Tension as Divination

I named this blog after a concept I wasn't sure I understood, but felt: being on a tight line of a spiderweb, riding that thin edge of thought, when the pitfalls of taking a stand for a sentence or opinion seem to make the whole web quiver with danger. I felt I often had to take time to ponder the concept, while standing on that line, trying not to fall off of it either way, trying to reach the far, other side, where certainty might live.

Life rarely seems certain; more often we have to continue edging along the line, hoping the fog will clear before we make an irrevocable choice. Mostly the process is messy and the progress is hard to mark. Mostly I sit full with feelings, to which I must apply my powers of organization and articulation. In other words, I work through my dilemmas by writing, and this seemed like the place I would take a moment to look around and find my direction.

Today's subject is the life of a craftsperson at the OCF. The word *life* is the operating one here. I want to try to point out a few of the issues that continue to make trouble in the greater Fair community, from the perspective of someone who has invested my life in it.

I know all Fair Family tend to think we have invested our lives in Fair, at least during the event each year, but it's tough to value that investment in equal terms over all the roles. Each individual has a scale for that, and there is a time for each when they weigh up, maybe many times. Some people weigh up and leave the community, or at least the role they are presently playing. They lose the magic, or they change the role, or they find the balance won't hold and they quit. There is an occasional craftsperson who quits, finding the family isn't interested, the crafts don't sell, the nights are too loud or the times too changed. Mostly we don't quit.

We evolve. It might be difficult to imagine a life where creative decisions are routinely made, many in a day, and *things* are made from nothing over and over and over. Different each time, perhaps, or within a formula that works, but always adapting the current skills and materials to the current conditions and culture. We get a nice space in OCF to bring traditional crafts that may be found in only a few other places, maybe things we have made for decades, or lost skills that aren't economically or culturally that valuable outside the alternative culture. We have carved out a space for handcrafted items that is precious, diminishing in the world, and still vibrant in our corner. It hasn't been luck.

We've invested our lives, and the point of today is that this is indeed different in some vital ways from the ways volunteers have invested their lives. It's not about money. It's not about time on site. It's not about age, or skill level, or love, or fun, either. Everybody involved holds OCF in our hearts. There are significant ways that we do not differ. We all love it, and hate it, and work on it, and keep that weekend and the weeks and months surrounding it protected so that we can attend. We have a lot of common ground emotionally as well as physically.

Probably every crew has a person or two who are seen as elements who could be pruned out. They aren't reliable enough, they don't pull their weight, but they might be fun or nice or for some reason not easy to take out of the picture. They don't go away, they don't retire to the Elders, they keep showing up, and bringing with them what is viewed as inadequate, troublesome, or in the way of what is seen as necessary to thrive.
Every year they get their pass, and eventually most of them get moved out in some way or another, but there isn't a clear way within policy to ask them to step up or leave. Probably on crews this is handled however well or badly by the coordinators, and by circumstance. It's subjective.

Craftspeople, however, apply and pay, are juried if they are new, or might be grandfathered if they are not. There is some scrutiny by Craft Inventory each open morning, but CI has been pressured to be kind and gentle and artisans have been awarded more flexibility within their craft categories, so largely they feel respected and welcomed each year, and as long as they can come up with the fees, they come *home* to their space, where they might have spent thousands of dollars over the years to meet the demands of the event. They feel a lot of ownership, but more is centered on a small piece of ground and not as much on the whole site. All Fair family feel ownership. That's why we care so much and work so hard.

Longterm booth people put in their money, year after year, and are rewarded with the opportunity to work at Fair for the weekend. We're not invited to stay for a month, even if we have work to do, and we feel largely left out of the family events, which are usually held on weekends, by necessity, when we are, by necessity, retailing. We certainly are Family, we certainly play an essential part, but we definitely feel of a different status. We can be seen as opportunists by some: we drop in, collect our cash, and walk away.

Of course the reality is far from that, from my perspective. I produce massive amounts of stock, of which some 80% is there to support the 20% that might sell. I continually invest in materials, tools, skill-building, production efficiency and adaptation to physical needs, so that in fact my entire life is invested in those items you pick through, to love or reject. A bad Fair could quite literally ruin me.

Plus I have to haul enough stuff out there to set up a complete shop, home, and home for my workers and their families. I spend around a thousand bucks each year assuring access and comfort and a healthy and safe experience for those I need to bring with me to meet the demands of what has become a giant Fair. It has gotten harder and more expensive every year, just like everything else in life. I observe that the organizational direction is to continue to grow, so I don't see my investment getting any smaller, or my job any easier.

As I age I have to dial things in or I will be overcome. We all have to do this, streamline our expenses and possessions and options so that we will be able to continue. Any kind of retirement plan, health plan, or random plan is generated by me. Noone else is in place to do it. I am on my own.

I chose it, I will do it, but it comes with me to Fair. I bring my whole life there: my vulnerability, my health, my ability to progress, and my stuff, which represents my life investment. It's as if I bring my whole life there, rest it in place for a weekend, and then haul it all home. My image is of a snail with a shell that is large, awkward, and in danger of being crushed.

I might appear slow, with one foot still in my hippie past. I might not appear as vulnerable as I feel, with my big showy shell. I might be defensive if things start to move more quickly than I can go, which of course they do.

So whenever the concept of *revitalizing* the crafts at Fair comes up, I feel the danger. I don't hear this coming from my fellow craftspeople, who are in the continual process of revitalizing, every day, but from observers who see artisans who don't excite them. This veers into the subjective right away, and I could write many blogs about leather belts and the market for them, types of pottery, shirts people like or don't wear anymore, and on and on. For every booth at Fair there is a roster of fans and detractors. It's a messy concept, evaluating others.

Those who want to explore it struggle for respectful phrases, and at core the desire is to ensure that the life of the handcrafting artisan is protected, as well as the life of our event. The public can be fickle. If the public gets tired of what the event offers, they won't buy their tickets. Talk about investment! While I have my little life invested, the collective investment, with our tracts of land, our vehicles and buildings, our paid staff, our insurance bills, our legal issues, and so on, the Fair Family does have a deep collective vulnerability.

Every piece of that vulnerability needs to be examined, and there are those who work hard on visions for keeping us thriving and important enough to keep it all alive. I'm not so much a visionary, but more of one of those who hang on, resisting change, until it is apparent I have to give something up. Without some other people having visions, I wouldn't have made it, because it does take more than determination and hard work to succeed in the larger realms.

But I'm willing to do the hard work, so I started volunteering, on Scribe Tribe and Craft Committee. Immediately as I start to work together with these other hard workers, with those who are visionary and those who need some enlightenment, with those who have wide, or limited ranges of skills, I see that there is far more commonality than difference among us. It's usually only one or two steps back from our positions to see our commonality.

So in this discussion of revitalizing, or more correctly, continuing to be vital, since we never stopped, we have to step back time and time again to our commonality. We all love the Fair, and in that, we all feel a terrible vulnerability. We all fear we could lose what we have built, or watch it erode.

So the creative problem-solvers look to fix something, something that isn't working as well as it possibly could. There are a small number of booths, fewer than ten, in which the craftsperson, for many reasons, appears to not be doing all that they might to ensure this vital event. They're not keeping up, or they're using the Fair for selfish goals without giving enough back, in the perception of some observer. Possibly many observers.

We've all heard this, about Fair and Saturday Market as well, that the offerings are boring and nothing ever changes. I submit, that whomever the observer who is saying this is, THEY ARE WRONG.

Or at least there is enough doubt in the situation, enough subjectivity, that we can't act on it. Just as Joe Schmoe can't be kicked off Traffic because he is always ten minutes late (Fair time, heh heh) for his shifts, there just isn't enough information available to "weed out" a craftsperson who looks like an opportunist. As an observer you just have no idea what the reasons are for what the person offers at Fair. All you can do is make sure they follow the Fair guidelines, encourage (maybe with your dollars) those you observe doing things your "Fair way," or figure out why you are bored with the lives of these members of your community.

I constantly hear volunteers who brag about staying out of the eight completely, yet the eight is where the whole Fair exists, for me, so I feel rejected. My life expression is boring? I was taught that if you are bored, it is your problem. Look within. If I'm defensive, it is because you are actually attacking me? Are you being defensive because of your own vulnerability? Is there a different way to have the conversation to get around opening up these pools of fears?

The messiness is ours, and we have to work through it. Together. We have to articulate our fears so we can get around them. We absolutely have to understand each other's experiences. We have to stand on our common ground.

So step back, and move more slowly for us snail people. The giant spinning peach is heavy and we are already carrying a huge load. When the fears come up, even if they come up masked in anger, we have to address them.

This has gotten too long and I am still on the wire, not having reached clarity, and not feeling like I've even taken a step forward. What can the Fair organization do to keep the crafts vital and relevant? Is there a way to have evaluation without vulnerability? No, I don't think so.

However, there is a way to work through it. Policy is our protection, guidelines are our tools. Standards have to be spelled out in words; measurement and evaluation have to have concrete metrics. Let's acknowledge our fears, get our vulnerabilities on the table long enough to set them aside, and work together on our common goals. It's a huge and messy task, so we're going to have to do it in little but coherent pieces. We have to have the discussions, but the little hurts and the big fears they bring up don't have to defeat us.

We are stronger than we think. Let's continue to try to do our best, with every piece of stuff we make, every policy we try to craft, every letter we try to write. We have an excellent record, so there is no reason to think we will not find the elegant solutions.