I'm sitting in my residence of Seattle Washington, shirtless waiting for a cup of coffee that is brewing in my kitchen, which I am most likely going to enjoy with a hand rolled cigarette much to my Mother's chagrin. I'm getting closer to wanting to quit that shit. This past month has been one to write down in the history books. I need to do a job better at documenting my life, that way when someone wants to write an ode to me after I am deceased, they'll have enough information to roll with. I want to be an accommodating corpse.
I've been living in community since I was born, and I just recently realized I'm a pain in the ass to live with. Not because, I am a thoughtless person. I often stress out thinking about what the people I live with think of me. I know that I'm not the tidiest person alive, and its not that I don't care, its just I haven't trusted in a sense of "Home" in quite some time. I have a back door mentality in just about everything I walk into. So I treat the homes I've been living in as cozy storage units with kitchens and beds. As soon as it gets hot, I peace the hell out.
I've never once lived all by my lonesome, where I can walk around naked maybe rub my butt on the kitchen counter once or twice. I've never really had a place where I didn't have to worry about other people's opinions of the space, or how the meat should be stored in the fridge. I don't know if I ever will. I think that God knows that I'm way too much of a self absorbed prick to live by myself. I still would really like to. Walking around naked sounds rad.
Every time someone is like "Lets start a community", I respond with enthusiasm and speed. Then the reality that I'm living with these people that all have a different version of what community is, and what truth is, and what boundaries are sinks in, and my enthusiasm tapers. I've been thinking a lot about what the word community means, by definition. I always think of words by definition vs. how they actually are in society. I think definitions were made so we could improve them. And what I've seen within the communities I've lived in, is that it is more attached to the common than the commune. I once lived with a Married couple that were artsy, and had this great vision and I helped them with some remodeling on their house and then. I moved in. The shower didn't work and the bath tub took 30-45 mins to fill and just about as long to empty. And the house rule was you had to be there to clean it out after it emptied. So if I wanted to bathe I had to get up before everyone else (at like 5:30 or 6 in the morning), and I generally wouldn't get home from work until 12a-1a, and I had to leave the house to go rehearse with the company I danced with at 9a, then rush to work at 3p. So I was busy all the time, busy. They also wanted to have a communal dinner once a week (which I still love the idea of that, just the practicality of it generally doesn't work), needless to say I never really made it to the dinner, and never had time to do my chores. Eventually they sat me down, and asked me if I had a drug problem. And I had never done anything illegal besides some under age drinking. I got extremely offended and left. I wish I would have had the maturity to talk through it with them, and seen where they were at. They were amazing and beautiful people, with pure intentions and a clear vision that in my developing age I didn't grasp or understand.
I've got a dash more wisdom now, but I'm still not good at living with people, mostly because I embrace the victim mentality. I've finally gotten to the point where I'm okay with the "common" part of living in community, and I'm struggling with the "commune" aspect. When you're living in intentional community, it has to be more than a place where you throw your shit on the floor, cook food and sleep. That is what I like to call "common" place. Intentional community is a place where each person invests into this idea of "home", a place to commune, to see and be seen, where communication is key. Its forcing me into a stillness that I'm not comfortable with, and forcing me to give more of myself that I'm afraid to show people. The side where I don't run, and invest into this thing called home. Get me a pair of ruby high heels, and I'll do a jig. There is no place like it.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Price tags
"I don't understand how people put a price tag on art." Said my ex-girlfriend's Father, whom I respected but I did not like. "I see something that looks like a five year old finger painting and they have a $300 price tag on it. Who decides its value?" His density made a good point. This made me think of things like supply and demand. Generally the market varies in price because of these two things. Once the manufacturer of the art/product catches the fancy of a consumer, the manufacturer can set what price he/she feels fair.
Basic economics works like this: the consumer purchases a product, the manufacturer gets profits for the time of the process and cost of materials. The problem in the art industry rises with the fact that the average consumer doesn't really understand the market value, unlike the music or literary industry. These creative industries are interesting in the sense that a multi platinum recording artist's album isn't going to be dollars above some no name band on the same shelf. And a book on the New York Times best seller list may vary in price then a title like "Crocheting on rooftops in Canada", you don't see the price jumps you see with paintings, or the reluctance to purchase a ticket to the theatre to view an emerging company, vs. spending half a pay check to see Blue Man Group for your family of four. Where does the value come from?
I know so many extraordinary artists who are struggling either because people don't get it, or don't purchase it. This creates a feeling of invalidation, and a personality trait you see in short men. Like men at the height of five foot six inches, nobody seems to take notice of us, so everything becomes very serious, deep and dramatic. We flex our intellectual muscles, close our cerebral fists, and try to show people our art at whatever costs. Pointing at what we've created and saying this validates me as a human being!
My question is, shouldn't our humanity validate our art?
We often look at social icons such as the Beatles, Brad Pitt, or Stephen King, and we recognize them for what products they've manufactured. Would I think different of Brad Pitt if he were a mere grocery checker and not an Oscar winning actor? Probably. What if we changed our lens to seeing that all human life is art and our humanity is priceless, grocery checker or Oscar winner. The life and tissue is art, and the product is nothing without the human being that went through a creative journey to bring the product into existence.
I get frustrated with the label "Artist", because in a lot of ways the art isn't that special in the sense that seven and half minutes of choreography doesn't really change the world. It changed my world, but as whole the world doesn't care, but they care how a tomato is grown, or that someones life was saved in the back of an ambulance. I think the significance doesn't come from what is created. It comes from why it was created. The motive, the process of the creative journey. Why do you create? What drives you there? The humbling thing about all of life is we're all using the same words and rearranging them to tell our own stories, whether we like it or not there is nothing new under the sun, nothing original except our individual lives. So I urge you to find your validation in who you are not what you create. Just see what happens.
Basic economics works like this: the consumer purchases a product, the manufacturer gets profits for the time of the process and cost of materials. The problem in the art industry rises with the fact that the average consumer doesn't really understand the market value, unlike the music or literary industry. These creative industries are interesting in the sense that a multi platinum recording artist's album isn't going to be dollars above some no name band on the same shelf. And a book on the New York Times best seller list may vary in price then a title like "Crocheting on rooftops in Canada", you don't see the price jumps you see with paintings, or the reluctance to purchase a ticket to the theatre to view an emerging company, vs. spending half a pay check to see Blue Man Group for your family of four. Where does the value come from?
I know so many extraordinary artists who are struggling either because people don't get it, or don't purchase it. This creates a feeling of invalidation, and a personality trait you see in short men. Like men at the height of five foot six inches, nobody seems to take notice of us, so everything becomes very serious, deep and dramatic. We flex our intellectual muscles, close our cerebral fists, and try to show people our art at whatever costs. Pointing at what we've created and saying this validates me as a human being!
My question is, shouldn't our humanity validate our art?
We often look at social icons such as the Beatles, Brad Pitt, or Stephen King, and we recognize them for what products they've manufactured. Would I think different of Brad Pitt if he were a mere grocery checker and not an Oscar winning actor? Probably. What if we changed our lens to seeing that all human life is art and our humanity is priceless, grocery checker or Oscar winner. The life and tissue is art, and the product is nothing without the human being that went through a creative journey to bring the product into existence.
I get frustrated with the label "Artist", because in a lot of ways the art isn't that special in the sense that seven and half minutes of choreography doesn't really change the world. It changed my world, but as whole the world doesn't care, but they care how a tomato is grown, or that someones life was saved in the back of an ambulance. I think the significance doesn't come from what is created. It comes from why it was created. The motive, the process of the creative journey. Why do you create? What drives you there? The humbling thing about all of life is we're all using the same words and rearranging them to tell our own stories, whether we like it or not there is nothing new under the sun, nothing original except our individual lives. So I urge you to find your validation in who you are not what you create. Just see what happens.
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