To be a thing

A thank you and some thoughts

Last weekend I had an open studio. If I saw you there, met you there, THANK YOU. I know life pulls us all in a million directions, so making time in your life to stop by my studio means a lot. A lot, a lot.

There were definite highlights of the weekend (lowlights, too, because opening your sacred space to the public is HARD). A cool thing that happened? Some family friends near and dear to my heart bought one of my favorite pieces.

It’s called “Self Portrait”. A face made up of three faces.

I don’t make art around themes, but themes emerge in the making. This one is part of a big emergent theme for me: the idea that we are not one thing but that we are multitudes.

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Walt Whitman:

Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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Saturday night I went to see a band called Mae. It was a celebration show for a record of theirs that came out 20 years ago. A record that I helped to promote. A record I love.

It has me reflecting.

A lot happens over 20 years. Marriage, kids, jobs. It’s funny how your vision can be so clear, but life has other plans. I thought I’d always work in music, always work with bands like Mae. But the industry changed, plans changed. I’m still grieving this loss.

This loss, that grief, is a part of who I am.

Living my best life at a Pomegranates/Look Mexico show, 2008. Both of these bands were on my label, Lujo Records.

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Langston Hughes:

What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore— / And then run? / Does it stink like rotten meat? / Or crust and sugar over— / like a syrupy sweet? / Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. / Or does it explode?

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Yesterday I was getting to know a new artist-friend. “I live a double life,” she said. “I’m a therapist two days a week and I do my art the rest of the time.”

Is it really a double life if it’s all your life?

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There’s a fox tail agave in my front yard. Earlier in the summer I noticed it was changing. It had started to drop “pups” along its base and its leaves began to feather off. It’s beginning to sprout a flower stem which can grow up to 10 ft, curving and falling back to the earth.

What was one thing, is turning into another.

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To a world that asks us to be one thing I say fuck off. To those with dreams deferred, you are not lost, keeping fucking going. To the one in transition, trust that you are wild, you are beautiful, even - and maybe especially - as you change. And to those living a “double life”, I dare you to embrace all the beauty and hurt that you are.

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To be a thing means to be many things.

Jump + Pray,

joce

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