Bless This Mess.

This post is a weird one, admittedly. But, over the weekend, I wrote a short short story (yep, no typo) about an elderly Japanese woman who decided to stay in the 19-mile radius evacuation zone despite the warnings. The other day on Twitter, I tweeted about being messy, about scribbling in between the lines, spilling my tea, about breaking things. I am so sick of everything so perfect perfect everywhere online, perfect photos, perfect lives, perfectly-placed items, everything perfectly curated purposely to show the absence of mess, chaos, confusion, and in some senses, life.

To me it’s the imperfections that lead us to perfection. I.e., there is no perfection until we unleash and embrace and lay bare our imperfections. Perfection isn’t the lack of life, but the celebration of it, in all of its messiness, noise, stress, love.

It’s where it’s okay to miss a stitch, to have an imperfect seam, to have a hair out of place, to not know what to say. The other day I realized that after I had run an errand that my lipstick was totally on askew, and wondered what the people at the vet thought when I went inside. I sat in the car and in the tiny mirror couldn’t see much else other than my lips, the lipstick a little above my cupid’s bow, some had even slipped a little below my bottom lip. And I laughed at the part of me that was immediately horrified by two tiny smudges.

I’m always the one with slightly crazy hair or an earring half falling out or a laugh that’s too loud, never perfect, despite my best intentions. I’m clumsy, I can’t wear anything white due to my penchant for spilling my tea and coffee, there always seem to be some cat hair hitching a ride on the back of my skirt or coat. I once stained my entire face using a coffee scrub. And that’s okay.

I’m okay with that. Because it’s these little foibles that bring me back to the imperfection of life and the true beat of living. I don’t want to see your projected life or what you wish your life was like, I want to see your life. I’m not saying bring on the wreckage, I’m saying show me your messes. That’s where creativity lies.

So, in that spirit, I’m posting the story here. It’s not perfect,* or even necessarily good. But it felt good to play around with fiction as I haven’t in years. It felt good to stretch my brain even though the outcome wasn’t stellar. And it’s imperfect. I share it with you as a reminder that life is messy, our creations are messy.

Bring on the mess, bring on the scribbles, bring on the experiments, bring on what you really see, instead of what you wish us to see.


*I’m resisting the urge to edit the typo right now, though…


When I was a kid and wrote fiction, I used to write things like “This is not about real life!” on the cover of my notebooks so people wouldn’t think all the weirdness was autobiographical. This story is pretty much the same thing. I just started wondering, what if you couldn’t leave the area? Or had no reason to leave? How many people would that be? What would they be thinking? Doing? Seeing?

Too Busy.

Lately I’ve found the word “busy” escaping my mouth. Too busy? Seriously? When did too busy become a synonym for I just don’t want to?

A long time ago, when I was still in love with Walter Benjamin and The Arcades Project I wrote the text below:


April 21, 2006:

“In 1839 it was considered elegant to take a tortoise out walking. This gives us an idea of the tempo of the flânerie in the arcades.” -Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project

laundromat.jpg

I’ve picked up The Arcades Project again, and have been reminded of how much I adore Benjamin’s views on the importance of the flaneur.

Walking around town never fails to incur a wealth of inspiration and tiny joys. I wonder if walking around town with me must, at times, seem like walking around with a tortoise, as I walk with wide eyes and frequently stop to further investigate my surroundings, taking my time as I wander down the path.


I’m thinking that maybe every time I hear myself say the word “busy,” I should replace it with the mental image of Benjamin’s tortoise. When should I ever be too busy to get inspired and find joy? Heck, when should you be too busy for these things, too?

How did we slip into being so busy that joy is quick to fall off the map?

Hi, Hey, Hello, 2011.

Here’s to the new year and all the dreams and adventures and love it may bring. As for 2010 parting, few things could be more fitting that this piece above.


Why this piece, you ask?

Because it depicts the juxtaposition of rough, activated and rugged (bull) vs warm, welcoming and beautiful (crochet) and how well they can go together. As those are the two poles we circumnavigate continuously in our daily lives, in between the good stuff and the bad stuff, I really like that it appeared on Wall St right at the tail end of a rough year. While this particular installation only lasted a scant two hours, this image remains as a testament to an artist’s vision, as she expertly combines aesthetics and concept. Of her work, Olek (born Agata Olek) writes,

It was truly a year of guerrilla actions that opened a new path in my crocheted investigations. I started it with a bike and ended up with the Charging Bull as a Christmas gift to NYC and a tribute to the sculptor of the bull, Arturo di Modica,* who in another guerrilla act, placed the bull on Wall Street in Christmas of 1987 as a symbol of the “strength and power of the American people” following the 1987 Stock Market crash.

This crocheted cover represents my best wishes to all of us. It will be a great, prosperous year with many wonderful surprises!!!

For more on Olek, check out her website, artist statement and be sure to check out her work, especially the Sculptures section for more amazing crocheted and fiber work.


So here’s to 2011, and here’s to new work, new ideas, new collaborations and new joy in this new year! And like di Modica and Olak, keep in mind that creativity and its creations are a gift, for both the maker and the viewer.



As makers we’re meant to let our ideas and whims break through into actual visual manifestations, we’re meant to put forth the work we envision in the shower, in a conversation, in dreams, everywhere we look. Maybe some projects falter and crack, but if you look carefully enough, they always light the path to an even bolder and more thought out project, the original thought was just the starting block.


As viewers, we’re meant to not only appreciate the time and effort that has gone into the making, we’re also meant to see these creations as manifestations of our own goals, in whatever shape they might evolve. Like the maker (creator, artist, crafter, whatevs), as viewers we are also here to create and make something beautiful, just perhaps not visually. Creativity, while at times, goofy, melancholy, engaging, is at its root, transformative, freeing and bold sparking revolutions both inside and outside of ourselves.




*For more on Arturo di Modica, check out his website. For more information on his statue, Charging Bull, go check out the Charging Bull Wikipedia page. Most interesting perhaps, is the original NYT story written the day after the bull’s installation on Wall Street in 1989.

[For more about the second photo, it’s by Flickr user Fotologic. About this photo she writes, “A still from a stop frame animation I made with my 8 year old son today. The full quotation from Henri Bergson reads: “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating.”]

And for extra credit and two gold stars, go learn more about Henri Bergson, k?

Sometimes It’s the Quiet That Leaves the Biggest Scar

“Today the only works which really count are those which are no longer works at all.” -Theodore Adorno*

“Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” -John Berger**

It’s important to film and document what happens, when it happens. It’s important to leave documents of real life instead of curated life, which we’ve all become so used to. We document the happy moments, the milestones, the loved ones. We document so we don’t forget. The bad moments? We want to forget them, but we can’t. We don’t need photos, but what about people outside of our own heads? They need to see it too.

Riots, protests, need photographers and filmmakers. I want to document the quiet protests. The ones going on in houses, huts, tents, refugee camps, work about countries fleed from when they finally got to where they fled.

It’s the quiet I want to preserve and write down. I want to speak for them, not necessarily even out of a political standpoint, but a human one. We all want to leave this planet better than we started, to make our mark. While we with the internet and freedoms have a chance at that, millions don’t. I want to give them a chance to leave their mark and tell their stories.***


It took me a long time to uncover that the mundane is just as important as the other side of our reality. And finally, I came to a place where I believe that the most important work is done in, around, between and among these two worlds. The work of struggle and complacency, fighting against each other, just as those two opposing forces fight against each other all day long. We eat toast for breakfast while listening to the radio. At the very same time, somewhere a child is dying of starvation. Those are indelible aspects of our everyday lives, and I think it’s important to document them both.

The former and the latter are both someone’s realities. We create to ignore, justify, fight, love, hate, question those two differing worlds. For me, creation is just as much an act of salvation as it is an act of education. The mundane and the horrific have different stories to tell, and as such are equally important to take notice of. For years and years I tried to figure out what those two things fascinated me; figuring out their connection opened a whole new world. In their dissonance, they leave a bigger mark than by their isolation.

As for the scar left behind? It’s the emotions that the images themselves evoke as opposed to an actual physical mar. Most scars we can cover by wardrobe or makeup. But, however, when we sit down to create? There’s no makeup or wardrobe to hide behind, the curtain’s open before us, waiting for us to open it wider rather than run away or shut them tight.


*Epigraph from the Introduction of The Object of Performance by Henry M. Sayre.
**
Ways of Seeing, by John Berger. (Page 1)
***Something I scribbled down one day at random.

Tough Dudes, Soft Craft: Men Getting Crafty

This story has made its rounds on the US craft blogosphere yesterday, but for those of you farther afield, I wanted to post about it in case you haven’t seen it, Idle Pastime: In Off Hours, Truckers Pick Up Stitching. I especially adore that when the man in the video was interviewed he was waiting to pick up his next delivery load: 45,000 pounds of Spam, which, seems quite manly, don’t you think?





I think timing is quite interesting given the Quilts 1700-2010 show at the V & A Museum that just opened is showing off the work of some stitching inmates trained by Fine Cell Work. There with all the historic quilts is a quilt made by the tough guys. There is a lovely video about their work over here, if you haven’t seen it already, please go check it out. There is also a little bit more about the truckers sewing above over here.

Just as craft hit a point 10 years ago where feminists began to embrace craft, have we reached a point where men are beginning to embrace it more and more? Just like feminists took back the kitchen and the knitting needles, are men finally getting hassled less now that craft has been in vogue for a decade? I’d like to think so.

Although, just like with the feminists, as we heard such gender stereotyping nonsense like, “You?! You knit? I thought you’d be off giving people tattoos or in a mosh pit or not shaving your legs?” I think that the novelty factor inherent in men embracing craft is a bit sad. Why can’t men make “soft” things if they want to? After all, soldiers are given sewing kits to repair things in the field and wasn’t the toughest dude of the 80s, MacGyver, one hell of a crafty genius? And who could forget, everyone’s favorite male stitcher former pro-football player Rosey Grier? And his 1973 book, Needlepoint for Men?

Hopefully, just like all us feminists who finally get asked less and less why in the heck we’re knitting instead of doing something rough and tough, men who get their craft on will soon enough be seen as just normal (albeit awesome) guys that like to be creative. Because after all, there are plenty of single ladies (myself as well as many of my friends and peers) who think that a guy who can craft with the best of us, is pretty darn hot. So maybe next time you see a guy trying to impress a girl or guy they fancy by being reckless, you should take away the fire/speed/mass amounts of alcohol and hand them some needles and thread.

And these truckers and inmates aren’t the only dudes who craft. Here are some other awesomely mantastic craft links:
*I Knit
*Manspun
*Fiber Beat
*Stitchstud
*Dudecraft
*Mr. XStitch
*Crochetdude
*Manbroidery
*Franklin Habit
*Men Who Knit
*Extreme Craft
*It’s a Purl, Man
*Brooklyn Tweed
*Shane Waltener
*The Man Who Knit
*Brian Sawyer (Check out the DVD about knitting men!)

And I’m sure there are loads I have forgotten to list here. Have any other examples of guys stepping out and up to the needle or hook?