Observing Changes

This is a heady time for me, with a lot of things in the air, a lot of personal risk, but a calm center somehow. Of course Spring, the hopeful season, is here, and the Saturday Market will open very soon in response. Many of us are really ready for that. I have made almost no money all winter (Jell-O Art is a full-time job), so am really ready for some retail. It's not that I haven't been working, just not so much in my shirt shop. Though I made Jell-O shirts! (And Babes with Axes, thank you, thank you.)

A few years ago I noticed that the maple tree I can see from my kitchen goes through a pink flush when the buds appear with the leaves inside. It's subtle, and the first year I noticed it I was astonished, as I have been looking out that window for many years. This year it lasted for over a week, here and there on the tree at first, and then quite evident, but not so much when the sky was cloudy, gloriously against the intense blue we had for several days last week. Every time I go outside I notice things that I have not remarked upon to myself, even though I must have seen them in passing for years, even decades. I think this close observation developed from my house research, as I have learned to look at the physical presentation of something, a house or a person, or a news article or an object, and try to see the story behind it. It's a deep observation that is gratifying, and I'm happy to be developing it, even though it makes me sad for all the things I have missed before. When it comes to people, I've been extremely saddened by the deaths of people I really should have paid more attention to, in a more focused and personal way, and that is a particularly important lesson in being here, now, and alert. I hope I learn it well.What was I so afraid of? It seems so trivial.

I've been doing a lot of business writing in my roles with OCF and the Market, which I enjoy but also makes me nervous sometimes. I've observed that close scrutiny has worked for me here, too. The minutes-taking is so very detail-oriented, even when I am supported by the voice recorder, and it can be crucial that the intent of words be transmitted as well as the words. It's really a skill-set that goes way beyond spelling and grammar, and it also is satisfying to be able to serve my organizational families in this way, but there is the risk part too. I can't make up or reveal intent that I might see but is not really in the words; I can't use my knowledge of the person or outside factors that weren't actually stated at the meetings. It can be really hard to just stick to the slippery type of facts in discussions. Even when things are said with conviction, they may not be factual, and I can misinterpret just as quickly as the next person. Some things are crucial, although most are not, and all of the minutes are reviewed by the groups before being adopted into the public record, but still, they have to be right.

I don't feel that as pressure most times, though I do get overly conscientious and pedantic about some things. I like motions to be in formal language, and I dislike using people's names, not wanting to set anyone up to be a target for something they said in a semi-public meeting. People say the most shocking things as jokes, and I have to know when they are kidding. It's usually not that difficult, but I get frustrated with too much flippancy. Anger and confrontation, of course, really derail the meetings, and damage everyone there. When those come up, everyone thinks about quitting and never attending another meeting.

There's one kind of knotty aspect I worry about: the recordings. They are actually not the public record, as only the approved minutes are. The recordings should probably be discarded, although back when we used the little cassettes we saved them all, and occasionally someone had the need to listen to the original discussions for some fine point. Lots of fine points are left out of the minutes, as well as who expressed them, so there is some value in the original recordings, and I also take detailed notes which often include names, but those are also my interpretations. So the recordings are valuable, but again, I don't want to be a party to making anyone a target. Interesting that when I listen to the recordings, if there is anger or confrontation, it is never as shocking as it was when I was in the room. At that distance, I can hear behind the anger.

You wouldn't think I would have to worry about targets in these very human organizations, but irrational and angry people are everywhere and hippies don't have a corner on human understanding. Everyone is capable of going instantly to a defensive stance over any issue and often that is the default, before they even consider the other aspects or ask for clarification. Close observation, mostly learned from co-counselling, has increased my ability to see through these defensive patterns, to a degree, but if I am attacked, I can go into altered states of intense anxiety, so I'm pretty protective about interactions with angry people. A lot of my avoidance patterns are simply to keep myself safe from the anger of others. I quail and am useless in person, but in the safety of my kitchen, I find I can do written analysis fairly well and respond to it in a fairly helpful way, if I take the time to make sure my thoughts are clear and get over feeling irrationally targeted.

It's kind of simple sometimes, just asking the question "Is that me?" In other words, am I coming from my own defensive stance, or an irrational place of my own? Again, very subtle stuff at times, and often about deep fears and what is called occluded material, things you are yourself not really able to be aware of or access rational thought around. Deep, deep stuff like trauma and loss, separation and fear.

So writing letters concerning kicking people out of places they love is really hard. I merely walked by a young couple last night who were blanket-vending downtown, and being arrested at that moment, and my heart sank. I wondered all the way home why things had progressed to arrest. The police seemed nice enough, but they were charged with enforcing the rules, and the couple had no doubt been warned. I had seen them in another spot before the meeting and guessed that they were doing that shuffle of desperation when you move across the street or down the block and set up again, thinking maybe you won't be noticed, will wear the authorities out, or somehow escape the fate you probably don't believe is coming. That couple probably did not believe arrest and an expensive ticket would add to their problems, and they surely had some problems if they were trying to sell jewelry from a blanket on the sidewalk. It was just sad, and I wanted to save them, but of course I just walked over to the Kiva and then home so I wouldn't miss Jeopardy. Oh, the irony of it all.

The concept of jeopardy has been on my mind, as over the last two months we (the RadarAngels) wrote the show for the Jell-O Art Show performance, a parody of the TV show which will of course be hilarious, to us at least, and we hope to our audience. Early on I felt that everyone in the place should experience some subtle type of jeopardy that they could easily overcome, a symbolic growth pushed by art, in particular Jell-O art, kind of like the unfolding maple buds which made it through the snow and pinked up anyway, and the loved ones who lived their lives and then found the lives over, as we all will. Deep stuff about safety, risk, our short lives, our world of things, houses, craft objects, and all around the circle the way things always go, but made light of through music and fun, and resolved in a positive manner so we all could leave feeling safe.

So to go on just a bit more before everyone gets tired of reading, I have to use all the skills I've got to do difficult things sometimes, but with support, I can do them, and it gets easier all the time. When I first started to volunteer for OCF, there were a lot of major shifts in my thinking as I joined with thousands of people to not just experience the event, not just participate in it on my level of using it as a part of my income stream, but to deepen my commitment to making it work well for not just me, but others like me, and even others who were not like me. I felt compelled to speak from my experience for the mutual understanding of others with different experiences. I was a lot more selfish at first. Gradually I have started to join those who are caring for the event/organization long past our individual lives, way outside our own country fair. (You know the way there are thousands of different country fairs going on at once out there, simultaneously.) I certainly am not at the decision-making level on any big scale, and don't want to be, but in the craft realm I have begun to be able to take a stand and have some clear convictions. It's not easy! It's way easier to reserve judgement, continue observing, and allow, than it is to take action and make something change.

The current struggle, which is not a new one, is at the core one of the survival of the craftsperson. To continue to thrive making things by hand, one at a time, out of the impossibly vague recesses of our individual creativity, taking raw materials and ending up with an object of beauty and utility--this is a delicate and tenuous thing. Jell-O Art in it's gorgeous impracticality shines an important light on this, but you'll have to read about that in the other blog (Gelatinaceae.blogspot.com). To cut to the chase, I have begun to fight for the survival of the handcrafted artist. Not just to fear for her. Not just to observe the increasing difficulty of staying important and current, not just to make my own adjustments to fit the conditions, but to join with others, to fight for her. And him, of course.

I'm not a visionary, but I also tend to not dissove in fear of the future. 3-D printers will change everything, just like computers and cell phones did, but I don't fear that. Small factories are a common and adaptive reponse to the marketplace, and I don't fear them, but I have to take a stance against that erosion of the hand and heart connection of the artist with the appreciator, through the fingerprints of the artist on the object and the face-to-face interaction between the two. I have to be willing to draw some lines and stand on one side of them. I wouldn't be able to do it alone. Thankfully, the nature of my membership organizations is that we all care so deeply about this and the related issues, that there are plenty of other members willing to stand with me.

What makes it hard is when people take aim before they take the time to see what we are so passionate about. To the small factory owner, who is still passionately involved with their objects and has not changed their own heart connection, it's hard to see the shifts and why they matter. I've been there, I've had employees and moved more to management and done less production and felt that discomfort. To be honest, I still feel like I am in a grey area of the crafts world with my decoration of commercially produced items, be it as it may that I do the handwork necessary to qualify and my objects are certainly crafts. Now that the little factory is long gone for me I can see the contradictions better than when I was creating the contradictions.

But the issue remains that the craft artist is up against a world that could cease to value her. Spending low-paid hours to take pains to perfect objects of sometimes limited utility with relatively high prices is counter to the way the world markets are going, and that is perfectly evident everywhere. Doing it without employees at a volume necessary to survive in this world is not only difficult but might become impossible. We could be a dying part of the art world, but I am convinced that we are not. I'll die, of course, and join the crafts fair in the sky where we just get to sit there and collect good feelings instead of dollars, and make only what we want instead of what will sell, but art will never die. No commercially manufactured object, no matter how complex, is going to affect a person the same as a handmade one. People will still seek those out and marvel at that transformation. And to quote one of the songs I'm valiantly practicing this week to stand up in front of strangers and perform art through: "tell me love and hope never die."

Love and hope never die. Craft will survive the present challenges, and I will survive whatever confrontations come my way just as I will survive the two performances I have gotten my chicken self into (thank goodness for costumes.) Challenge is just as much a creative process as handwork. You dig in, you gain skills, you use those skills to gain broader skills, you pay attention, you learn from the work of others, and you pitch in and do what presents itself to the best of your abilities. You use your creative abilities in every way you can. And you try to leave your anger and irrational attacks on others out. You try to learn to ask the cops what you can do to find common ground rather than getting mad and calling them pigs, or whatever mistake that young couple made yesterday. 

My very first thought, when I saw the couple with their blanket, and I was going to a product screening for the Saturday Market, was to invite them to come along. I wish I  had. I didn't take the time, and was involved in my own work. I saw the buds, but I didn't see the frost that was coming for them. I hope someone at the police station told them about Saturday Market. I hope they told them that you can pay your membership fee in installments, and that you can join one of the most benevolent, easy-entry, loving and caring networks in the known world. Love and hope never die, friends.

And just to end with that irony that we all love so much, the guy who did some  the most virulent gay-hating in our times just died, and though I really don't believe in heaven and hell, I wonder what he might be experiencing as he left his realm of hate and moved to another. I'm guessing either it was over, and that was it, or he opened into the greatest space of love and hope we could possibly imagine in the most creative moment we ever had. I have a friend who tells me that we do not die. I won't try to explain that, but just imagine it and how that might work. If there is anger and hate there, in that dimension, seems like we would all be able to see it in the most transparent way. We might even laugh at it. We might be wise enough to see it as a tool we do not need, one that hurts, not only those that it is directed at, but our own selves. 

If you are angry, that means you care and you need something more. Figure out what it is, and how to get it without hurting anyone else. Don't be a bully. Demands separate us. Join, somehow, the other caring people and find the common ground. Persistence is a good quality when used in good ways, but sometimes you can't have what you want. I'm haunted by the downcast look of the young woman who sat handcuffed with her necklaces while the second officer negotiated with her partner. She was compliant, yes, but ashamed and bereft. She got damaged there. That shouldn't have happened, and I'm not faulting the police either, or the laws. It just was an ugly bit of jeopardy, not caused by art, but in the interface of art and society.

Next time I want to know what to do and do it. Love and hope will keep me growing, keep me helping, keep me living while I am here. Let's focus on that this spring, the season of opening and beauty. Did you know this is apparently the International Day of Happiness? I'm celebrating.