Before the Iceland Airwaves Festival started, I spent a few days as a tourist in Reykjavík, mostly geeking out on saga and settlement history. But I did make a hurried stop at the Reykjavík Art Museum, which turned out to be one of many serendipitous epiphanies experienced in Iceland. Read More
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Rúrí at Reykjavik Art Museum
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Chaology: A Post-Airwaves Lesson From the Reykjavik Art Museum
The northern lights failed to create the proper cinematic effect after Sigur Rós’ concert, but the morning-after rain was a perfect visual for the movie version. I tried to write, but it was useless. Such a wide variety of music juxtaposed over such a short time had sparked more new ideas than I could process. My cup had run over so forcefully it toppled off the table and landed upside down on the floor. I had finally achieved the martial artist’s “empty cup,” the beginner’s mind. Read More
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Macklemore, DIY Job Creator
A lot of things have irritated me this election cycle, but few get under my skin as much as “jobs creation” as an election issue. It wasn’t until this week, when Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ completely DIY album hit number one on iTunes in America, Germany, and probably a couple other places, too, that I put together the messages of “Thrift Shop” and “Jimmy Iovine” to see just what was eating me about the jobs creation.
Jobs creators: A spin-doctored term for the oppressed minority of rich white men upon whose backs the rest of us stand, ungrateful for the jobs they have given us with their very life’s blood
The term assumes that jobs are created out of thin air the same way that jobs creators’ wealth is created on paper. It denies the possibility of jobs growing organically out of the work that actually needs to be done to sustain our lives on this planet.
“Jobs creation” treats jobs like commercial products that must be endlessly regenerated to keep the system rolling, whether the outputs of those jobs are actually valuable or not – which I guess is an accurate depiction of the current system.
Value Creators
Like Macklemore, I prefer to make wise use of the commercial products and jobs we already have, rather than wastefully producing new ones without regard to their usefulness. Imagine if, instead of protecting the privileges of the tiny minority of jobs creators (who, let’s face it, haven’t served that purpose very well lately anyway) we as a society collectively said, “Fuck the jobs creators. Let’s find a system that allows musicians, sculptors, painters, writers, parents of small children – all the people whose creations sustain us – to make a living creating things of value instead of commercial products.”
Then, all the jobs currently held by value creators could be recycled to employ the folks who actually want them.
Our society doesn’t seem quite ready to ask the question, “What about the arts creators?” and we’re not very good at choosing collective responses to social issues. Until the day when proper funding of the arts becomes an election issue, I’m glad to see Macklemore proving it’s possible to DIY without the jobs creators.
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Where the Muse Takes Me
One of the many things I love about the movie Dogma is Salma Hayek’s portrayal of The Muse – a feminist spirit determined to create her own art, reduced to dancing in a strip club where the patrons are consistently struck with great ideas. The creative muse is always portrayed as female, perhaps because artists in the past have usually been male. Or at least, female artists have not seemed to rely as heavily on the idea of the muse. Perhaps because women have seldom had access to that room of one’s own that offers the luxury of a tryst with the muse, female artists have had to take a more workmanlike approach to their art. Read More
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Freedom on the Edge
As a student of ecology, I learned about the importance of edges. The variability of resources and environments in the interface between the forest and the meadow, or the land and the water, allows a greater variety of species to thrive. Many species can only survive in the edge habitats, and others, like humans, thrive best there.
As a student of yoga, I learned about the importance of the edge. You grow most when you push yourself right to your edge, to the boundary between what you are already capable of accomplishing and what will injure you.
Koi and Blue and White Vase by David Kroll
Perhaps that is why so many of my most significant moments happen in the edge times – between putting the kids to bed and going to bed myself, at the very beginning of trip as I step out of the airport, between the bus stop and work. The Grover/Thurston Gallery [2014 update: now extinct] lies on my path from bus stop to day job, and I always look through the windows as I pass to see what’s on display. Sometimes what I see interests me, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes, I am transported by the art inside. Read More