads back to DIY culture in my mind. how it shatters a lot of those perceived limits. how it is the best antidote to consumer culture available to us right now. relying, every step of the way, on buying survival puts me in a very weak position. and i'm talking about the basics- food, shelter, clothing. i have to buy a place to live and buy the food i eat and buy the clothes i need to cover my body. i have no choice but to participate in the system.

wrong.

after making the most recent banner, i realized that i already have a skill that can be used to satisfy one of my basic needs- clothing. and with autumn's arrival, i decided that rather than buy sweaters and scarves, etc, etc, etc... i'll make my own. i'll buy yarn instead. and lead a more artful, more creative, more compassionate life that way. i want the objects in my life to have some type of meaning... and i just don't find the meaning i'm looking for in mass-production. can i find a way to love myself enough to figure out how to be less reliant on a system that keeps artists down? yes i can. i totally can. it takes time but i've become willing to spend my evenings with my crochet hook (and learn to knit too!) so that i don't have to buy a blanket or buy a pair of mittens. i'd rather give cash to the people who make the supplies with which i can use to build (truly build, with my own two hands) a life that i love and feels good. making my own sweaters is a good way to begin. it's a start. it's a start that takes a stand too. and i think artists and craftsmen who do this need to be supported as well. i think it's wonderful to buy t-shirts and stuff like that from the artists on etsy and places like that. a t-shirt can carry a lot of meaning sometimes.

i'm not going to choose between painting and drawing and crocheting and writing. i'm going to do them all. i love them all and they all feed each other. having a wide practice makes life more interesting, more beautifully complex. it erases dualities and strictures and just opens the world up. a sweater could be Art, for sure. a sweater can operate as a billboard. just like the banners do. fashion is Art, so why not?

one of my favorite art pieces ever is Jenny Holzer's t-shirt project. body as billboard, clothing as a warning label. i love it.




talk about a ton of bricks, right? t-shirt as Art.

thanks Jenny. :)

in, and with, honor

today is my brother's birthday and my birthday is on friday.

when we were kids, more often than not, we'd celebrate our birthdays together. two birds, one stone = two kids, one cake. :) and even though i didn't really like that at the time, the memory is very sweet now.

a few weeks ago, my brother started a conversation about the importance of trying, in any small way, to make this week somehow different than all the weeks that have come and gone. the blur of time and routine. and he made a charge to hold that as a weekly goal.

and we talked about how reading a book or taking a walk is very much a political act these days. every choice endorses a particular way of life. how a person chooses to spend their time states a preference about what a person values. and making those choices thoughtfully gives rise to positive action. as a form of Resistance to the deep level of consumerism/greed that our nation currently resides in, taking a walk or sitting on the floor of a used book store and reading some poetry for free is a very good way to begin. while i'm doing these things i'm outside the nagging feeling of Powerlessness. i'm outside that circle of defeat. instead, i begin struggling toward a deeper faith. faith in anything. faith in everything. but faith nonetheless. my conscious comes forward and i can look at the world through a new lens that encompasses compassion and realizes the need to keep sight of what Nietzsche said:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.


or this statement by Albert Schweitzer:

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.


these are very hard things to do. very. but the attempt toward maintaining one's honor and personal values in the face of anger and outrage is so so so important. there is a heavy wind of angry blame blowing across our country. maybe it has always been there but, the current level of hate-mongering that seems to have become permissible (if not outright acceptable), is scary to me. it is alarming to me. and it has taken a huge amount of personal strength to not fire back at people who practice hate speech (in whatever form).

it's one reason why i was so quiet on my blog last week. i've been trying to swallow my own advice and apply it.

and so today, in honor of my brother's birthday and the massive triumph he has accomplished in overcoming our personal past, the fact he IS a self-made man who employs an inspiring amount of dedication toward the goals he has chosen for himself, i will undertake the huge 3.5 mile run this morning. when i come home, i will eat a healthy breakfast of fruit and greek yogurt, i will get back to my work, i will draw and write and read and learn something. learn anything. and i will make a conscious sustained effort to not inadvertently practice (and thereby endorse) modes of interaction that i find to be unethical, abusive, and yep immoral.

blame is a superficial emotion. guilt does not require blame in order to exist. and anger is not wrong or bad- it is how a person chooses to express it that is either positive, negative, or of no consequence whatsoever. i will choose to express my anger by focusing my attention on my own morality and see where I missed the mark... find the place where I slipped, look for the site of improvement that exists within myself and take action there.

my brother is 32 today. on friday i'll be 30. :) i am looking forward to this new number in particular. i'm enjoying seeing a grown-up Womanhood take hold of my body and mind. i'm enjoying noticing how i am coming in to my own now. i'm enjoying seeing my brother grow and change and become stronger and more and more dedicated to ethics. i'm enjoying figuring out how to blend lived experience with theory and philosophy and the creative impulse. and, for however hard it is to accomplish, i enjoy the charge to somehow make this week of my life different from all the others. i can start by making myself, my inner world, a bit different. to make my insides match my outsides and vice versa. to live what i believe. and to choose what i believe with care, love, and lots of self-examination.

happy birthday, andy. i love you and i am so proud of you.

the regular fears

my internet connection has been failing off and on for the past week and half and has become totally unreliable. i called customer service and they let me know our modem is bad and so a man is coming out today to check it out and hopefully give us a new one. the upside to this is that yesterday after posting about kate's book, my internet was down all day- effectively hog tying me and keeping me from deleting the post... which i sorta wanted to do and was in a panic all day long, waiting for my phone to ring, and going over and over in my head fear-driven conversations and how to explain the difference between art and life, how to use one to inform the other, and that creative license and honesty are an imperative of our times, etc etc etc. ha!

and then i started thinking about lady gaga. yep. she is a recent fascination of mine. and i thought how a lot of people in this country seem to think she's the spawn of Satan and, looking at her work, listening to her songs, and paying attention to her message of self-acceptance and self-love... i really have no clue where these attacks on her are coming from. it's one thing not to like her work, a totally other to label her as "poison for the minds of our children". and i thought: here's this 24 years old girl that has somehow managed to acquire enough strength and stamina to endure such a massive onslaught of hatred and malice, and here i am, a 29 year old girl, fretting about a "review" i wrote about a book i love and posted on my personal blog. a blog which doesn't get a ton of traffic anyway. at least i don't think it does- i disabled the tracker on it months and months and months ago.

but there it is- the thing every person needs to overcome if they expect to be a writer (in the public sense of the word): getting beyond the fear that you will anger or embarrass your family, and speak from a site of truth and strength. let come what may. this is a very very VERY hard thing to do. very.

i love my family. of course i want them to be proud of me, the work i do, and the person i am. we've been through a lot of shit together and have come out on the other side with a deeper understanding of what it is to be resilient, capable, and how to truly practice forgiveness. still, there are some stories that need to be told. they need to be told because silence seems to have (strangely) become the dominant mode of our era. these stories we have need to be shared. and when i stumble across a piece of writing that i am able to see my own life story in, i feel such a huge comfort. i become stronger. i become more confident, more able to not only stand up for the rights of others, but also for my own. i also become more able to forgive, to see the other side. silence prevents forgiveness.

and so, i must find a way to let my words and work keep their wings. i must find a way to shake off fear, run right through it, and just keep digging digging digging. it is a strange world and a strange life and our stories have such value, such power, such music in them. i want to be strong enough to let that fact sit on high and not apologize for the life i have lived and the life i have found as a result.

here i am

hello! good morning! i missed you! :)

i missed the click of the keys below my fingers and this time in the morning to ramble on and on. but it was wonderful to have a friend here. especially daniela. we've been friends since we were 14. we met walking home from school one day and have been close ever since. she brought pictures taken when we were ditching school one day, trying on the clothes in the Scottish Shop. hahaha! kilts and jackets and hats! hilarious! and, though we look the same to each other, we look like total babies in the photographs. and the entire time she was here we laughed hard! just picked right back up from where we left off like not a day had passed since the last time we saw each other. we also had a lot of heart-to-hearts too. though our circumstances are different, we are in the same place of transition- realizing our own adulthood, considering ethics and values and trying to choose a path through life rather than having the path choose us. that stage. that scary, daunting stage full of uncertainty and anxiety. the fear. and so fate brings us together just at the right time when we can talk and explore and wrestle together for a week- laugh at ourselves and help each other along. having my longest friend here in my home all to myself was so encouraging and just plain joyful.

and now- coffee and the early fog and scribbling in my notebook. the meandering of my morning routine. the chill and the quiet. i wrote for a solid 2 hours this morning. my path becoming clearer and clearer. integrity as necessity. ethics as a MUST. courage. courage. courage. and, as elisabeth relayed, "the continual TRY".

all of a sudden, so many people bought work down at the gallery. THANK YOU! i can't even tell you what security you have provided! what encouragement and faith! and right in time! just what i needed, just what i was craving! the grand NUDGE to keep moving forward. ((((HUGE HUG)))) you lend me such bravery.

as my pencil scratches, i become more and more self-assured, more rooted in the relevance of the work, the necessity of my practice. i begin to feel like Kusama- that my work is "art medicine". i need it. i cherish it. i believe in it. i will follow it wherever it leads.

and last week, we just played. i started crocheting a new banner and painted some more little alices that need to be adorned with glitter and stamped out some hearts to be cut out and hung on the wall. :) fun and healing and playful. that stuff is so necessary within my practice- doing something light-hearted gives me strength to continue exploring Loss and what it means, how it effects us, and what benefits it can provide... that ruined landscape is also the site where hope springs... and how to locate that hope, that flowering, that incentive to continue. the grand NUDGE again and again. HOPE as a call to brave, compassionate action.

i'm happy to be back inside the Blackland. happy to ramble on and wrestle. i didn't get on the computer at all really while daniela was here. there's a lot to read and write back about, a lot to catch up on, a lot of research to continue, a lot to learn. but it was wonderful to have a little vacation here at home. i am recharged and resolved and reassured, and i'm very happy to see you! good morning! :)

the world contains such amazing people

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this little video makes me reconsider so many things about how we perceive "living well" in this country. this woman is adorable because she's smart, savvy, kind, ethical, and knows how to wield a hammer. her name is Dee Williams.

i really want to know what book she is reading.

philosophies

such a quiet.

and a moment of stillness.

and i am less and less concerned with right and wrong.

just effective and ineffective, warranted and unwarranted, what works for me and what doesn't work for me. a stoic philosophy- knowing myself and then living in accordance with what that is/means.

behavior that lines up with belief.

and i acknowledge that this harmony may not always be pleasant or appear beautiful. "beauty" is as subjective as "right". morality is relative. ethics are individual. and i mean that in terms of application. i mean to say that my ethics are for me to apply to myself. that's who they exist for. it is my code, my way, my walking stick.

the big WHY.

these pictures are a document of that wrestling: a catalogue of my attempt to make meaning. accuracy is important. it takes courage and patience. but accuracy about what? my life and what it has meant. it may mean something different in a year, in a month, tomorrow. and so... some sort of exorcism. some sort of reckoning.

self-portrait after self-portrait.

aren't we all just talking about ourselves? giving light to our loves, hates, losses, and concerns.

i don't think a person can make ART about shit they don't care about. captivation is mandatory. the subject must be relevant to the artist dealing with it. it has to be. and it IS if it is any good at all.

when i am captivated i can work all day. when i find the right form, the right image, when everything is married and conjoined and aligned in a way that makes sense to me, that is true to the mess of things or the beauty of things, i will work until my hand locks up in a huge, painful cramp. i do not abandon it. i stay and stay and stay because something honest is going on. and that site of honesty, for however idiosyncratic it may be, is where the reckoning occurs. it is where ART is made.

i can be honest about my own impulses toward blame or self-pity if i dig deep enough to actually see where they come from, if i find the hidden kernel that gives rise to those feelings. but merely to offer an expression of blame, an expression of self-pity, adds nothing to the conversation. it shuts conversation down. all it is is lashing out. it is not courageous. the results are not ART.

but that doesn't mean an artist can't be angry or ugly. you can be. is it warranted? and if it is- don't excuse yourself, don't blame anyone else, keep the responsibility and guilt of it for yourself, let it be ugly and don't try to cover it up or run from the aftermath. stand there. own up. that might be ART: to not run. to not make excuses.

to make a statement and stand by it even if the statement is ugly or offensive is an act of courage that has the capability of causing a reckoning, a fracture, a tear, a split in the seam. "ugly" is relative too. and sometimes, it is warranted. sometimes an ugly expression causes us to notice an overlooked beauty- a situational contingency or symbiosis that supplies knowledge and an avenue to compassion... and those things are rewards.

rewards are not always shiny and warm.

behavior that lines up with belief.

i am changing my attitudes about certain things. effective, ineffective. acceptable, unacceptable. necessary, unnecessary. and only as they apply to me, my practice, my life, my ins and outs and daily grind.

and so this catalogue is only a catalogue. it is not an argument for why i might be right and another person is wrong. it is not a case i am building against anyone or anything. and if i have indited anyone, it is myself. it is either effective or it isn't. and if i can get to that site of honesty where the reckoning occurs than i can steadfastly believe in what i'm doing because i have achieved an amount of courage, i have achieved an amount of clarity, i have done something relevant for my own life. and of course i want the looker to be effected. of course i want to catch their eye and keep it. but i can't dictate that. my tastes, my desires, my needs are my own to satisfy. just as i walk passed paintings, others will walk passed mine. it is no strike against me. the other person has an entire life inside them that i know nothing about. we are not all cut from the same cloth and we do not all share the same beliefs or have the same needs. especially not when it comes to art. i'm more than okay with this and am not beaten down by it. and increasingly, i am thankful for those who do stop to look. who stay a minute and look at the lines and shadows and (hopefully) see a bit of their own biography in the shape and twist.