Thinking about style again lately. Interesting how theme and variations occur and can be utterly different, no matter how "close" or "far they are from the "original".
I have always liked the song "Summertime" from Porgy & Bess by Gershwin, written in 1935 (I think). There are something like 12,000 known versions of this song. I'd love to have a collection of the notable ones. Billie Holiday's version is the closest to original in terms of time period, but the Ella Fitzgerald/Louis Armstrong recording is the most iconic/most copied. I have included a live performance by Ella to stand in for that version...it's interesting to me how each version relates to her prototypical performance and what that says about style....I'm not even sure the Chick Corea/Hiromi Uehara version can really be called the "same" song at all--but what do we mean by the "same" song, anyway?
BTW, I think Devendra Banhart is evil, like truly evil, and not in a good Nietszchean sense. I want to like him, but he gives me the creeps, really really really bad. Any other opinions?
Billie Holiday, 1936
Ella Fitzgerald, Berlin 1968
Janis Joplin, Stockholm, 1969
The Fun Boy Three, London, 1982
Devendra Banhart, n/d
Chick Corea and Hiromi Uehara, n/d
Tuesday
Song Needed: Request for Audience Participation
OK, I was trying to find a song or poem to post here that would really get at the meaning I was trying to express in my last post about how we are made of each other, and the kind of love I'm working with there....but I'm stumped. Any suggestions?
Monday
Thanksgiving: we are made of each other
I have just spent the past few days dwelling in the past, sorting and cleaning out my belongings from my parents' basement. They had everything down there, from my earliest toys to all of my school papers (preschool to high school! you can tell I'm an only child). It has felt good to go through it all and to let go of most of it. It has also felt good to stumble upon the unexpected treasures that will continue along the next part of my living with me.
I have found many photographs that I took of my friends in elementary and middle school and have had the chance to look through all of my parents' belongings and photo albums....a comprehensive family and personal history in artifacts and photographs.
Spending time with my parents in their home also gives me the chance to notice so clearly how much I am made of them...their patterns of speech, their facial expressions, their gestures. I wonder how far back those go? Is my mother's goofiness really that of my 13th great grandmother's? My father's linguistic precision, did that come from Adam?
We all grow out of one another in such concrete yet mysterious ways....and it isn't just our parents and our families that we are made of.
In the photographs I took as a child of eleven, I found there was one little boy in particular that I had a number of photographs of, by himself. I guess he was a favored photographic subject of mine. I don't recall having a crush on him, he was a lot shorter than me. Yet, there are all these photographs, more of him than of anyone else. Why? What did he mean to me then? I can't remember what it was like to be 11 or 12. Was it so much different than now, in my early 30s?
I found some old letters written between me and friends when I was 12 or 13, and to be frank, it doesn't seem that different now. Some of these letters were so much more insightful than I understood at the time. I think people totally underestimate children and adolescents, perhaps adolescents especially. I've grown, but the brilliant sentience that I am, that they were, (that we all really are) hasn't changed at all. If I have improved it has been because I have found ways to be what I always was without being worried about it.
He was a beautiful little blonde boy, a good friend of mine. Such a heartbreakingly beautiful boy, smiling in this photo, pensive in the next. I notice as I look at them that he didn't mug for the camera the way the other kids did. He was capable of being seen, it seems. He could look the camera in the eye, and be present. I am blown away by the strength and power of his 11 year old presence. I remember him in impressions...a fragment of his voice, the way he laughed, the way he sounded when he was upset about something. What kind of man did he become?
When I was in my early to mid twenties, my parents moved back to the town I lived in when I went to school with this boy, and I tracked down his parents' phone number. I called his mom and introduced myself and asked about him. She remembered me and told me he was in school for engineering at a state university, that he was doing well. I must have left my contact information (I don't remember doing it, but I must have) and he didn't get back to me.
Maybe he'll show up on facebook one of these days. A number of the people that we were friends with in the early days are there, and I have reconnected with them since I found these photos. It's strange to me that they remember me--I moved away in 7th grade! I see pictures of all of them as teenagers and even as adults together--going to each other's weddings and stuff.
I have lived in a lot of different places and have had a lot of friends and lovers, and I am always flattered (and surprised) when the people whose lives I floated through on my childhood and adolescent travels remember me and are glad to hear from me again.
Those people...all those people in all those places! I loved them all so much. I still do. I am made of them....I am made of you.
Thank you all so much for the time we have spent together, and if you're reading this, thanks for spending your time checking in with me now. It has been my privilege and my pleasure to know you--you have let me be what I am and you have made me what I am. Know that I carry you with me everywhere I go...it is such a sublime fullness.
thank you thank you thank you
I have found many photographs that I took of my friends in elementary and middle school and have had the chance to look through all of my parents' belongings and photo albums....a comprehensive family and personal history in artifacts and photographs.
Spending time with my parents in their home also gives me the chance to notice so clearly how much I am made of them...their patterns of speech, their facial expressions, their gestures. I wonder how far back those go? Is my mother's goofiness really that of my 13th great grandmother's? My father's linguistic precision, did that come from Adam?
We all grow out of one another in such concrete yet mysterious ways....and it isn't just our parents and our families that we are made of.
In the photographs I took as a child of eleven, I found there was one little boy in particular that I had a number of photographs of, by himself. I guess he was a favored photographic subject of mine. I don't recall having a crush on him, he was a lot shorter than me. Yet, there are all these photographs, more of him than of anyone else. Why? What did he mean to me then? I can't remember what it was like to be 11 or 12. Was it so much different than now, in my early 30s?
I found some old letters written between me and friends when I was 12 or 13, and to be frank, it doesn't seem that different now. Some of these letters were so much more insightful than I understood at the time. I think people totally underestimate children and adolescents, perhaps adolescents especially. I've grown, but the brilliant sentience that I am, that they were, (that we all really are) hasn't changed at all. If I have improved it has been because I have found ways to be what I always was without being worried about it.
He was a beautiful little blonde boy, a good friend of mine. Such a heartbreakingly beautiful boy, smiling in this photo, pensive in the next. I notice as I look at them that he didn't mug for the camera the way the other kids did. He was capable of being seen, it seems. He could look the camera in the eye, and be present. I am blown away by the strength and power of his 11 year old presence. I remember him in impressions...a fragment of his voice, the way he laughed, the way he sounded when he was upset about something. What kind of man did he become?
When I was in my early to mid twenties, my parents moved back to the town I lived in when I went to school with this boy, and I tracked down his parents' phone number. I called his mom and introduced myself and asked about him. She remembered me and told me he was in school for engineering at a state university, that he was doing well. I must have left my contact information (I don't remember doing it, but I must have) and he didn't get back to me.
Maybe he'll show up on facebook one of these days. A number of the people that we were friends with in the early days are there, and I have reconnected with them since I found these photos. It's strange to me that they remember me--I moved away in 7th grade! I see pictures of all of them as teenagers and even as adults together--going to each other's weddings and stuff.
I have lived in a lot of different places and have had a lot of friends and lovers, and I am always flattered (and surprised) when the people whose lives I floated through on my childhood and adolescent travels remember me and are glad to hear from me again.
Those people...all those people in all those places! I loved them all so much. I still do. I am made of them....I am made of you.
Thank you all so much for the time we have spent together, and if you're reading this, thanks for spending your time checking in with me now. It has been my privilege and my pleasure to know you--you have let me be what I am and you have made me what I am. Know that I carry you with me everywhere I go...it is such a sublime fullness.
thank you thank you thank you
The crux of creating: feeling situations?
This post is in tangential response to Cara's comments on my first post.
One of the things I'm noticing as I'm in conversation with you and non-blog others is how little interest I have in "art" or "fashion" or "design". I mean, I read some magazines like Domino and Allure and I read some blogs like If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, bad banana blog, Design*Sponge, and Grassrootsmodern, but these are mostly for inspiration and light reading. I too, seek to be pretty (or at least 'put-together') and am not invested really in participating in the world of aesthetic professionals. Whatever aesthetic production I am interested in participating in personally I am mostly interested in for my own enjoyment and edification (although I hope to write interesting books about psychology one day, and I consider psychotherapy to be a performing art/performance art)...
On a day to day basis, though, I am inherently attuned to the aesthetics of situations. This does not necessarily mean decorating everything just so or buying art or even arranging my architectural experiences such that I have fabulous views all the time. It does mean that I feel the situations I'm in pretty acutely.
In fact, the feeling of situations is foundational in my creative actions, academic or otherwise. For example: The other day I was working on my dissertation proposal and had a moment when I was working through a complex concept and didn't quite have the words for it. Anyone who writes has experiences like this--working through the process of bringing something into words. It's a curious experience--where do the words come from, anyway?
As part of the writing/thinking process, I paused from actively writing while still totally engaged with the work. In a matter of seconds, I found myself completely taken with the beauty of one of my plants; swimming in it, overtaken by it. While there was no direct relation between my dissertation work and my plant, somehow gazing at it was part of this creative process. I felt so incredibly glad that the plant was with me, that it was here in this temporary rental apartment I am staying in for now. There was something about the intense Reality of the Plant and my Love For the Plant that was totally important and cogent.
To be honest, I cannot explain or conceptualize the importance, at that moment, of my experience with that plant. Nor can I explain or conceptualize the importance, at any given moment, of the people, things, and aesthetic details that help me bring my own creative products into the world.
My dissertation proposal (and the research project it outlines) is a piece of work developed and supported by countless hours of listening to music, reading poetry, watching films, and spending time with my husband, my friends and my clients in deep human engagement. It also grew out of the many tangential and accidental encounters with all of my neighborhood acquaintances and the unknown strangers that I have noticed crossing my path. It grew directly out of the curtains in my bedroom, the plants in my house, my backyard, my kitchen, and now this boring rental apartment that--luckily--includes my precious plants. Moreover, it grew out of everything I have lived in my life until now...all the different sunlights I have ever seen and gotten to know, the different airs I have breathed, etcetera, etcetera.
Back when I used to be creatively impaired (read: clinically depressed), I had the problem that the world would come into me in the very way my plant did, rushing in, inseminating me, somehow insinuating something in feeling that I couldn't quite grasp intellectually. Instead of bringing the world's feeling-children into being via some kind of creative work, I would let them fester like little tumors. The world-feeling would go sour in me, get stuck in there, and then eventually come out in little puss-oozing sores that smelled bad and were really aesthetically displeasing...and frightening. I felt then that there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow "too sensitive" and that I would never be able to bear the way the world affected me.
It turns out I was wrong, but the only way for me to bear the world is to listen to it, to experience it fully, and to experience it by letting it create through me. That's not quite right.
Really, the situation is that in the creating, there is neither a "me" nor "the world". In the creating there is only the becoming...which is a radically sentient and material event--listening to the feeling of being and letting it take over in the production of sentient and material circumstances.
One of the things I'm noticing as I'm in conversation with you and non-blog others is how little interest I have in "art" or "fashion" or "design". I mean, I read some magazines like Domino and Allure and I read some blogs like If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger There'd Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats, bad banana blog, Design*Sponge, and Grassrootsmodern, but these are mostly for inspiration and light reading. I too, seek to be pretty (or at least 'put-together') and am not invested really in participating in the world of aesthetic professionals. Whatever aesthetic production I am interested in participating in personally I am mostly interested in for my own enjoyment and edification (although I hope to write interesting books about psychology one day, and I consider psychotherapy to be a performing art/performance art)...
On a day to day basis, though, I am inherently attuned to the aesthetics of situations. This does not necessarily mean decorating everything just so or buying art or even arranging my architectural experiences such that I have fabulous views all the time. It does mean that I feel the situations I'm in pretty acutely.
In fact, the feeling of situations is foundational in my creative actions, academic or otherwise. For example: The other day I was working on my dissertation proposal and had a moment when I was working through a complex concept and didn't quite have the words for it. Anyone who writes has experiences like this--working through the process of bringing something into words. It's a curious experience--where do the words come from, anyway?
As part of the writing/thinking process, I paused from actively writing while still totally engaged with the work. In a matter of seconds, I found myself completely taken with the beauty of one of my plants; swimming in it, overtaken by it. While there was no direct relation between my dissertation work and my plant, somehow gazing at it was part of this creative process. I felt so incredibly glad that the plant was with me, that it was here in this temporary rental apartment I am staying in for now. There was something about the intense Reality of the Plant and my Love For the Plant that was totally important and cogent.
To be honest, I cannot explain or conceptualize the importance, at that moment, of my experience with that plant. Nor can I explain or conceptualize the importance, at any given moment, of the people, things, and aesthetic details that help me bring my own creative products into the world.
My dissertation proposal (and the research project it outlines) is a piece of work developed and supported by countless hours of listening to music, reading poetry, watching films, and spending time with my husband, my friends and my clients in deep human engagement. It also grew out of the many tangential and accidental encounters with all of my neighborhood acquaintances and the unknown strangers that I have noticed crossing my path. It grew directly out of the curtains in my bedroom, the plants in my house, my backyard, my kitchen, and now this boring rental apartment that--luckily--includes my precious plants. Moreover, it grew out of everything I have lived in my life until now...all the different sunlights I have ever seen and gotten to know, the different airs I have breathed, etcetera, etcetera.
Back when I used to be creatively impaired (read: clinically depressed), I had the problem that the world would come into me in the very way my plant did, rushing in, inseminating me, somehow insinuating something in feeling that I couldn't quite grasp intellectually. Instead of bringing the world's feeling-children into being via some kind of creative work, I would let them fester like little tumors. The world-feeling would go sour in me, get stuck in there, and then eventually come out in little puss-oozing sores that smelled bad and were really aesthetically displeasing...and frightening. I felt then that there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow "too sensitive" and that I would never be able to bear the way the world affected me.
It turns out I was wrong, but the only way for me to bear the world is to listen to it, to experience it fully, and to experience it by letting it create through me. That's not quite right.
Really, the situation is that in the creating, there is neither a "me" nor "the world". In the creating there is only the becoming...which is a radically sentient and material event--listening to the feeling of being and letting it take over in the production of sentient and material circumstances.
Saturday
Friday
community of style and becoming-molecular
"There is no subject of the becoming except as a deterritorialized variable of the majority; there is no medium of becoming except as a deterritorialized variable of a minority. We can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things. You don't deviate from the majority unless there is a little detail that starts to swell and carries you off." Deleuze & Guattari, 1000 Plateaus, p.292
I've been pondering the value of style lately. Style in the more common sense of aesthetic style, appreciation for art, good decorating, putting together a stylish look. For many years I had this style that was very aggressive and defined itself proudly as a deviation from the majority. This kind of approach to style did not value the common, ordinary, or everyday, and certainly did not value things that were inherited. It was exhausting. It was doomed to fail, and it was painful because I constantly had to try to live up to a standard of non-ordinariness which is pretty impossible to achieve in a day to day living kind of context.
So I was starting to wonder whether my interest in creating my own aesthetic style was merely a kind of egoistic attempt to be better than other people, to look down on them in their dreaded ordinariness, which I used to perceive as weakness, slumbering, and inauthenticity. (Which of course was a way of trying to feel better about being interested in things that other people thought were strange, odd, or otherwise aberrant.)
As I've been working it through now, as I look at it closely, I find that the aesthetics of daily life (home decor, clothing/hair/makeup, food, patterns of speech, means of transportation, writing instruments, etc) genuinely are important to me, but not because my taste sets me apart from other people. The aesthetic interests I have are not about judgment, but rather about really noticing what is going on within me and around me--really noticing the textures, shapes, colors, sounds/musics, temperatures, speeds, slownesses, traditions, innovations, pathways, walls, etc of the world that I live in, and the world as I live it.
Deleuze and Guattari talk about becomings as these creative actions and moments where we lose the rigidity of knowing exactly what things are and exactly who we are and instead we enter into a kind of sublime engagement with the world such that transformation is inevitable. This is what it is to be creative: to forget what you know through total engagement with the living reality of whatever it is that you are doing. In this sense, creativity, as 'becoming' is about deviating from the majority, and even from the established minority, and just going into experience as it is right now.
This kind of becoming is never absolute in the sense that we are able to escape all (or even most) structures of our existence--culture, personal history, biological and geological limitations are always in play. But there is an aspect of our experiencing that is free, that is fundamentally creative, and that continually makes plays for the open spaces in all of those structures that allow for transformation.
Through the development of my own style, I seek this freedom. In addition to all of the aspects of my style that are inherited and unable to be changed, the true "stylishness" of my style isn't something finished or resolved, but rather, a kind of material, linguistic, and gestural record of my responses to what my close engagement with the curious details of life that "start to swell and carry me off" such that I forget my historical identity and the rules of things....and something new appears, however small. That newness, that is "my style".
"We can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things. You don't deviate from the majority unless there is a little detail that starts to swell and carries you off."
I've been pondering the value of style lately. Style in the more common sense of aesthetic style, appreciation for art, good decorating, putting together a stylish look. For many years I had this style that was very aggressive and defined itself proudly as a deviation from the majority. This kind of approach to style did not value the common, ordinary, or everyday, and certainly did not value things that were inherited. It was exhausting. It was doomed to fail, and it was painful because I constantly had to try to live up to a standard of non-ordinariness which is pretty impossible to achieve in a day to day living kind of context.
So I was starting to wonder whether my interest in creating my own aesthetic style was merely a kind of egoistic attempt to be better than other people, to look down on them in their dreaded ordinariness, which I used to perceive as weakness, slumbering, and inauthenticity. (Which of course was a way of trying to feel better about being interested in things that other people thought were strange, odd, or otherwise aberrant.)
As I've been working it through now, as I look at it closely, I find that the aesthetics of daily life (home decor, clothing/hair/makeup, food, patterns of speech, means of transportation, writing instruments, etc) genuinely are important to me, but not because my taste sets me apart from other people. The aesthetic interests I have are not about judgment, but rather about really noticing what is going on within me and around me--really noticing the textures, shapes, colors, sounds/musics, temperatures, speeds, slownesses, traditions, innovations, pathways, walls, etc of the world that I live in, and the world as I live it.
Deleuze and Guattari talk about becomings as these creative actions and moments where we lose the rigidity of knowing exactly what things are and exactly who we are and instead we enter into a kind of sublime engagement with the world such that transformation is inevitable. This is what it is to be creative: to forget what you know through total engagement with the living reality of whatever it is that you are doing. In this sense, creativity, as 'becoming' is about deviating from the majority, and even from the established minority, and just going into experience as it is right now.
This kind of becoming is never absolute in the sense that we are able to escape all (or even most) structures of our existence--culture, personal history, biological and geological limitations are always in play. But there is an aspect of our experiencing that is free, that is fundamentally creative, and that continually makes plays for the open spaces in all of those structures that allow for transformation.
Through the development of my own style, I seek this freedom. In addition to all of the aspects of my style that are inherited and unable to be changed, the true "stylishness" of my style isn't something finished or resolved, but rather, a kind of material, linguistic, and gestural record of my responses to what my close engagement with the curious details of life that "start to swell and carry me off" such that I forget my historical identity and the rules of things....and something new appears, however small. That newness, that is "my style".
"We can be thrown into a becoming by anything at all, by the most unexpected, most insignificant of things. You don't deviate from the majority unless there is a little detail that starts to swell and carries you off."
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