I Put My Paints Away
I put my paints away this week. I hadn’t painted for months. Paintbrushes, paper, an easel and the other accoutrements of painting were hangong around in the office, looking artful but doing nothing. It was time to clean up and make way. During the office clean up I found about ¥20,000 yen, the spoils of people who requested to pay for the clothes swap on the door IN MAY! That meant I could pay 2 months of health insurance and put money on my travelcard.
I put my paints away in anticipation of the next round of creative output that I will do. And perhaps in order to be a bit leaner to meet my clients, my needs, my writing group and the next iteration of what I will produce. That is not yet clear. It’s not even foggy. Its nothing yet. The world changed this week. It changed collectively and it changed locally in my personal network. These things have never ever made me more clear on the fact that I need to stay close to my people. Keep serving my community. Keep bringing what I have - no shame, no sabotage, no imposter syndrome.
I put my paints away because my medium of artful communication will be writing. We are being called in to make, deliver and create. In response to the mass awakening that we have experienced this week. It could break us - it certainly will break people. Their hearts and souls. I don’t mean us. I mean the people whose power is derived from positioning themselves over. I’m not sure a soul can handle that. I don’t know. I know I want my people near.
Perhaps you are celebrating. Most of my people are not. A collective grief hangs in the air. A desperate calm. This isn’t a cartoon-like anomaly; a blip on a country’s political radar. this is it. This is what a small majority of the country wanted. I don’t know what comes next, but I sense it is not going to be the progressive and inclusive direction that was happening.
I had foolishly imagined that my area of the world was moving steadily and wonderfully toward more and more ways to lead a life. The womanists (a term coined by writer Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple.) were telling us - I believed them. +I’m thinking of the collective mourning and sadness and terror being felt this week. I stand with my black siblings, minority siblings, LGBTQIA+ siblings, any women or men who feel danger and anyone who is feeling the existential and actual dread and threat that hangs in the air. This is a love letter to you and to us. More than anything community and being in the company of people who can knit together and be together and be good and kind and a different kind of supportive. A real, present, whole kind of supportive. I have these people - I am so lucky. And I am that person. And my people are those people.
This week was personal and collective grief and mourning. Never before has these collective been so important.
I have questions too:
I love social media - I love photographing beauty and sharing it, I love seeing what friends are doing and I love keeping in contact through it. But how can i do that while unplugging from a system I fundamentally do not agree with and are there social media alternatives that aren’t run out of USA? I do not want to give up this part of my life but I also wonder what happens next.
Would you like to have a gathering? To get together?
How can we be together and be with people who are stuggling?
How can we make copious amounts of art, produce ridiculous amounts of beauty, and really sit together in direct opposition of the oppressive patriarchal expectations. Can we just stop self-sabotaging in protest against a system that loves us doing that? Can we just say FUCK imposter syndrome - it is an oppressive nonsense - WE ARE IMPOSTERS. We are not under some syndrome. It’s not US. Can we please just - and I mean the sweet amazing, talented ones who are find it difficult to bring their work and art to the fore - can we please, just give it up.
I put my paints away.
