Let's Fall in Love, Rewritten

Let's make Jell-O,
Why shouldn't we make Jell-O?
Republicans screwed us, they took us to hell,
Why shouldn't we jell?

Let's all eat cake,
Thanks for all that Dana can make,
We've got Dave's cookies, we've got Pad Thai,
And we can get high!

Dance, while we still have our health care,
Smile, while you still have your teeth.
Play, while you pay off your mortgage,
You won't get tax relief.

Let's shift our eyes,
And notice we live in paradise,
Here we have love, here it is mellow,
And we always have Jell-O!

If you know me you know that for me, Jell-O is not the stuff you can mix with water and eat when you're in the hospital,it's my metaphor for sacred joy. Jell-O Art is my vehicle for fun, my glamour, my saving grace, and all winter after we close our retail season, I sing and write parody songs and scripts for the Radar Angels performance, and fill my living room and kitchen with strange and wonderful creations made with the transparent, brilliantly colored and sometimes jiggly substance that the uninitiated eat. It feeds me, but not in conventional ways. And on the advent of spring, sometimes on Opening Day of Saturday Market, high holy day as it is, we have the Jell-O Art Show, and it is glorious and Joy Incarnate. And, bowing, I am Your Queen of it. Humbly.

But it's only December, and this was quite a week in politics, and it's the Holidays. So after reading the paper this morning and before heading off to my day of retail at the Holiday Market, I spent a little time yelling obscenities, a little time lecturing myself, and by the time I was slogging through puddles at the Fairgrounds, I was composing songs.

My lecture was about letting politics get to me...I paid way too much attention to the tax debacle and was way too scared by the zombies who think they are in charge. I'm quite terrified of what those people are doing. It puts me in this state I call the matrix fantasy which is the cynical feeling that no matter what, I am enslaved and playing whatever game they want me to play, powerless and complicit and doomed, so doomed. I've felt it since the Kennedy assassinations, really, so it began when I was 13. When it began I was too young to know what I was doing, but I worked on my resilient qualities, taught myself to escape into trees, books, and creativity, and cultivated my joy.

I had a traumatic childhood, as did many of us, and I feel for you if you are as unhealed about it as I am. Holidays are particularly bad for me, so this year I vowed a drama-free six weeks. I decided I would limit TV, mute all the commercials, and do whatever I had to do to avoid laying my feelings on someone else, most particularly those who are close to me. I get hypervigilant about my particular conditions, and I know my patterns and weak spots really well by now, so avoidance works and if I stay low and don't get too vulnerable, I am always hopeful that I will not fall into those dramatic patterns. My lecture involved restricting my social interactions, not allowing myself to be too vulnerable, not eating the things I know make me sick, not doing the things I know make me sad and helpless and anxious.

Yeah, wish me luck. All that is pretty incompatible with selling one's creations in the public marketplace. Being at Holiday Market is like having an open house of the heart. I am lucky enough to see all of the people I love (who live nearby at least) and I treasure our short but deep conversations and check-ins. I thrive on the warmth in the room, with so many people I know and have worked with so long. I eat well, and I'm proud of my work and how popular it is. I have reams of observations and stories about what goes on there, and I do love it. But it does make me vulnerable and there are a lot of people there who get my heart strings twanging and it's not always harmonic.

But today, people from the very first were SO KIND! Everyone, from the start, was sweet and nice to me, appreciative, welcoming, generous, loving, and wonderful. I have experienced this before when things in the big world got bleak. Each time, like after the election, after the financial crisis, after 911, or after significant deaths in our community, each time people came out, spread love, and managed to salvage some peace and some joy from the wreckage. Determined, deliberate, and making a statement. That is how the people are among whom we live.

At one point, and this was tragic with a side of comical, I was over buying sweet potatoes and the fire alarm went off over at the Farmers' Market. A loud voice said to Evacuate, to Leave the Building!! Repeatedly, with a very loud alarm and flashing lights! People began to comply but I literally ran back to my booth on the complete opposite side of the building, and thank goodness this was not happening on the craft side. However, the alarm and flashing lights were loud and bright enough to be intrusive, and that's when things got comical. Sadly for the farmers, it shut them down, but for us, we shut the doors and Pickles and Peppers kept playing, everyone gathered in the aisles, hoping against hope that the sprinklers would not come on, and it was kind of like Shopping While the Titanic Went Down. People kept shopping, people were laughing at ourselves, and all of the stories came out, of the time the ceiling fell in in Holiday Hall, which was during the big snow, and remember how booths were empty so other people moved into them for the day, and remember when we sold outside, and on and on.... It was a party. I guess it was hard to play clarinet but it was once in a lifetime, and a good story is always going to be a good story.

I felt terrible for the farmers, who were having a great day because the Fix it Fair was really fabulous and brought lots of people in. I think it did shut them down, though I'm pretty sure they didn't get deluged with water because there was actually no fire, just a teense of smoke from some soldering that I suppose no one thought would be a problem. I know it was hard on them, traumatic maybe, and I do care very much about that. Some day they'll laugh but probably not tomorrow.

It healed me, though, because there was one part of my day today (but only one!) that was hard. I was having a really great visit with someone who recently left the farmers' market, and our friendly conversation actually turned into a fight! He started trashing Saturday Market, repeating all of these mythical things that some of them think about us, which I won't of course tell you, because they aren't true, but I was kind of laughing and trying to tell him that no, that's what we say about them...and it would have been funny except it was ugly instead. He was hating us. He was holding resentments he had held for over a decade, because I know he had them then and it was the last time I actually had a conversation with him. I had forgotten why I avoided him. He hates us. He blames us for everything that isn't working for the farmers, or didn't work at some point, or hating us for everything we are and do. He really had it stored up.

Fortunately we were interrupted by some shocked customers and I told him we'd have to finish our conversation some other time, because I honestly feel that we do. We have to have it out until we both understand that those myths held by all of us about the "others" are not true and are in our way. And they're hurting us. They're not going to be helpful as we move together into our mutual and connected futures. And they're similar to other myths that other groups are operating within. It reminded me about the perils of division and irrational thinking and blaming and holding others responsible for things we ourselves need to work on and fix, and how we are really going to have to do that in concert. We really will. We can't split our town or our country or our world into two halves and operate separately. Anyone promoting that is putting us into the matrix fantasy and I simply will not accept living there. It's not the world I am willing to co-create.

So. It has been decided that I am vulnerable and will not get away with trying to pretend I am not. I will have to struggle through the holidays and the politics and the realities of aging and death and so will you, and we are stuck with doing it together. We cannot separate from each other, we can't separate from our myths and delusions, and we are going to have to work with them. We are here and it is now. Feel your grief and your fears, and so will I, but we will also bring them on down to the community gathering place and spread them around a little. It will help us all to do that.

That farmer and I may not get around to another maybe less ugly conversation, but at least we had the lovely one before we started to disagree, to remind us that sometimes we like each other. Us laughing and partying while the farmers had a hard time today will hopefully result in more of us supporting them tomorrow to get past it. (By the way, the sweet potatoes I got were amazing!) People buying or not buying things today will be just like them buying or not buying things for the rest of the month and then again for the rest of my life, and I'll love it and be bothered by it as it comes. It's the life I chose.

And I chose it here, and I made it here, because of all of you, so if I isolate and don't write and try to protect my tenderness, I won't do it very much until something makes me break through and sing and dance and wear Jell-O on my head. Because that is how it is. That's the joy I want, and that's the joy I make. Thank you for doing your part!

One thing finished, a pile of other things to begin

It was a terrific Jell-O Art Show as usual, and I marvel every year at the way the limits disappear and I am able to do so many things that I would normally avoid...the persona of the Queen takes over and I can extend much more generosity and social ease than I can do as the hermit worker that I really am most of the time. I'm still feeling vulnerable and depleted but also buoyed and rewarded for all the efforts it took to get to today.

I truly do dedicate myself to the show and the Angels efforts and serve as this essential link to the gallery and the public that strengthens the show and the community...and I was doing this to a degree for the 24 years before I was Queen Gelatinaceae of the Jell-O Art Realm but in her embodiment I can carry several hidden roles and still end up loving it. The depth of emotion in the troupe and in the art of performance itself is something I am still learning about. This was only my fifth performance (I was crowned in 2012) and I still have a lot to learn about the fear/fun divide so that I can spend less time in the fear part (manifesting as worry) and more in the fun. I simply love the costumes and props part, and will spend hours at home working on that. I love to sing and dance, but wish it didn't come with anxiety.

Making the Jell-O Art itself is getting harder in some ways...I have less interest in playing with it and more interest in some deep artistic process and statement, so the theme is important to me, even though I don't follow it in some discernible way sometimes. The theme, Fool's Jell-O, was wide open and I was in a zone of deception and imitation...thinking about how fewer birds come to my yard, whales are still being massacred, and the obvious present assault on our planet is really our biggest problem. Combine that overwhelming anxiety with the antique bell jar that created a space used in history for preserving things from the passage of time, or keeping them safe from the effects of the environment, dust, light, etc. worked to give me this kind of simple concept and elegant presentation which wasn't really what I envisioned but did satisfy me.

Practicing greater simplicity is a goal and the script was more streamlined as well. I wish I would have crammed more jokes into it and done this or that, and I didn't give myself a solo or lead to a song, but played a supportive role for the most part and held down some of the emcee and director duties to be responsible for the flow and action. That worked mostly, with quite brilliant assistance by the fabulous Jester Jacque who gamely stood at my ear in case I didn't have it down. She also helped me with the parallel duty to sell my shirts which is something that doesn't fit with my Queenly duties during the public show. I like to try to recognize and congratulate each artist and let them know how much we all appreciate them and love their work. I work with the raining Slug Queen or whomever represents her, to try to get them the right space to give the benediction, and do lots of tiny things to keep it all afloat. Of course I am not the only one doing any of these things.

A big thank you to Bee who held down the shirt table and apparently did most of the work as lots of shirts went home with people! Next year will be the 30th show so I don't mind that we have a few left over. Thanks also to every single artist, young and old, and to the staff and volunteers of the gallery who are wonderful to us and improve the show every year. Having seating in front was great and a lot of people really appreciated it.

There is no way to encapsulate the gratitude and appreciation for the rest of the Angels who are each and every one amazing with their generosity of time and talent. It's important to acknowledge that they do it for love. It takes a lot of meetings and practice and it's hard as hell for that to all be over in less than a half hour and consigned to our rich history. They find the parts they love to do, be it dancing or singing or playing ukes and kazoos or making costumes or promoting the show to their friends and families. 

Indi deserves an entire book for her many contributions as the true goddess and glue of why we are still doing this after all this time. No one wants to let her down! She is patient and wise and kind and without her it would not be what it is at all. The funniest part of yesterday for me was that a young TV reporter was trying to interview me with a tight deadline and the whole time Indi was behind her dancing and making big gestures which I could not look at but also could not ignore. My peripheral senses kept asking "What would Indi want me to say?" and "What is she trying to tell me?" and it kept me guessing and even brought tears to my eyes once to the dismay of the reporter. I don't think she ended up using the interview at all and after I looked for it on the website I realized she didn't have any lights or a real TV camera...she was using the interview as notes for the little article she did. It was terrible but it's awfully rude to say that so I won't repeat it. I can be so mean and nasty sometimes. I want to be understood! I do not want to be quoted in a terribly grammatically incorrect run-on sentence that I swear I didn't say! But yeah, it doesn't matter and since it was the only media coverage we got I should be a lot more grateful. We'll make a bigger splash next year when there might not be a sportsing event grabbing all the attention. If there was a spot of me talking on TV I didn't see it, and I'm okay with that, too. Roger Rix, who is the official photographer of the Slug Queens, did a fabulous group of photos that you can see on his Flickr stream. He really captures it so well you can almost hear us.

I have three weeks of things to do in a week starting tomorrow so although this is my chance to get my photos processed and posted and write all the things about all the other artists and what they brought, I'm going to go outside instead. I have weeds to pull out there. I can't write about everything at once the same as I can't do it all at once. I will try hard to follow through. I can't even get into my deeper feelings and document all that I learned, but I'll hope to return in not forever to do more of that. I hope to get a video in a few weeks and will try to post more photos. Stay tuned I guess. Probably you are outside yourselves, as sun is rare and we need it. Be well! See you back on the Park Blocks next Saturday!



 

Scouting for Truth

I do love having the framework of Jell-O Art in my life, especially now when I need something so deeply creative, so buried in that part of my psyche. After 30 years of it, I've long passed the point of thinking of it as something wacky or trivial. 

I know plenty of you do, but that hardly bothers me now. Art is art, no matter the medium. As my vehicle for self-expression, it has taken me far further into art than my craft of screenprinting, or even writing, as it uses my whole brain, my body, and my visionary projections. Skill is involved, and the regular problem-solving that any effort takes, from doing dishes to changing the world. It lies on the spectrum of creativity in a not only solid, but delightful way. The fact that it can jiggle does not make it fall off that spectrum.

It does hurt me a little that people think I'm silly. I rarely am, actually. I'm pretty hard on myself about all of the ways I am illogical, and have developed a quality of scanning for a greater truth. I heard a TED talk about this, about the different operations of a "scout" personality as opposed to a "soldier." I shy away from military metaphors but see this more as an explorer scenario. You walk into an unknown woods on your way to an unknown future home, and the scout is looking at all the plants to see if some are familiar and might be food or building materials. The soldier is thinking about the miles walked or to be walked, about a tent site, about enemies, and wondering when the scouts will come back with the needed information about what lies ahead.

The soldier trains to follow leaders and rules, to do what is written in the book. The scout looks at the leaders to get a sense if they are leading in a helpful and honest way, to get to the destination intact and healthy. She looks in the book to see if there is some guidance that might apply to the current situation, although she keeps in mind that it might not apply and might need a little revision or variance. She knows the rules, but won't follow them to her peril, but rather decides repeatedly what the next step might be, according to the gathered impressions, facts that are available, and ways to interpret the facts that might be questioned or shifted to be seen in a new perspective.

Simplified, but I had the insight to see that I am a scout. Of course I still struggle with the good girl and rule follower that I was raised to be, but that scout spark was always in me and caused me a good deal of trouble as the second child in a family of five children, four of us girls. We were raised Catholic with reservations, indoctrinated but with plenty of seeds of doubt sewn as well. We worked together for the family goals, notably on Saturdays when we all cleaned together while we sang. 

We also fought for dominance in hidden as well as scratchy and bitey ways, but that felt bad and at some point I stopped competing with oppressive forces and started going around them. Parents only have so much attention and approval to dole out in the capitalist consumer society. Dad had to go sailing to deal with going to work, Mom had to keep everything shiny. Both of them were scouts. We were supposed to be soldiers, like all little kids, but you know how those things go. Or went, in the 1960's and 70's. The Fifties were soon over.

Nothing was idyllic, but it was functional and my scoutiness was satisfied through science and nature, as I spent most of my time in trees, on trails, and on the water, when I wasn't inside a book. I was good at school so made short work of it and gained the skills to use my mind to articulate and evaluate. I loved diagramming sentences, writing lab reports, and creating a system of order, but at the same time I was thinking about other possible results, other facets, other versions of what I thought I was observing. I scouted my way to here and still kept looking back, still try to see that inner landscape that helps illuminate the outer one.

Who knows what parts are nurture or brain patterns that were instinctive or inherited, what parts are damage and which are gifts? I tired of analysis with professionals after years of it. It was productive but when it came to changing myself my stubborn resistance didn't respond to authority. As soon as the therapist assigned a task, I was on the way out of the relationship. I would comply to a point. I am really not a follower, though I can certainly cooperate and have a sister loyalty that comes in handy. If your mind is large enough to question things, I'll want to see inside it. If it is too small to allow any shifts in perspective, I'm not going to bother trying too hard.

I'm a natural complier, since I like peace and space to create, but I do not submit well to authority. If I comply, I still resist inside. I will, intentionally or not, subvert and find a way to do what I feel is best, based on what I know is a wide range of gathered detail and a solid perspective of "what if?" I'm not going to act based on your assumptions unless I have also come to those same conclusions, or can allow that they might be as valid as mine. At least until we can gather some more relevant facts.

Which is not to say I am not gullible and coerced, because nothing inside my brain is so neat and tidy that I can't be fooled. So I am often fortune's fool, or someone's victim, and it does hurt when I figure it out. I actually have a very developed process around it and do many steps of analysis each time it happens. There's a brain pattern and a behavior pattern and I feel that it is a human's duty to other humans to recognize our inner workings that way. If you try to run your control and domination fantasies on me, I will resist, call you out if I can, and work around you with all my might, unless I can avoid you altogether. I don't need it and it damages me to deal with it. It's one of the things I am most sure about in a shifty unsure universe.

To be evolved humans, we first must recognize the patterns that trip us, and the ways we allow them to be set up or set them up ourselves. We have to find ways to stop ourselves from making the same mistakes, scan our woods for better solutions, clearer paths, ways to gain skills to avoid following the wrong leader or the flawed rule. Then we have to have some courage about changing course, communicating if we can, forgiving those who were in error, and ultimately, forgiving ourselves and moving forward with an improvement in functionality if one is available to us. If we can grow that way, which we usually can if we are willing to apply the effort.

Humans are so small so often. I include myself in this. It's easy to complain, to blame, to feel outrage and anger at perceived injustice, to make a judgement. These fall-back emotions come when we are not sure where we're going, not sure if we have a clear way forward, and we get scared. We all get scared. We generally make the mistake of going into a defensive stance...like a soldier. We prepare to fight, and when we fight, we must win. We must dominate.

Yeah, no. Domination is everything wrong with what is going on in our world right now. People making choices for other people based on lies, poor fact collection, biased observations, and illogical assumptions, will make choices that will not serve us. They will pull back the scouts and pick a fight with the people who are cultivating the berry bushes right there, because the soldiers are simply hungry right now. They won't find the communal patch that everyone is welcome to pick from. They won't even think that there will be one.

Reading about the slave-breeding history is still my dominant field of study, and I happen to be reading about Andrew Jackson, and as a scout I certainly see the spin of racism and where it wants to take us. It's all about profit and domination and we are mired in it again, despite the advice of the many scouts out there looking for ways to treat each other better, to not repeat the mistakes of the past, to not go down a flaming hole to hell in the next few years. We may have to live in hell someday, but we don't have to go quietly, and we can drag our feet the whole damned way.

It's my feeling that there are many more scouts than soldiers in my generation, due to the lies we were told in our formative years and our subsequent explorations for a better version of some truth. I would venture to say that this is true for every generation, as each has had some galvanizing experiences that helped them see lies and spin. Maybe the younger people are the most clear of all of us...that could well be true. I hope it is. Lots of them are watching, and lots of them are speaking up too.

I have gone from despair about politics through that shock and awe campaign and am there, solid, in hope. It might be somewhat foolish to base my future on hope. I had a hard time trusting Obama about that, but it makes for a lot better path forward than any other motive. In my smaller worlds, I am not so sure hope will serve, but actually am placing my faith in education. I want these scouts to have all of the available knowledge and accumulated wisdom of our human existence to help us stay on a path that will keep us alive, and with a modicum of happiness and joy, and keep us holding a bit of faith for the future, a core of hope that will convince us the hard slog is worth taking. 

Like the pioneers or Lewis and Clark, there will be some self-serving interest in there and inevitably some greed to assuage our deprivation, and it won't feel balanced for a long time, if ever. But all of the scouts are out there, on the edges, looking with their sharp eyes and applying their sharp wits and learning, learning, learning. Taking notes. Doing research. Asking hard questions. Speaking truth to power. 

And many of them are making art, some privileged few with Jell-O. I know, it's food (kind of) and an animal product (but made from the things that are thrown away) and you think it's silly and a distraction from other more important kinds of art. But bend your mind to the idea that it's the essence of what is true. Clear, colorful, wiggly and alive, made to bring only 
joy and delight, made for you, made from our hearts, and really really not what you used to think about a showy commercial product made of industrial waste and chemicals that destroy health and life that is owned by a major corporate dominator out to kill us all. Some people even think it tastes good (I don't eat it if I can possibly help it.)

Let's not die from it. Let's have a laugh about it. Thanks to all for the Ides of Trump, that was fun and exactly the kind of thing that is super effective on a soul level. Our souls are hoping we will keep our heads under control, and the weapons locked up. See you on April Fools.