communion, craft, and solidarity

My mother has been the art teacher at our synagogue’s Sunday religious school for the past 15 years. When I was younger and attending classes, I would wait as the building emptied and she cleaned her room. Sometimes the kitchen had snacks left over for the taking, sometimes I’d help her put away the colored markers. Sometimes, I would peek into the main prayer hall. Only a few times was the room empty, and I could wander inside and look up at the stained glass. Although reflecting now I know it was certainly permissible for a teenager to sit before the Torah ark in privacy, at the time it felt like I wasn’t supposed to enter the room alone, like I would get caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to. I remember vividly the feeling of sitting in that room alone though. It was a gentle and overwhelming emotion, an intimate sense of joy and grief between me and the holy essence. Grief because many people must have asked for healing in the room, and joy because many people must have bowed their head in thanks. The space in its vastness and emptiness held me, as if the tall architectural ceilings and wooden pews absorbed people’s prayers, people’s wishes and sadness. The power in the room silently hummed to me. The room was a vessel for prayers, for hope. And the room never seemed so large when it was full of people. When I was 21 I spent 11 days in a silent meditation retreat to learn vipassana, a Buddhist method. The guru said that if you meditate in the same room every day, the room itself will begin to be holy. It was not my prayers in that moment in the temple that overwhelmed me (though I probably did mumble something about my 7th grade crush or for the health of my friends and family) but the fact that other people’s prayers might have been heard in such a space.

I’ve since felt this feeling many times: in religious spaces, in nature, in art museums, looking at my friends around a fire drinking cocktails and cuddled up, watching a sunrise, reading a good poem. The sense of fullness, that someone else once felt the same joy or gratitude or hurt and another will feel it in the future. I feel god most profoundly when I am aware of the fullness of each moment, and I do believe that feelings can become entrenched in a space, in memory, in stories, in art.

I am thinking about religion not only because I am studying Buddhist craft in Nepal, because also because of my Jewish upbringing in context of the Israeli attacks on Gaza. I am confused how the holiness I wrote about before could be the same holiness that is being ‘protected’ by violence. I am saddened that for some, Jewish grief does cannot find a loving vessel. I am heartbroken that Palestinian grief is rendered illegitimate in media discourses. I am betrayed by Jewish people who fail to recognize the weaponization of our people’s wounds and I grieve that too many have not learned of the beauty of liberation movements, how all our struggles are connected. There are many women who are brave and smart and loving and have taught me and others what a liberated world might look like. Only through learning how world powers (white supremacy, capitalism, etc) gives and takes away power behind curtains have I begun to understand how this conflict mirrors many injustices in the world. I recommend reading and following these women now: adrienne maree brown, Celine Semaan, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Their dreaming gives me the same sense of fullness I felt in the synagogue, and I am beginning to wonder if communion with the holy essence is the same as standing for freedom and reciprocity and compassion.

I’m trying to come up with something to contribute to the world, art that will make others feel the fullness. I feel guilt and shame about being a white person making Buddhist art. I wonder if I am the same as an imperialist extracting ideas - that the truth of my current situation is far from the reciprocal values I respect and strive for. I can’t change who I am or where I was born, but I can change how I move through the world, how I listen to others and champion for those who have not had the same privileges. I’ve come to the hesitant conclusion that learning to make art, even when it is not from our own culture, can be an act of devotion to our teachers and their histories. This learning requires a diligent listening, and has required of me to leave my ego and preconceived notions of making at the door in order to receive their knowledge. What is more compassionate than to committing to understand another’s point of view?

I keep waiting for images and symbols to appear before me, some sign that reappears in my life that I am to make art about. For a while it was lady bugs, after that my weird amoeba flowers, some sort of ode to girlhood and imagination. In my mind, the story went this way: a spiritual sign comes to the artist who renders it visibly legible to the outside other. The secrecy of the temple is seen through the crack in the door. But why do I think I need to invent the symbols, that I need to do something diƯerent or something better? This individualist line of thinking is catastrophic to authentic expression, to communion, to solidarity. So I continue painting and chasing the traced images of my teachers, symbols of a religion and region that are not mine but slowly becoming known.

It feels like I’m supposed to make something that has a political statement, that joins hands with others who are fighting for justice, but I just want to make things that feel good. And maybe that’s the political statement itself. To build more vessels that might help hold joy, that might remind us what we are fighting for

On being stuck

I listened to a podcast this morning sent to me by a dear co-conspirator. On the podcast, adrienne maree brown discusses octavia butler’s conceptualizations of change. Brown says butlers’s main message is super clear, “change is coming. You can be prepared for it. You don’t have to be a victim of it, but you can actually shape it.” Fitting quote, as the friend had just left stl for the big city, shaping her own destiny. In fact, a few of my close creative friends have left this month for various periods of time on their own artistic and personal becoming. I’m excited for them and curious of my own becoming and of what’s next. A tension comes up for me: am I really shaping change here in stl, what feels like the easy route? Maybe it’s jealousy, maybe it’s fear, hell, maybe it’s joy that keeps me here in my hometown. This post probably doesn’t have a clear answer.

Reading Butlers’s parable of the sower and parable of the talents a year ago has opened a discourse and discovering for me about what shaping change manifests as. A mindset that leans into transformation, into alchemy, into change and turbulence is patient with the knowledge that wisdom must be integrated (months later I am looking at a picture of him and i, and I so clearly realize that reality became muddled with the rose colored glasses of proximity). Butler is insistent on the actual integration of ideas as to become a shaper of change. Life rn isn’t as rushed or exuberant as I imaged ‘growth’ to be when I was younger.

Transformation is not always abrupt nor an obvious metamorphosis.

What happens when you just be in one place? How can I notice, cultivate, and celebrate the pervasive growth that is possible during stagnation? During safety?

I used to love transformation because of the adrenaline. Newness! Excitement! Maybe it was the youthful freedom I felt of finishing school in 2018, that I could choose my own change and my own circumstance. I left the country for a long while, traveling alone abroad until I ran out of the money. I had a job lined up to go somewhere entirely new again in 2020, but then the pandemic, and then the building of a business, the making friends and relationships, the literal tending to a garden (I have four eggplants growing!!!). Along with new mental transformations of race and class that have left me associating foreign travel for the pursuit of discovery as the literal frontier myth, one inevitably starts to wonder how other things we’ve been told about growth and metamorphosis are just someone else’s imaginations on how society works and how we ought to move through it.

There’s this discourse in stl that’s like ‘I need to leave the midwest. "I’m not understood, I don’t want to get stuck here”, etc. Etc.. And it’s awesome and brave to leave a place you feel safe, I guess I am just noticing and advocating for that slow beat of integration and building. I’ve chased expansion before…I can’t quite place my finger on it just yet, but it feels like my world and community are now expanding with ease?

I am attracting the opportunities and relationships I long for by prioritizing life enriching daily habits. Has my labor of shaping change already begun to integrate?

Taosim has a different texture of agency than butler or brown when it comes to shaping reality. Reality is fixed (chaos. The way. The tao) but acting in alignment of reality is actually the ultimate liberation. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense for ya, it doesn’t quite for me either. Remember what I said about wisdom taking time? Anyways, maybe you are familiar with lao tzu, that old guy with a long beard next to a pinterest quote, credited with writing the tao te ching. Chuang zhu was of the same school (around 400bc). He’s a philosophical skeptic, frankly comparable to today’s meme girlies or one of those people on twitter with 40 followers but posting the *most* real hot takes. Chuang zhu’s text poked holes at the perceived reality of the time and mocked the accepted social order to reveal an underlying way of the world (the dao) that is just pure chaos. But like a harmonious chaos. Again we’re back with the revealing of social orders as imagined, more proof that transforming movement is feasible and in fact is done over and over again throughout human history. Tbh chuang zhu is an original shitposter, proof that silly little stories and sarcasm can actually undergird an entire ontology. And that’s what we’re trying to do, right? Plant seeds of loving revolution through the internet via emojis and subliminal messaging over american girl doll pngs?

Here's a parable from chuang zhu. It has a lot of interpretations on its own, and even more in context of the rest of the text, the history of the warring states period, and in conjunction with other daoist philosophies of the time. I know it’s long so I bolded the important parts, but left it all if you feel like meandering. It’s a parable so it’s a bit exaggerated…yea...here’s the story:

Horses’ hoofs are made for treading frost and snow, their coats for keeping out wind and cold. To munch grass, drink from the stream, lift up their feet and gallop this is the true nature of horses. Though they might possess great terraces and fine halls, they would have no use for them.

Then along comes po lo. “i’m good at handling horses!” He announces, and proceeds to singe them, shave them, pare them, brand them, bind them with martingale and crupper, tie them up in stable and stall. By this time two or three out of ten horses have died. He goes on to starve them, make them go thirsty, race them, prance them, pull them into line, force them to run side by side, in front of them the worry of bit and rein, behind them the terror of whip and crop. By this time over half the horses have died.

The potter says, “i’m good at handling clay! To round it, I apply the compass; to square it, I apply the t square.” The carpenter says, “i’m good at handling wood! To arc it, I apply the curve; to make it straight, I apply the plumb line.” But as far as inborn nature is concerned, the clay and the wood surely have no wish to be subjected to compass and square, curve and plumb line. Yet generation after generation sings out in praise, saying, “po lo is good at handling horses! The potter and the carpenter are good at handling clay and wood!” And the same fault is committed by the men who handle the affairs of the world!

In my opinion someone who was really good at handling the affairs of the world would not go about it like this. The people have their constant inborn nature. To weave for their clothing, to till for their food — this is the virtue they share. They are one in it and not partisan, and it is called the emancipation of heaven. Therefore in a time of perfect virtue the gait of men is slow and ambling; their gaze is steady and mild. In such an age mountains have no paths or trails, lakes no boats or bridges. The ten thousand things live species by species, one group settled close to another. Birds and beasts form their flocks and herds, grass and trees grow to fullest height. So it happens that you can tie a cord to the birds and beasts and lead them about, or bend down the limb and peer into the nest of the crow and the magpie. In this age of perfect virtue men live the same as birds and beasts, group themselves side by side with the ten thousand things. Who then knows anything about “gentleman” or “petty man”? Dull and ununwitting, men have no wisdom; thus their virtue does not depart from them. Dull and unwitting, they have no desire; this is called uncarved simplicity. In uncarved simplicity the people attain their true nature.

Then along comes the sage, huffing and puffing after benevolence, reaching on tiptoe for righteousness, and the world for the first time has doubts; mooning and mouthing over his music, snipping and stitching away at his rites, and the world for the first time is divided. Thus, if the plain unwrought substance had not been blighted, how would there be any sacrificial goblets? If the white jade had not been shattered, how would there be any scepters and batons? If the way and its virtue had not been cast aside, how would there be any call for benevolence and righteousness? If the true form of the inborn nature had not been abandoned, how would there be any use for rites and music? If the five colors had not confused men, who would fashion patterns and hues? If the five notes had not confused them, who would try to tune things by the six tones? That the unwrought substance was blighted in order to fashion implements — this was the crime of the artisan. That the way and its virtue were destroyed in order to create benevolence and righteousness — this was the fault of the sage.

When horses live on the plain, they eat grass and drink from the streams. Pleased, they twine their necks together and rub; angry, they turn back to back and kick. This is all horses know how to do. But if you pile poles and yokes on them and line them up in crossbars and shafts, then they will learn to snap the crossbars, break the yoke, rip the carriage top, champ the bit, and chew the reins. Thus horses learn how to commit the worst kinds of mischief. This is the crime of po lo.

In the days of ho hsu, people stayed home but didn’t know what they were doing, walked around but didn’t know where they were going. Their mouths crammed with food, they were merry; drumming on their bellies, they passed the time. This was as much as they were able to do. Then the sage came along with the crouchings and bendings of rites and music, which were intended to reform the bodies of the world; with the reaching-for-a-dangled-prize of benevolence and righteousness, which was intended to comfort the hearts of the world. Then for the first time people learned to stand on tiptoe and covet knowledge, to fight to the death over profit, and there was no stopping them. This in the end was the fault of the sage

Yeah. The time of ‘perfect virtue’ is a false romanticization of a static ideal, but the critiques here bring something up for me. Take into consideration that taosim (over simplifying here) refutes confucianism and heaven-mandated governance in ancient china. What does this have to do with shaping change? The sage (take it metaphorically as a leader or teacher) shaped understandings of the world to be about scarcity, about reaching for something just out of reach. And the part about five colors and fashions, let’s interpret that as the creation of trends or certain aesthetics as more valuable ultimately create jealousy and fighting.

I mean, I’m an artisan trying to pay rent, but his critique stands the test of time for neoliberal capitalism. There’s a clear sentiment that being slow and steady is a true virtue compared to chasing the bag.

Here in my apartment (pls keep buying my art, I love it here), i’m not releasing adrenaline because i’m not in fight or flight. There isn’t excitement or some obvious change. The changes that are happening are tiny little shifts in understanding and tiny little shifts in my everyday actions. I can’t quite grasp what that final thing about this is… like, damn i’m only 26 this stuƯ should not be clear to me and that’s the whole point. Like, I don’t know the end point. The only constant is change (shout out satya narayan goenka). Change can be scary and exhilarating and change can be scary because it isn’t exhilarating. Transformative cycles are ancient and constant. Am I not growing stronger roots by gently tending? What is so repulsive about comfort and safety? I am ready to learn the lessons from the tree who spends her whole life in one spot.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

social media optimism

“we are taught to fear the truth, to believe it always hurts, we are encouraged to see honest people as naïve, as potential losers. Bombarded with cultural propaganda ready to instill in all of us the notion that lies are more important, that truth does not matter, we are all potential victims. Consumer culture in particular encourages lies… keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy. Lovelessness is a boon to consumerism.“ (bell hooks, p47, all about love, 1999)

As for new years resolutions, I imagine a lot of ppl will say they are taking a break from social media. Too much time online means something is wrong with you, right? What is it with the world’s immediate assumption that social media is bad?

I am very much a social media optimist. I grew up on runescape, club penguin, gaiaonline, maplestory. I was of the generation and economic class to play on computers and the web as early as 10, downloading art software, reading blogs and illegally downloading youtubes to mp3. The internet is like the world’s largest library, quarantine friendly dance hall, a temple that transcends country borders. I’ve written about how technology has disrupted our experience of linear time and caring relationships (its not narcissistic to share an ig post from a year ago, its archival). Online, we are in a unique position that enables asynchronous conversation with ourselves and with others to a threshold never before experienced by humans. This is the medium we find ourselves in, as we peer at eachother thru the screens.

My idealistic view of the internet, however, is before you add in economic, political, and social forces that shape experiences online.

With the acquirement of instagram, meta’s chokehold is concerning. The way algorithms sell us what we say out loud is concerning. Then there is the commodification of images, meaning visuals have market values. A sexy swimsuit pic impacts multiple markets: it will make you order a swimsuit, buy a gym membership, a tanning lotion, subscribe to of. Nft’s are a badly planned attempt to rein in the internet’s democratic stronghold (screenshots) in the name of benefit for artists, but commodifying creativity will always be contorted into opportunistic/ capitalistic hedonism.

As an artist that makes money via my social media page, I see the contextual realities of social media and consumption, but I need to act in this cultural space so that I can pay rent while making space to play and rest and dream. We all need to act more intentionally in online spaces. My guiding principle is not the algorithms. It is not the number of likes or the number of followers! (but how seductive those numbers are…) I have to constantly remind myself because these incentives are shoved in our face every moment of every day, the impetus to go viral ascertains that success (i.e. Happiness) is sure to follow. Certainly, it’s harder than ever to be authentic in a world that is hyper visible, but perhaps there is more at stake when we aren’t.

I’ve always hated the discourse that selfies are vain and that social media is ruining peoples perception of themselves. Noooo baby, that’s the capitalist male gaze that says bodies are meant to look a certain way, that says if you like how your body looks, you’re evil. Liking how you look and how you live means you are satisfied, and means you aren’t the ideal consumer (lulz this is real, read more). An interconnected network online is not what is degrading our self worth or our connections with others, it’s the dominant human created discourses that have shaped online spaces the same way they shape oƯline spaces. However, it’s actually very exciting to realize that online spaces are shaped by dominant discourses, bc it means that other, alternative discourses can shape spaces. What would it be like if we chose love and pleasure and compassion and honesty as our reasons for sharing?

“gestures, posture, clothes, habits, and certain distinctions, from the way one holds a cigarette to the manner in which one crosses one's legs, to the way one wears a hat-they all are performed differently depending on the gender, race, class status, and sexual orientation of the performer. How the body moves about in the world, and its various mannerisms, styles, and distinctions, is inherited from one generation through space and time to another and demarcated within specific identity categories. Therefore, these performativities become the manifestation of gender, race, sexuality, and class. You have heard the saying, "act like a man," or the stereotypes, "she acts like a boy," "he doesn't act black," "he acts like he's gay,” or "she acts like she has no class." these expressions are common in the vernacular because identity is performed, and to perform outside these inherited constructions is to break through these taken-for-granted and commonsense notions of what a specific identity is or should be. These performativities are engrained in the way we understand and order social behavior to the point that we often think it is not only natural, but proper and as it should be.” But what happens when performativity is disrupted? What happens when a boy acts like a girl? When a woman acts like a man? When a black person does not act black? When an old person does not act old? Performativity is up for examination and reflection in cultural performance.” (d. SonyinI madison, critical ethnography p192, 2012)

Imagine it is your first day of school. It’s new, you don’t know anyone. You are whatever age you are right now, reading this. How would you want to act? Who would you want to meet? What classes would you be the most excited about? Pe, art, home ec? Geology? What if we came online with the same curiosity and the same energy of connecting over interests, not market valued things like wealth, false beauty standards, or hyper productivity?

As the omicron variant spreads and people are feeling very lonely, negative feelings have potential to be exasperated by being on social media spaces that nourish jealousy, fatigue. We must care for eachother by reshaping our actions online to be guided by love and compassion, rather than the immediate gratification, click bait, and false aesthetics of capitalism such as new clothes, extravagant vacations, and quickly formed opinions based off of a few tweets . Like other “pleasure activists”, I full heartedly believe that moving through spaces, yes even digital ones, with love and with boundaries allows for imagination, creativity, and healing in ways that are very human. I’m talking about authentic connections and using social media as the tool that it has the potential to be— if we take space from it and engage with it in meaningful ways.

My age group (1994-1999) we were not rlly taught by anyone about how to be online. They just said things like be careful what you post it will follow you, people will track you, it will be unprofessional, etc. As an adult, I see that professionalism is a false performance of white cis hetero patriarchy. I want to move beyond these oppressive perceptions of what is ‘right’ and ‘moral’!! The future (the now, the past), is queer, collaborative, expansive, and non-human (tech, environment, animals on equal planes as humans). The same way our authentic selves inherently deserve respect and compassion irl, so do our digital avatars as archetypes of our self, our dreams, who we want to be, and who we cant be in real life.

So what about a tool kit for actually acting this way online? How do we escape the influx of images selling things to us? How do we view social media as anything other than a fake highlight reel of people we don’t actually interact with irl? “embodied experience and affective forms of interconnection are both facets of our online and offline worlds” (devin proctor & tariq adely). This means that the ways we relate to eachother, how it makes us feel in our bodies and feel emotionally, is not just a thing of the offline world, though ofc it will have different texture and reverberations online. The advice is not that bullshit ‘treat people behind the screen like people’, that’s so vague and it isn’t actual instructions for creating boundaries nor acting with love. Our online worlds need to be safe to be regenerative, creating opportunities for individuals to perform authentic versions of themselves. (I act different at home then I do in the office then I do on a first date than I do at a bar with my best friends than I do at home alone. Which is the authentic version of myself? Are they not all real? Am I not a sum of these performances?). To disrupt patterns of habit online, we must take space away to stop cycles, and think intentionally about how we want to move in online spaces before going back in with curiosity and intentionality.

Going online needs to be energizing and inspiring. Like any artist will tell you, inspiration and work come in cycles. Inspiration without discipline, without trying, prevents our dreams from becoming reality. Ideas require integration, require kneading out bubbles, time to rise. This is where the work of boundaries with the internet comes in. I feel like boundaries are such a buzz word that seem like a solve-all, when in reality it is a vast umbrella that covers actions, thoughts, and words that differ for every person in every context. My boundaries with social media will look different than yours. And when people criticize social media for being life draining, they’re actually feeling the impacts of our social pressures manifested in an online space. What do energizing online spaces look like? Gardening facebook groups, potluck dinner posters, upcycling tiktoks. Its funny bc the recent meta ads and fb group ads sell this sense of community back to us, but I really think most people are so jaded from social media that we don’t see that kind of connection anymore!

What is our tool kit for mitigating social pressures irl, and how can we translate that to online space? There is a long history of dreamers who aspire towards justice, freedom, and compassion. Its up to us who grew up online to lead the way, testing how these principles might be practiced online. We must be the generation that disrupts the current trajectory of social media into a nihilistic world where the only option is to buy happiness. Posting to any social media is the opportunity for an intentional curation of sentiments, colors, shapes, and forms. Reject the idea of curating wealth, aesthetic beauty values, and hyper productivity. If we are inserting ourselves directly in the perception of others, ought we not be more careful of what it is we are showing them? Ought we not see it as an opportunity to present our dream world, how the world could be, how things might be? It’s true that our individual actions and words are mere lines in the sand of the great discourse desert. It is also true that what each person notices about the world in their quiet moments is something of a revelation. And if we were to collectively draw our own little lines with intention, aiming to align them with each of our different values and how we might imagine a world, maybe the winds will blow dunes into the shape of community.

“it is a metaphysical illusion that one can speak only for oneself: we are collective caught in an intricate, delicate web in which each action I take, discursively or otherwise, pulls on, breaks off, or maintains the tension in many strands of web in which other find themselves moving also” (linda alcff, the problem of speaking for others 1991, p 20)

We are the subject and the artist, the avatar and the one who holds the controller, who will you perform as next?