The Things I Love Are Awful

Protecting Creative Space

Protecting creative space is something that I am quite passionate about. Particularly space where the artist is doing transformative work that is risky and perhaps not recognized and validated by the world.

And this constant onslaught and pressure to conform and produce is quite threatening and the capacity for the artist to survive it is in no way certain.

We see this consumption and destruction and we see those who simply thrive on attention suck all the energy and take up all the space. So, like I said, protecting a certain kind of creative space is of peak importance to me and something I have been doing most of my life.

STAND

Throw it all away
Left with nothing
I can say I am here
Reeling in the final conflict

A warrior of illusion stands
Waiting for absolution
When everything melts
And all distinction whispers away

Until standing
Wasted and empty
There is only
Life and death

And in between
The warrior of belief
Holds fast to the one string
Tied to reality

And climbing
Across it
I seek
Security

Staying True

Which is to say, it really is no small feat to protect oneself, at any stage, on any level. It is truly radical to have one’s own vision or sense of self and to protect it. To prioritize it. To take that risk and to let go the “safer” path. To trust the process.

So, I absolutely encourage it. Not in a dogmatic way. The boundaries are generally never clear in that oh so obvious, this is definitely the way, kind of way, except when they are. But they are exceedingly clear in the way that jumping rocks across a rushing river are clear. You make that split second decision to push a little here and a little there, to take the big leap, or veer left and take those one, two, three little hops to the shore. A delicate balance that sometimes lands you head first in the freezing water and that is just the way it is.

It’s really a matter of what one actually wants. What one sees as their job, duty, goal, identity as an artist.

What is the point?

The point is really easy to define if you measure it by the mechanism. Which most people do in my experience. The point is less easy to define if you don’t. The problem with measuring by the mechanism is it produces diminishing returns. It rewards those that are willing to exist within that world and create relative to it.

It should be noted, that my position is not so much a judgement as it is a contemplation. Things are what they are. They tend to work in certain ways. So if I want to go somewhere, I want to take the road that goes there and not somewhere else. If I imagine a road goes somewhere it doesn’t because I refuse to read the signs and look at the map, then that is my own delusion. It changes nothing.

But, what if there is no road for where I want to go because no one has considered it useful to build one because that destination is not marketable within their system of reality?

When Maps Become Useless

A sense of direction is useful and necessary until it isn’t. It can become an illusion of accomplishment. An appearance of great movement and activity that ultimately produces nothing of substance. Just distraction. The illusion of life rather than the thing itself. That is the nature of consumption and profit. It reduces life to things, art to commodities. Our sense of satisfaction rooted in transactional relationships. And this all essentially leads to violence of one kind or another.

Personally, I don’t wish to create violent art. And when I succumbed to extreme illness and disability, I could not.

Creating Mindfully

I stopped trying to be good at what I was doing, I stopped having a sense of direction or goals or plans and just did it. Because I didn’t have a choice. The only choice was to be where I was.

So I let go of the idea that I was doing something for some reason and just embraced the practice itself. Which may sound perfectly reasonable to you. But I had been making my living from being a photographer or working in the industry for over a decade. It was all I had in that regards. So, to do it for no reason was quite significant to me at the time.

No reason may not be entirely true. The reason was, I wanted to. I wanted to see what would happen, what I would create if I didn’t judge it at all. If I didn’t require it to be particularly spectacular or important or difficult. If doing it was enough. If my own interest was enough.

And it turns out it was. Because I did in fact have something important to say. And it did turn out to be rather spectacular and difficult. I just didn’t know it would be. I didn’t expect people would be interested in my point of view because they generally weren’t. They wanted the important and the spectacular and were fairly certain that my vision didn’t conform for every number of reasons. Yes, I had encouragement also, but…

So I worked very, very slowly and quietly, in my own strange way for many, many years.

While those “around” me had grand adventures and success, I stayed isolated in a little garden and did what I could in between migraines, pain and paralysis.

And during these many years, I aged.

I kept playing music and recorded when I could. I had to give up performing. I blended my visual work with my sound and contemplated an identity that was birthed purely of my own process rather then relative to external mechanisms of production and commerce.

I Found It More Interesting

That’s the funny part. The life I lament losing I don’t actually want, it’s just a particularly significant challenge to create what I do want.

That’s what I am working on now. A way to build community that creates in alignment with the way I create, so that it becomes possible to live that way.

It’s a beginning and as I like to say, beginnings have power.