Peace and Making things: Response

To my delight my previous post elicited some remarks. Without permission, I repost them:

Interesting post. If you make a some thing and it defies your own expectations, is that art? Is any strong experience an implicit poem? Is anything one makes for onself worth making--better done poorly than not at all? It seems that if youcan make something well, it is worth doing so and calling it a craft and if you can make something that influences or has bearing on the way the whole of art is viewed, then it is worth doing so and calling it art. Maybe you underestimate or I overestimate the extent to which the standards of our times get into the guts of us and shape our notion of what art is. There is a nice feeling that goes with the notion of a mass-production of individualized self-expressions---it has the feeling of shared creativity and the feeling of togetherness in defying the personal limitations that get in the way of making things...but there are some people who appreciate art, but do not consider themselves artists, and this is not a result of fear, but of a fair assessment that they have nothing to contribute at the moment, while there is also the superfluity of very predictable things that people make which defy expectations in a thoroughly uncreative way. Though nobody should be prevented, I'm not sure that everyone should be encouraged---I do not believe the paucity of art in the world, if there is a paucity, results from people's fear of articulating the inarticulate poems within them. I doubt that the exuberance of human emotion will be sublimated into art if people are encouraged to make things---making things is usually the result of necessity and making things in response to passions is a diversion and not the surest way to make something well, which requires a devotion to improving one's skill and involves a kind of perfectionism. I won't go as far as to say that I think that there should be more perfectionism and less things, but I think for most people the best thing they could make today would be breakfast and that is perfectly fine, since it is probably in art and not in life that people should be improved upon anyhow.

-JG

Meanwhile, today, I just learned, is an/the International Day of Peace. I do not doubt that this event offends or riles up some people with charges of indulgence or self-congratulation, pacification and/or passivity, but I buy into reflection and celebration in the name of peace and change. It makes at least as much sense as busting shit up in the name of peace and change. It does become an indulgence if it's an end in itself, but it's my opinion that the effect of coming together to celebrate peace is likely to be inspiration, a sense that people and groups are not alone in being desiring of global facilitation of nonviolence, and this can be motivating. It needs to be made motivating, on an individual and collective level this needs to be insisted upon, but I buy in.

What peace has to do with my rant on "making things" is that creativity is an antidote to violence. I endorse a definition of violence that describes oppression of the potential of an individual or a group, the infliction of suffering, the quashing of the opportunity to flourish. I had the fortune, for example, of an elementary school education that was encouraging of individual creativity, or at least, certainly compared to what is out there for mass multitudes of children. I find restrictive education to be violent, I find movements that have debilitating effects on creative expression and a sense of the validity of the self to be violent. I also do believe that violence against the self is unacceptable violence, even before stating, as I would, that violence against the self is violence against humanity. My suggestion here is that to convince yourself that you are not creative is a violent act.

My definition in my previous post of art was perhaps distracting. I do not believe that those who "appreciate art, but do not consider themselves artists" necessarily disagree with my demand, because I truly believe all people are artists or have the capacity to be. My definition of art allows that while theirs may not. But I contest the idea that they make "a fair assessment that they have nothing to contribute at the moment." No; because every person has creative contributions. It would be absurd to demand that these individuals start presenting visual art or literal poetry. But I do plead for creative acts, and internal facilitation of creative acts, and honest representation of selves. Meanwhile, predictable, uncreative things are not what I'm advocating at all.

So, in contrast to the violence of self-censorship, I do believe that creative acts build peace. I think protective acts build peace. I think practice and learning and development build peace. I intended in my post to allow for the definite truth that "to make something well requires a devotion to improving one's skill and involves a kind of perfectionism." However, making things in response to passion is a damn good assurance, as assurances go, to making something well for a number of reasons, and to call that diversionary is utterly false. It is diversionary if things get in the way of effective expression, but rejecting and innovating and playing things out, imagining and inventing the best way to do justice to one's passion is part of the creative effort I'm advocating. It's not easy to be creative.

I don't agree that most people's capacities are limited to the making of breakfast. That said, I'd ask that it be conceded that in making something as simple as breakfast, something, perhaps integrity, can be absent. Don't make breakfast a copy; or maybe all I'm saying is, in my opinion it seems that it's worth identifying why we do what we do, and it's worth intending that our actions be honest. There is a link between honesty and creativity, and between creativity and peace. Frankly if we're going to talk about breakfast, I think many people could find themselves a lot less fucked up if they started with deciding to figure out a breakfast that honestly reflects their needs and tastes rather than their believed roles, their unconsidered habits, or their externally-focused fixations, like low-carb diets, to pick a stupid thing at random.

Not to get all meta, but what I am making here is crude. I volunteer that. I pursue it because it seems true and seems to me to be a part of something I want to be building.

Making things, that is, inventing, painting, writing, organizing, overt and active creating, is important. It inspires, it builds, it offers alternatives, it offers solidarity, it offers comfort, it offers help, or, it can do these things. I believe that this, which I have perhaps distractingly called poems or art, is the macroscopic representation of what I'm talking about. But it is built from the smaller acts of creativity, the bravery of being I've alluded to.

Inspired creating, I think, comes when the self is present and honoured. It comes when assumptions are identified rather than given, when boundaries are questioned, when in great stress a sense of possibility is what is fundamental, rather than an ideal.

My entreaty isn't actually about a dearth of art, I suppose, but about the potency that seems evident in a mindset that strives to limit mimickry and honour self-expression. It seems in my observation linked to qualities like perceptiveness, empowerment, and basic security, and in this fertile way of being, creative improvements can grow. And these "poems" do indeed have lives of their own. I unashamedly want there to be more of them.

On a day devoted to peace I'm thinking about violence and though I know my words might seem murky it's an antidote to violence that I'm grappling with. From so many human beings I know to have beautiful, creative inner selves, there is too damn often a sense of a person stifled. Their stress, as I said earlier, is about their devotion to creating more perfect copies. That is not the exacting "perfectionism" of a passionate devotion to a cause, but a manifestation of a fundamentally uncreative, fixated, stressful mindset. They are themselves from the outside in, rather than from the inside out. This and other kinds of violence against the self - where violence is stifling, wounding, dehumanizing - I do feel can be antagonized by a paradigm of critical thought and self expression. Moreover I defend that such a way of being invites ideas and that these ideas blossom outward; that creativity is a cornerstone on which peace - where peace is is nurturing potential, emphasis on points of connection rather than division, and motivation not from fear or hate or vengeance but from something else... I suggest perhaps discovery, and joy, and contribution - can, or maybe even must be built.

Make art, make music, make decisions, make a garden, make breakfast, make peace.

And make a fool of me - if you can say what I'm trying to say better, or if you think I'm full of shit, please do speak up. I'm using annoying things like the word "paradigm" and semicolons for my own reasons but if they're getting in your way, make it better.

I keep meeting these people who make things.

Have you noticed that? If you keep your eyes open, and you think about it. Awesome! There are these people who are bravely making things. And there are as many different ways and things to be making - no, there are definitely more, in fact - as there are people. Have you noticed? And have you noticed, there are all these people who somehow don't believe in their own creative capacity, people who either don't or think they don't make anything at all?

I think that we have to talk about this.

I wonder about how we can foster the making of things. The barriers are many, which is kind-of heartbreaking, I find. There are reasons people are afraid to create and this is facilitated by social messages that make it seem satisfying to make selecting from prefabricated options one's manner of self-expression. I know people who will be frustrated by this suggestion. I don't mean to invalidate the process of self-identifying that can be felt in things as innocuous as deciding what books will populate your home or what you wear to keep warm, are you a mittens or a glove person, is it the function or the colour that you prioritise; these things come from you, from your values and your taste, that's all you, and yes, we're all very "free" and "unique" and even within very limited pickings you can be somehow statistically "unique". But can we consider how limiting this really is. Can we consider that that is not enough. Can we consider that critical thought is making something?

Maybe I need to talk about why it's important to make stuff. I mean, first I'm saying everybody's making things, then that not enough people are making things, then that people are afraid to make things, then that selecting a scarf is a creative art and asking "or is it?" - so I'll state this:

I believe that people need to be urged to make things because to live in repetitive sync with expectations and to be motivated by the creation of perfect copies is damaging to people, leaves them vulnerable to emotional onslaught that can strike them unaware and be devastating, and it cripples their potential, all of which has an effect not only on their capacity to enjoy and be present in life but on their community and on society. So it's a public health concern. It affects their children or their friends, it perpetuates norms; it's all wrong. And I submit that that is the alternative that is in play. Someone has an idea in mind and they try to emulate it - often it's an imaginary idea, something from some ad. So I end up with lines of women almost identically frocked, and barely, stalking awkwardly up my street towards the bars nearby on spindly heels and dressed from just below their bottoms to just above their nipples, though it's freezing cold. I shiver just looking at them, partly because it's true - they really do look the same. It's chilling. And, it's an exercise in reproducing a suggested way of being. Or, someone is at a loss to carve out a life that will be well-received, so they stress themselves out in programs that mean nothing to them and/or applying for jobs that are similarly meaningless. So we end up with people doing jobs they hate and growing depressed from sun deprivation and a total stunting of their selves. Or, it could be the child or teenager - or adult student, for that matter - whose only method of learning is to copy down what is on the board, the original thought necessary for learning woefully un-nurtured. So we end up with people thinking that they're just not smart, and certainly they can't learn on their own.

The consequences of this are non-negligible. I have learned that there is something necessary about true self-expression. I think there are many ways to go about this, and I'm not at all saying that everyone should be financially sustaining themselves by some artistic pursuit. But this world is not a stagnant place, for all it often seems that people would like it to be. It is changing and our way of being and living will continue to change; it's a matter of how well-suited we are to change, and it takes the practice of being original to survive in that without becoming overwhelmed at the scriptlessness of it all, or, alternatively, protectively deadened by avoiding the truth of it. And I don't believe the latter will stand the tests of the slings and arrows of our individual and collective lives, nor is it a way in which I want people to live. Deprived of the exhilaration of experiencing and expressing, stressed not about what they're doing and are but about what they're not. Ascribing meaning and stress where there isn't any; missing the scary meaning within brave human expression. So vulnerable, and so often unaided. It does break my heart.

I think my suggestion is both an easy and a difficult demand. I think it begins in the way one conceives of things - I learned from a wise man I know the concept of seeing with "owl eyes", which applies when one is trying to appreciate the vast activity going on everywhere when you walk in the woods and I daresay it applies when one is just trying to be aware. You start with noticing things; you notice what you think of them; you refine your reflections; you notice where they come from and seek to build from your own instincts and reactions; you express your reaction. This is art, this is decision-making, this is something significant. This is something we need. Exploring is art.

I don't think it needs to be all esoteric, either. I can't knit. Can you? What do you make? I think that recognising an interest, honing a skill, producing something, sharing it, this creative process is as healthy a cycle as your blood oxygenating.

That said, I used to enjoy a vivacious argument with a former teacher of mine, an artist and philosopher who in a great loss died recently while exploring the options of exhilaration. He would define art as something which must be identified by not only an individual but by another as art. To be art it must be shared, called art by an external person experiencing it. I at the time was enamoured of the idea that even to view something and call it beautiful, to construct associations in your mind, to appreciate the music of some cacophony or the mixed-media art of some panoramic vantage, was every bit art. I continue to think there is value in this - that if not art, it at least is creative. Maybe what I was missing at the time is that the way of being I described is an important thing to value and is very good practice, but that it needs activity. We need to do, as well as imagine, and to dare to express, as well as appreciate.

The problem I'm looking at here exists in the many people who don't believe they're creative, who don't have time to be creative, who view the world in sets of multiple-choice options with no space for "none of the above." To those who view themselves in that category, I suppose I would say, I dare you. I dare you to walk around with owl-eyes and to decide it is worth it to bravely call your views your own, I dare you to find the loves and urges inside you and build things with them. Take pictures in your mind, know that the things you choose to appreciate are expressions, decide they're of value and dare to express them. I once went for a walk with someone who wanted help learning to use his brand new-to-him 1973 SLR, but not only did he follow tips on settings for aperture and shutter speed, he actually mimicked each perspective my own camera took. This baffled me. There isn't a correct photograph to take. There are infinite photographs to take. Classically trained musicians will know that Bach would have us all doing four-part harmonizations that must have airtight defences against an unforgiving red corrective pen - to my gratitude that isn't the world we live in. Dissonance, parallel fifths, seven and a quarter bars of silence and outrageous changes in time signatures welcome. There are no wrong notes.

But then, there are the many people who know they are creative and who still don't make things. There are ugly barriers to art. Expectations, finances, priorities, time. Procrastination, I believe to be fear.

For my part I know I am creative, which it takes courage to know even if you would defend, as I would, that every person is creative. Because I value the effort it's taken to be brave enough just to know it, I demand I be brave enough to say, I know I'm creative. And this is where the demands are for activity. For saying you know what? Fuck this. For identifying the obstacles to being fucking brave, and making stuff. If something fascinates you, its pursuit is a creative act. If something is blocking you, patiently, lovingly figuring it out is an important act. If something enrages you, learning about it and talking about it and doing something about it is a creative act. If something brings you joy, if you're good at something, if you find beauty somewhere, do something about it, prioritise this creative act. You have time. Prioritise figuring out how. And as for fear . . . well, there are no wrong notes. It's not what's important. And evolution is part of the game; we all have to start where we're at.

Since my überblog below I have, I'm sorry to confess, begun and failed to finish more than one new blog entry. For instance I have more to say about the g20 and I have a problem with hate, I wonder about the definition of music and I find discussions of the concept of violence to have interesting potential. But false-startedness this is clearly to be a weakness of mine. (a fact to which anyone who has ever made plans with me to do something creative can, sadly, attest.)

I am going to make an effort to write something weekly, and my mandate is for chrissakes relax. I'm giving myself an hour-long time limit because the alternative to relaxing is apparently silence. So, with apologies to those who are reading, this blog will be eminently imperfect, and I hope in return you tell me some of the things you have to say. Especially if you think I'm full of shit.

And in the mean time, thank you for making things, thank you for inspiring, thank you for painting and knitting and programming and writing, thank you for organizing and postering and singing and whistling, thank you for imagining and implementing and exploring and considering, thank you for challenging and rejecting, thank you for concocting and inventing and cobbling together, thank you for considering, thank you for daring, and thank you for being.

I'm concluding this post by referring to a poem which writing this has caused to rise up from my memory to rattle around in my head. Thank you for etching on the earth.

peace and love [how subversive]

-Rache

Write a poem
they're dying out
they're all out there waiting to be born
Write a poem
Write on the number 22
on the colour blue
on you
i hate
watching someone walking in the wrong
direction on the other side of my own
reflection in a window and I know
they're gonna hafta go
all the way to the end to
realise it's a dead one and they're
gonna have to come all the way
back and past this pane of
glass again and go out of sight and
I'll probably never happen to know if they ever
find their way in somewhere.

I hate how sometimes a big truck a huge,
fuck, ugly polluted and filthy
machine obstruction
blocks
my view of that Paradise
from the already distancing thick unkempt
windows of the bus, as we both speed
past it on an ugly Road.
and I can't see it and I worry so much
it's not there
I can hardly
bear that.

And yet poems are in everything write,
write poems. In the dirt,
footprints, blueprints, raw prints or however
you etch on the earth, write!
with the primal drive
with which we
people
the earth with souls, a drive which we
feel in our bodies and mouths and
fingertips and cores, makes us crazy in
"love" or lust-ing for procreation,
with that kind of urgent
hunger!
that wanting, we want
to express that poetry that we experience,
felt and found in that place that scares you
like in the art gallery
the dark painting with the horse and train that hit you
when you turned a corner
somebody saved that poem.

And poems, like people, live lives.
They
are encountered by travellers and impact and
change and influence and teach
in unpredictable ways
that have shaped this world.
Poems and people are
manifestations of beauty, I think.
New combinations, creations, explanations
expressions, confessions, manipulations
illuminations. Evolutions.

The world (to say nothing of space)
mirrors
the task of the human race.
Evolving. Creating, considering, imagining
we are just
letting the soft animals of our bodies
want what they want, love what they love
which I borrowed
from another poem
I think
that the litter of pups
and the dewed yellow cups
and the child
are loved, a connection, a knowing
before birth
by the life that makes them
or they're wounded.
And we should love our poems
love our songs
love our notions-not-yet-expressed or it's
wrong
it's urgent
I've seen people
dying
from the worthlessness
we give the poems we've it in us to say
and the fear
of being alive enough to know them.

Write the poems; they're dying out
and with them. . .