Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2011
Structural Change
I just finished watching series 4 of The Good Life, a 1970s sitcom from BBC that aired in the US as Good Neighbors. The library system only had this last season of the show, so I requested that to see whether I would like it. I enjoyed it very much and so will probably purchase the set that contains series 1-3 at some point and then donate this to the library when I have watched it. It is about a these neighbors, both of whom were corporate suburban couples until one of the couples decides to drop out of the rat race and become self-sufficient. Some of it brought me back to my own corporate suburban 1970s childhood. Some of it was pretty laughable--like when they worked for a sheep farmer in exchange for fleeces which they spun (with a drop spindle), dyed with nettles, wove the yarn into cloth, and then sewed into a suit--presumably by hand, since the woman was always seen sewing by hand. This seemed to happen in a remarkably short period of time! All in all though, it was quite entertaining. At one point, though, it struck me how difficult (impossible?) it can be to be truly self-sufficient in a society where that is somehow held up as the ideal, but is structurally set up to make this very, very difficult. At some level, of course, none of us are self-sufficient, and indeed even in the show, they had to barter with other people to get their needs met. This has always been the case, I would venture to say, throughout human evolutionary history. Cooperation was a part of our evolutionary process and no one truly goes it alone. So, although we can strive to meet as many of our needs as possible on our own, we can't ever meet all of them. Still, having the knowledge to grow food, cook with what you have, and make do in creative ways with things you have just makes a lot of sense to me. When she cut up one of her husband's pullovers and made herself a tabard vest and leg warmers, I chuckled to myself. In the last episode she was wearing a patchwork shirt that looked like it had been cut out of other old shirts in different shapes and sewn together, seams outward. Now this is something I want to try myself. In any case, there are parts of this kind of lifestyle that not only do I find attractive, but that I actually do in my own life. There are limits--I know that unless I am doing container gardening, for example, I really don't care for it. So I will plant a few tomato plants in pots, but I have also joined a CSA and will support a local farm family that way. Brunswick happens to be a place where I can do that. In Fairbanks, we lived without running water for a couple of years. This was pretty painless, although it took organization and planning, because Fairbanks was set up for that kind of thing. There were places we could go to buy water and pump it into our containers. That's the thing--the system has to be set up in such a way to allow and even encourage people to make these kinds of changes in their lives. Clearly the system we have now does not work and millions of people know this and try to make positive changes in their own lives. This needs to happen because we need these individuals to turn into groups which will turn into larger groups that will eventually be large enough to force cultural, societal, and structural change. But these pioneers do have it a little harder--they are trying to build alternative lifestyles within a structure that is often not supportive and may in fact hinder them. So we all do what we can. One of the things I was happy to see in the show was the expression of the joy that such a life can bring. The more I have tossed aside all the trappings of a consumer lifestyle the happier I have been myself. There is little joy in shopping--I can think of few things more mind-numbingly boring. But there is satisfaction in taking a bunch of string, manipulating it with my crochet hook, and ending up with a pair of socks or a shirt. Bucking the system at any level requires creativity. I think we need as much of that as we can get.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
People Who Make Stuff
Bill and I have gone around and around over the past several years about the kinds of projects we could do in the area of life stories. We've come up with some really good ideas, some of which have come to fruition. We've worked with individuals and that has been fun and interesting. Today, though, I suddenly understood something that seemed so obvious in the moment I realized it that I felt like a complete and total idiot for not realizing it before. I am totally fascinated by the stories of people who make stuff. I always have been. When I was a kid I used to think my Nana was incredible because she made stuff. She grew food. She preserved it. She cooked it. When she needed slipcovers she got drapes at a rummage sale and made them. She made dolls, doll clothes, and scrap quilts out of old clothes and other bits of fabric that were no longer useful in their previous form. She took nothing--or more precisely, the little bits that used to be something--and made these things into something new and wonderful. Seeds grew into tomatoes, which became sauce after the new seeds had been saved to make more tomatoes. Old bits of fabric became a scrappy quilt that I slept under every single night as a teenager. Nana could look at something--something discarded in many cases--and see its potential. She knew how to make it something else.
So it is with so many people. Sculptors take some chunk of raw material and see something wonderful inside it. Mosaic artists can take little bits of glass and create a materpiece. Painters see a blank canvas and know how to fill it with whole new worlds. This is, to me, amazing. Even more amazing to me are the people like my grandmother, who can take the scraps and discards of life and turn them into warmth and love that you can hold in your hands or wrap yourself up in. This is why I do the yarn work that I do. I am my Nana's granddaughter, after all. I used to think that what I was interested in was women's domestic labor or gendered craft or something like that. And to some degree that's true. I am interested in that. But it's really much simpler than that. I am interested in people who make stuff. I am interested in the kind of creative thinking that allows someone to turn one thing into something else. I think it has to do with the idea of possibility. I am frequently saying to someone, "Just because it has never been done before doesn't mean it can't be done in the future." People who make stuff are all about creating something that has never existed before. They look at old drapes, or a blank canvas, or an odd ball of yarn and they see what it might be. This epiphany came to me this afternoon when I was opening a Christmas gift that my husband ordered for me--it arrived on Friday, but he worked all day and couldn't get to the post office to pick it up. It was a book called Traditional Crafts of Ireland and has a photo of hands working on a fiddle-in-progress on the cover. I was pretty excited. And then it hit me. I have been flailing around for a long time trying to figure out where to focus my time and energy beyond my own yarn work. Here it is--collecting the stories of people who make stuff. Duh! We have already done a few projects in this area with quilters and artists. As we think about what kinds of things to pursue in the year ahead, I am relieved to find that my task of narrowing things down just got a whole lot easier. People who make stuff. Yup. That's the ticket!
So it is with so many people. Sculptors take some chunk of raw material and see something wonderful inside it. Mosaic artists can take little bits of glass and create a materpiece. Painters see a blank canvas and know how to fill it with whole new worlds. This is, to me, amazing. Even more amazing to me are the people like my grandmother, who can take the scraps and discards of life and turn them into warmth and love that you can hold in your hands or wrap yourself up in. This is why I do the yarn work that I do. I am my Nana's granddaughter, after all. I used to think that what I was interested in was women's domestic labor or gendered craft or something like that. And to some degree that's true. I am interested in that. But it's really much simpler than that. I am interested in people who make stuff. I am interested in the kind of creative thinking that allows someone to turn one thing into something else. I think it has to do with the idea of possibility. I am frequently saying to someone, "Just because it has never been done before doesn't mean it can't be done in the future." People who make stuff are all about creating something that has never existed before. They look at old drapes, or a blank canvas, or an odd ball of yarn and they see what it might be. This epiphany came to me this afternoon when I was opening a Christmas gift that my husband ordered for me--it arrived on Friday, but he worked all day and couldn't get to the post office to pick it up. It was a book called Traditional Crafts of Ireland and has a photo of hands working on a fiddle-in-progress on the cover. I was pretty excited. And then it hit me. I have been flailing around for a long time trying to figure out where to focus my time and energy beyond my own yarn work. Here it is--collecting the stories of people who make stuff. Duh! We have already done a few projects in this area with quilters and artists. As we think about what kinds of things to pursue in the year ahead, I am relieved to find that my task of narrowing things down just got a whole lot easier. People who make stuff. Yup. That's the ticket!
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
What's It All About?
Christmas Week has begun. Or Solstice Week. Or whatever it is for me. I am never sure, exactly. I have never really placed a religious significance on Christmas. It has never been about the birth of a baby, though it's kind of a nice story. It is not about celebrating the return of the light, because I don't celebrate it. I dread the coming of spring and summer. I get depressed in the spring and I have to grit my teeth and get through summer. I hate it. I love winter. So maybe it's a celebration of winter for me, then. I don't know really what it is. But I do know that this is the best couple of weeks of the year. The air feels different. Everything seems more quiet. I realize that if I was caught up in the consumer christmas culture, I would experience things very differently, but I left that behind long ago. For me it is all about being quiet and just being with my family.
Yesterday we went grocery shopping for the last time in 2009. I was thrilled when we got home! It was done. And I was home. And I plan to be home for the next several days. I will be listening to Christmas music as I bake mocha muffins, oatmeal rolls, cinnamon rolls, and cookies (muffins today and the rest Thursday). I will listen to various audio versions of A Christmas Carol while I knit and crochet hats and scarves for our tree at UU. I will read when I feel like it. I will drink many cups of coffee and tea, sitting here with Bill. I will not have to watch a clock and schedule certain things for certain times so I can be somewhere. I can get up in the morning and just exist. And I can create. I think that is the real essence of this time of the year for me. I can create for other people. I do that all year anyway, when I make a shawl for someone or bake cookies and share them. But it feels different at this time of the year. Maybe that's the meaning of the season for me. It is a time when the reason for my creativity changes a bit from creating because an idea won't leave me alone, or because I want dessert, or I want to feel the yarn and my wooden crochet hooks in my hands, to creating because I want to share my creations with specific people. Maybe there is also a bit of honoring all of the women in countless generations who came before me, because my creative life is very much tied to women's history—I work with thread, yarn, and food. I crochet. I knit. I cook. I bake. I know that once the latter three got mechanized and commercialized, women no longer did them. But I am not working on that scale. I am working on a domestic scale as women have done through the centuries. Part of what I am saying, I think, when I give someone something that I have made is, “Look at this. It did not come from a store or as a result of someone's slave labor. I made this. I made this for you. And throughout history, women have been creating things for the people they love. Women have done this. Honor this work—not because I have done it, but because without it, none of us would be here.” The truth is, whether women have done this work out of necessity or because they needed it done but also loved doing it, it is necessary work. It is not just art for art's sake. It is creativity with a practical purpose. I am not against art for art's sake, but I find it amusing that we have privileged that world in the way that we have. It is, of course, primarily male, though that is changing. There's nothing wrong with thinking great thoughts and then chipping away at stone or throwing paint on a canvas or whatever else you need to do to express those thoughts. It's important. We need that. But we also need the kind of creativity that women have been quietly doing in homes everywhere for all of these generations. We need that kind of creativity at a very basic level. Without it, we don't survive. Without women expressing themselves in the kitchen, for example, by creating healthy meals, how would we live? We can see today when that task has been largely outsourced to food processors and fast food chains that we are not surviving well at all. We are eating ourselves to death. We need more people—men and women—to get back into the kitchen and start creating food again. Real, nourishing, life-giving food, not pseudofood. Not chemicals and cardboard dressed up to look like food. But we have devalued this work and so no one wants to do it. It is seen as unimportant. Our society is increasingly not set up to accommodate such activities. If we honored this work, if we understood that our very survival depends on it, maybe we would organize things differently. So maybe that is what Christmas is to me—a way to say that we can choose again. None of this is working. Our gluttony, our imprisonment in a consumer culture that is out of control, our unconsciousness about who we are and how we want to live are all highlighted at this time of year. And yet we are invited by the story of the birth of this baby and by the pagan celebrations that we can do things differently. We can recognize that there is a simpler way to live. We can accept that we need the dark time for contemplation and growth. We can use it to prepare for the work that is ahead. We can discover who we are—who we really are and not who we are told we should be—and we can build a life on that. When I bake and crochet, I am being true to who I am and what I value. And maybe that is a little easier at this time of year. Maybe that's why it all feels different to me somehow. By dropping out of the consumer culture christmas and dropping in to the creative culture christmas, I have discovered more of myself and a way to share that with other people. Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, Festive Holidays.
Yesterday we went grocery shopping for the last time in 2009. I was thrilled when we got home! It was done. And I was home. And I plan to be home for the next several days. I will be listening to Christmas music as I bake mocha muffins, oatmeal rolls, cinnamon rolls, and cookies (muffins today and the rest Thursday). I will listen to various audio versions of A Christmas Carol while I knit and crochet hats and scarves for our tree at UU. I will read when I feel like it. I will drink many cups of coffee and tea, sitting here with Bill. I will not have to watch a clock and schedule certain things for certain times so I can be somewhere. I can get up in the morning and just exist. And I can create. I think that is the real essence of this time of the year for me. I can create for other people. I do that all year anyway, when I make a shawl for someone or bake cookies and share them. But it feels different at this time of the year. Maybe that's the meaning of the season for me. It is a time when the reason for my creativity changes a bit from creating because an idea won't leave me alone, or because I want dessert, or I want to feel the yarn and my wooden crochet hooks in my hands, to creating because I want to share my creations with specific people. Maybe there is also a bit of honoring all of the women in countless generations who came before me, because my creative life is very much tied to women's history—I work with thread, yarn, and food. I crochet. I knit. I cook. I bake. I know that once the latter three got mechanized and commercialized, women no longer did them. But I am not working on that scale. I am working on a domestic scale as women have done through the centuries. Part of what I am saying, I think, when I give someone something that I have made is, “Look at this. It did not come from a store or as a result of someone's slave labor. I made this. I made this for you. And throughout history, women have been creating things for the people they love. Women have done this. Honor this work—not because I have done it, but because without it, none of us would be here.” The truth is, whether women have done this work out of necessity or because they needed it done but also loved doing it, it is necessary work. It is not just art for art's sake. It is creativity with a practical purpose. I am not against art for art's sake, but I find it amusing that we have privileged that world in the way that we have. It is, of course, primarily male, though that is changing. There's nothing wrong with thinking great thoughts and then chipping away at stone or throwing paint on a canvas or whatever else you need to do to express those thoughts. It's important. We need that. But we also need the kind of creativity that women have been quietly doing in homes everywhere for all of these generations. We need that kind of creativity at a very basic level. Without it, we don't survive. Without women expressing themselves in the kitchen, for example, by creating healthy meals, how would we live? We can see today when that task has been largely outsourced to food processors and fast food chains that we are not surviving well at all. We are eating ourselves to death. We need more people—men and women—to get back into the kitchen and start creating food again. Real, nourishing, life-giving food, not pseudofood. Not chemicals and cardboard dressed up to look like food. But we have devalued this work and so no one wants to do it. It is seen as unimportant. Our society is increasingly not set up to accommodate such activities. If we honored this work, if we understood that our very survival depends on it, maybe we would organize things differently. So maybe that is what Christmas is to me—a way to say that we can choose again. None of this is working. Our gluttony, our imprisonment in a consumer culture that is out of control, our unconsciousness about who we are and how we want to live are all highlighted at this time of year. And yet we are invited by the story of the birth of this baby and by the pagan celebrations that we can do things differently. We can recognize that there is a simpler way to live. We can accept that we need the dark time for contemplation and growth. We can use it to prepare for the work that is ahead. We can discover who we are—who we really are and not who we are told we should be—and we can build a life on that. When I bake and crochet, I am being true to who I am and what I value. And maybe that is a little easier at this time of year. Maybe that's why it all feels different to me somehow. By dropping out of the consumer culture christmas and dropping in to the creative culture christmas, I have discovered more of myself and a way to share that with other people. Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, Festive Holidays.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Hooks, Too
Yesterday I mentioned my book problem. Today I will confess to also having a hook problem! I am an avid crocheter. I do many yarny/ thready things on occasion. In fact, at one time, it was my primary interest. I had grown up fascinated by my grandmother who could sew anything. I still marvel at the fact that she would go to rummage sales, buy drapes, and turn them into slipcovers. By the time I knew her, she didn't have to do this out of financial necessity, but frugality was just a part of her, given her past life, which included 8 children and a depression. So when I grew up, I was going to be like Nana. I bought a low end sewing machine and gave it a try. And I kept trying. And I didn't like it at all. I consoled myself with latch hook kits and crewel embroidery, which were OK but not something that inspired passion in my soul. My other grandmother was a knitter. I would always see her with her thin yarn and aluminum needles clicking away. So maybe I could try yarn. I sat down with yarn, magazines, books, knitting needles, and crochet hooks. Stitch by stitch I taught myself both techniques. Knitting was OK. I could get into it. Sometimes I could get excited about it. Ah, but crocheting—there was a different story! I found my creative passion when I picked up a crochet hook and started pulling those loops of yarn through one another and a blanket or a sweater or a stuffed animal appeared. Use thin yarn or small thread and I could make lace and Christmas ornaments. It's been 25 years since then and I haven't stopped. I have cut way back at times, but crocheting has always served to excite me, comfort me, and provide me with a way to express myself creatively. I usually listen to podcasts or music when I crochet and sometimes I get lost in my own world when I get into a project. I still knit sometimes. I needle tat—or I did. My needles are currently residing in a box in a friend's shed in Oregon, so I won't be doing that anytime soon. I do these other things. I have even taught classes in these other techniques. But I never get as excited about them as I do about crocheting. I think in crochet. I will suddenly have an idea and begin playing around with texture or color or whatever. So when a woman at church said that they were going to put a tree in the narthex and decorate it with hats, scarves, and mittens, and she wanted to know if I could make some, I happily said I would. That was a few weeks ago and I walked in Sunday to see the tree up. I had been planning to finish the thread work I have been doing for the past several weeks—got into playing with color by mixing different colors and weights of thread (some of the results can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/burkejunior/sets/72157622850008540/ )—and then start on stuff for the tree. On Sunday night, though, my elbow began hurting after I'd crocheted for a few hours. So I reluctantly put my hook away and turned to weaving in ends. I decided that the next day I would knit a hat for the tree and give my hands and elbow a break by making different movements with the knitting needles than the usual crochet. So after supper and a bit of time spent finishing the book I was reading, I dug out some knitting needles and started in on a hat. Halfway through, I decided that one knitted hat would be enough. So when the hat was done, I put away the needles and got out one of my favorite hooks, my wooden J. And I started crocheting a hat, hoping that the fact that the hook was wood and quite a bit larger than the small thread hooks I'd been using would be enough of a change to prevent pain and soreness. It was. I made another hat. I enjoyed the process much more and I find the hat itself to be more interesting. I will dig out the knitting needles again at some point. Maybe I will even feel like knitting more than doing anything else one day. But I will always be addicted to my hooks first. It's good to know this about myself. There is much that I am interested in. But I discovered that I have a tendency to want to immerse myself in everything and then I burn out. It's good to follow interests and passions, but also good to know what can be skimmed over or left alone in favor of the things that are really important. And living the way I do, without a lot of possessions, it is good to know that I can let go of stuff that I probably will not use—fabric, sewing machine, embroidery floss, etc. But my hooks will always be with me!
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