dance on down

Song of the Day: The Blow – True Affection

When I was younger, while going to school and having afterschool classes, and sleepovers, and dates, and going to punk shows, I’d make a lot of stuff. My surrogate older sister Gillian taught me the ways of a good riotgrrl. I made zines with my friends. I’d go to CCA to hang out and make paper. We’d sit in silent on opposite ends of the room cutting and pasting and creating without a thought of the purpose behind what we were doing, or even really what we were making. We’d make care packages, and mix tapes,  and sent letters all over the world. I’d  make little books and we’d send them to each other, adding pages until it was filled and beautiful. We bought photocopied zines for a dollar, and traded them. We worked in the darkroom that was set up in the bathroom, spend nights cutting each other’s hair, getting silly, and making our own entertainment.

When I got to college, I struggled to keep this culture close to me. I’d take my typewriter outside and write letters in the courtyard under streetlights. My friends sent me art to put on my walls to make me feel more at home. I bought a bike and biked all over the town, looking for interesting places and interesting things. I’d bike in the snow to go to shows at this quiet clubhouse 30 minutes away. When everyone was freaking out about tests and grades, I couldn’t relate. I rebelled. I became an art major. I planned lesbian paint parties in my studio and took lunch to the guys who ran the university’s greenhouses every Friday. But somewhere in this mix of activities, something was happening. This elitist place, with it’s art theory and strictly academic way of thinking of projects began to seep under my skin. Art projects were supposed to be researched, theoretical, ambitious, perfect, surprising yet critical, beautiful yet meaningful, original, yet influenced by the entire art historical narrative.

It made me nervous. I spent weeks thinking and overthinking and analysing ideas before I could even make anything. It made me mad that I couldn’t just play and create. I began to look to everyone else to give me ideas on what to make. I began thinking I wasn’t good enough. I thought everyone must be smarter than me. I worried about whether I belonged there or not. I worried about being able to graduate. I began researching how all these artists attained fame and success. My advisor told me I needed to think more about craft, about making things perfect. I needed to be more ambitious. I had to stop thinking about my mother, my family, where I come from. I tried to fill her in. I tried to explain that this wasn’t the point. I was taught how to trick the art world into buying, instead of how to make things that you really cared about.

Then I graduated and became extremely depressed. I had big ideas, but it seemed like it was impractical and impossible for me to follow them. I got crappy jobs to give me time to do my art, but all I really did was freak out about never being able to make a living at it. I lost my friends, the ones who I had created with for so long. I lost those long nights cutting and pasting and painting and listening to music. I became isolated and alone and every moment I felt more and more like a failure.

I don’t know what to tell people when they ask me what I make. I make paintings, I make drawings, but really, I love to make situations most of all. I want to find ways of breaking the rules of society. I want to create new ways for people to interact. I want to find ways to create community without all the inhibition that comes from thinking we’re so different from each other, or that we’re better or worse, or that we’re strangers and we shouldn’t talk.

I’m trying to get over this thinking in my own head. I’m trying to find a way to break free and reconnect with people in a way that is real. I’m not interested in talking small talk to be pleasant and pass the time. I want to know what you think and how you live and what is important and why you think that. I want to challenge perceptions about the world and our lifestyles. I want to show you and me why it’s okay to choose different ways of living. I want to teach people how to fish, so they can feed themselves forever.

I want to encourage people to move away from this “I got mine” mentality. When we only look out for ourselves, we are thinking too small. I want to help build communities that treat each other like friends, even if they have never met before. I want to get people to sing and dance , and use our cooperation to make big things happen.

I’m not sure how to do this, but I’m feeling out a way. And I don’t want to stop, because every time I stop I forget and think my life has to be boring, broke, and isolated. I turn on the TV, and I turn off my hopes and dreams for the future. Even though I don’t know exactly what it is I want, or how to get it, I have to believe it is out there and accessible, because I don’t want to live a life of 60 hours weeks and no time. I want good food, and laughter, and music, and dancing and love, not snobs.