Category Archives: Art

Sensitive One

Posted on by under Art, Body, Community

Interesting to be “the sensitive one”, the peculiarly absorbent one, the one whom from the outside may seem a bit slower to process due to the vastly deeper effects of everyday stimuli on my five senses, heart, and mind. I am the one who often moves through life’s processes in a strange cycle of over-perception, over-absorbtion, over-filling, overload, followed by the necessary
retreat-and-recuperation.

People like this tend to cultivate coping mechanisms, escape routes from our sensitive, constantly startled body; habits, addictions, dependencies. I used to find the constant reception of my body a curse, green with envy at my friends who could bulldoze their way through an afternoon, anytime, anywhere, get 85 things done, without much emotional process, while I wasKonjac Sponge Puff With Mineral Rich French Pink Clay 1 an open bowl of other energies, a sponge heavy with foreign water.

I dated a couple of them–those beautiful bulldozers–hoping, in demented admiration, to somehow take on their rugged fast-response and “whatever-ness”.

Art came naturally in necessary adaptation, a powerful house for this absorbent, reactive nature in a place where it made sense. I moved to a big city because that is where so many creative folks lived, though shortly began to feel like I was dying with the heavy backlog of stimulation–without the speed-of-process to sort through it all everyday.

Now, as I feel this enormous transition in my bones, I wonder how my work would manifest if I lived in a place where the energy was lighter. The fact that my days in the city require regular recuperation and healing is beginning to seem odd to me. What would my days look like if I didn’t need to spend time recuperating from regular combative interactions with this inhospitable environment?

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Thank you, Pogo: Meanderings on Music and the Acoustic Distillation of our Environment

Posted on by under Art, Music, Spirit

I have to share with you the video-track that bewitched me this week, the song that drove me out of a heady darkness and onto our roof to flail in wild embodied joy alone in eight-degree weather:

In this gorgeous music video, DJ and sound-genius Pogo illustrates via visual collage music’s most elemental venture: the distillation of the sounds of our acoustic world into digestible pieces of art. Music is, at its essence, the universe distilled. In making music, we recreate the sounds we love from the world we live in. No sound we produce–whether by way of instruments or digital software–is completely unique, we mimic and draw upon sounds from our environment and experiences.

And its precisely music’s ancient process of acoustic reproduction and distillation of the world around it that induces such a profound sensation in most of us when we hear our favorite tunes. We feel the pleasurable sense of deep, instinctive recognition. It is spirit, really–that core piece of us that recognizes the outer world as itself. Within the sounds and heartbeats that combine to make our favorite music, resides a deep, resonant connection between our inner and outer worlds.

Embodiment….What this is really about: Public Space

Posted on by under Art, Embodiment, Feminism, Movement, Public Expression

An important step in personal empowerment and creative growth lies in recognizing one’s own indisputable rights to this thing we call “Public Space.”  Just as women have as much right to walk safely down the street as men, so-called “non-artists” have as much right to public expression, creativity, and sharing as those who call themselves “artists.”  1000870_10100576791921256_1101901815_n

How often do we hear, “I can’t dance because I’m not a dancer” or “I look silly when I do {insert name of creative activity}” as excuses for not showing up expressively?

The good news is, when it comes to “art” and “beauty”, there is really no such thing as either. These things are arbitrary concepts we as a society make up continuously, so saying that becoming either one is a prerequisite to making oneself visible, is just as arbitrary.

What the heck is an artist anyway?

In a society in which everyone is sectioned off to exist beneath the fancy hats we call “skill sets”, based on a certain number hours spent on a very specific activity, some hats are expected to be “seen” while others aren’t. The title “artist” offers a strange permission-to-public-expression to those who claim it. But this imaginary invitation is just as made up as the word that offers it, so the line between those that claim the permission or title and those that don’t is just as imaginary.

Public expression and creativity is the right of everyone who is alive, and recognizing one’s own right to full voice and full posture in public space can be a profoundly empowering realization.

Embody yourself fully, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, every single day.