The Summer Workshop Series, or, Summer Camp for Adults

After keeping this blog for the past two years, I still have not arrived at the meaning of The Weird. (Which is fine with me; The Weird is naturally inscrutable to some extent.) But even worse, I have not yet even attempted to parse the meaning of making which is The Weird's sister concept here.

The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that "to make" is a transitive verb with Germanic roots:

The word is associated with creation and the outcome of creative labor, especially labor done with the hands. Other definitions include artistic representation and composition, raising a crop to maturity, and mating.

In order to think about making, I have organized a series of workshops that explore a variety of creative endeavors and handmade crafts. I began by teaching a workshop on container gardening in which we got our hands deep into the dirt of making as a life-creating, life-sustaining activity. Like summer camp for adults, these workshops are fun social events, and force us out of our daily habits. I have loved being in the presence of open minds as a group of participants stumble their way through a new skill. Having to adopt the beginner's mind has been humbling for me, but also thrilling as I have been able to observe and participate in the making process. And like Ringo Starr, I get by with a little help from my friends who have taught workshops on bookbinding, home brewing, and crochet:

Journals made in Ashley Maher's coptic stitch bookbinding workshop

Ben Trumbo adds malt extract to the home brew; Dennis Hoppe pours the wort into 

a glass carboy for fermentation; labels for the Make It Weird workshop beer designed by Ben.

Happy people, about to learn how to crochet at Cate Williamson's workshop.

Bookbinding and crochet required particularly intense levels of concentration, while container gardening and home brewing were more lighthearted, conversational affairs. (The crochet workshop has made a crochet addict of me, but more on that in a future post.) If you would like to explore making during the summer that remains, please join us for workshops on poker, beading, and electronic music. Sorry, workshops are not currently open to the public, but if you are a friend of mine (or a friend of a friend), check out the remaining workshops here.

Leisurely Labor, Laborious Leisure

It’s May Day! The day before my birthday! The pagan fertility holiday! International Workers’ Day! And as I draw (sort of) nearer to the end of my career as a graduate student, I have been exploring career options, soul searching, and imagining what my life might be like  when my doctoral degree is proverbially in hand (but really hanging on my wall). In short, I have been thinking about labor: What is it? How is it compensated? What “counts” as legitimate labor in the world I inhabit? I have more or less decided that I do not want to follow in the footsteps of Professor X, but am still uncertain about what kind of labor I would like to engage in, or what I want to be when I grow up.

Labor: The word implies difficult work, putting a great deal of effort into something. But it is also the term for the process of child birth, suggesting that while labor is difficult and even painful, it is also productive, vital.

The carpenter labors. We know, because we can see the house he has built. We hear him driving nails, see his back bend beneath the weight of boards and bricks. We can quantify his work, and reimburse him with a paycheck. We understand the labor that others do by the products they create and through our imaginative empathy for their efforts. When we benefit from someone else’s labor, are we not grateful? Within that very sentiment, we acknowledge and affirm our own belief that labor is the not-fun, not-pleasant enemy of leisure. But are we right to do so?

Leisure: Free time, in the sense of being both unoccupied and unpaid. What we do at our leisure, we do for our own enjoyment, for the pleasure it brings us. These activities are their own reward, or so we are told.

But labor and leisure are a false dichotomy that is based on the way that others compensate us for our time. What if I write a magazine article, and I put a great deal of effort or labor into it, but I also enjoy that effort? Maybe the story I craft becomes a blueprint of narrative in my reader’s imagination. Perhaps I select and join my words in such a way that they are like irregular stones which are cemented together, forming a firm foundation upon which a literary image can be built. If I do this for free (like I do in this blog), is this a laborious leisure activity? If I get paid to write the article, is it leisurely labor? This blog: what is it? If you read it, and you gain some pleasure or insight from the text, are you not glad that you have read it? Are you not also grateful (as you would be to the carpenter) that you did not have to do the writing (or building) yourself?

Snow in Bloom

It's a cliche about Midwesterners that we love to talk about the weather. Although, when it goes from a sunny seventy degrees to a snowstorm in the space of a few hours, I think that is genuinely interesting. So I'm going to fulfill the cliche and talk about the weather. But this isn't a tale of intemperate change; this is a tale of The Spring That Would Not Arrive, and why that non-arrival is also amazing

This year, winter in St. Louis has been unexceptional. It has been cold, but not frigid. Snowfall has been rare, but we have had more than our share of cloudy days. Gloomy is a word that comes to mind. More than a few times in the past months I have found myself wondering if Fenrir The Wolf had finally succeeded in killing the gods.

Midwest Ragnarok with Train Window (2013)

The Spring Equinox came and went in much the same manner. While we waited for daffodils to unfold their golden faces, our consternation grew. We are hardy Midwestern people, but we have been ready to plant our gardens for several weeks now. The undergraduates at my university have been yearning to run barefooted through the quad, tossing frisbees and shouting, "COLLEGE!" But just when we had reached our collective breaking points, when we could wait no more, the weather gods came back to life, and produced a "bloom" of snow ...

... Proving that even the cruelest deities have a sense of humor. I might be in the minority opinion here, but I find this springtime snowfall to be magical. (Full disclosure: I like a cold snowy winter as much as I like a balmy summer.) For a few days, at least, the seasons fight back against the homogeneous empty time of the calendar, letting their frozen freak flag fly, so to speak. Two years ago we were graced with a similar late March snowstorm. It was amazing. I tell everyone about it. It was one of my favorite days of all time.

March Snow with Crab Apple Blossoms (2011)

Snow and ice clinging to those desperate blossoms is a rare sight, one that I dream about. It was such a delight to photograph them Also, and less poetically perhaps, I built a zombie snowman. Which is just plain awesome.

Night of the Living Dead Snowman (2011)

The Story of Outerspace Future Xmas: My Happy Holiday Card To You!

Happy holidays: ALL THE HOLIDAYS!

Merry Christmas, Freaky Festivus, Happy Belated Hannukah, Happy Early Kwanza, A Very Merrily Anticipated Boxing Day, Hooray for the world not ending on December 21st, & all the rest...

So whatever you might be celebrating, please don't forget to enjoy hyperbolic aesthetic audacity, the joy of friends, family, and all the utterly weird and wonderful things that we do before returning to sober sanity in January.

That means, this is the time of year when we contemplate The Story of Outerspace Future Xmas . . .

On a frozen night late in December, a mysterious, but beautiful light was pulsating in the sky, it's colored rays reflected and refracted by ice crystals high in the atmosphere . . .

Being drawn to that spectral light, three quantum entities arrived from light-millenia away. Having no earthly bodies, they silently uttered, "Take us to your leader," in some unspeakable paradox of language . . .

And demanded to see the newly supernova'd interstellar space baby, whose existence was utterly unknown to us . . .

They bore no gift of frankincense, but instead produced a glowing boombox, powered by neutrinos and black hole dust. And when they started up an interstellar supernova birthday disco dance party, it went a little something like this . . .

 Happy Holidays, Everyone!

The Utterly Naïve "Artist" Redux: The Re-Artening

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be participating in my second art show this weekend; at the Des Lee Gallery, 1627 Washington Avenue in St. Louis. Another of my collages has been accepted in this year's Washington University graduate student art show, Parabola. The show opens Friday, 11/30 from 6pm-9pm, and can also be viewed on Saturday, 12/1 from 1pm-6pm.

If you're in St. Louis this weekend, please stop by. Parabola is always a fun event and here are some pictures of me and Laura Isaac arting it up at the show last year. (Photos courtesy of Laura Isaac, who is a fabulous artist; follow the link to check out her thoughtful and beautiful work).

If for some reason you can't attend the show--maybe you exist in some incompatible spatio-temporal dimension, or you have been called away on an urgent mission to forge peace in a war-torn land, or you can't walk because your bookie broke your legs (always pay the man on time!)--below you'll find a photographic facsimile of the collage I submitted, along with a description of the piece.

Dissertation Citation, mixed media collage, 9" x 12"

The academic dissertation is the culminating project in any Ph.D. program in the humanities. It must summarize and scrutinize the scholarship to date on the given topic, while also contributing some original and useful knowledge to the field. The writer accumulates knowledge, selects, cites, and interrogates the existing body of scholarship in order to construct this new work. Citations form the intellectual genealogy behind the dissertation; they are the breadcrumbs leading both writer and reader through the forest of research, thought, and literary labor that constitutes the Ph.D. 

Dissertation Citation is a mixed media collage that represents the intellectual work of dissertation writing. As a medium, collage is an act of visual citation. By selecting images and words from printed materials and arranging them in an original way, the collage recontextualizes familiar images and forms, inviting the viewer to scrutinize them with fresh eyes. It is a process of composition done via editing and creative reorganization. 

In Dissertation Citation, pages from magazines, business cards, maps, credit card receipts, museum tickets, advertisements, transit cards, and other ephemera constitute a series of frames within frames. Each layer becomes both an object of inquiry in itself, as well as a contextualizing frame through which to view the subsequent layers. Within the regimented rectangles, randomized bits of color and texture combine in surprising ways, forming unexpected symmetries and patterns. These layers emphasize the analytical rigor, as well as the creative serendipity, that are necessary to write the dissertation.

When Weird Gets Real: The Rhetoric of Marriage Inequality, or, Red Hot American Summer

Caveat lector! I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people with this post. But, you know what? It's been over 100 degrees F here for the past six weeks, I have to hear the words "Mitt" and "Romney" spoken in earnest all day long on the radio, and I'm feeling a little cranky. From the rhetoric of the presidential campaign and the stuff floating around the interwebs these days, I get the feeling that a lot of people are feeling cranky too. Leaving aside the presidential rhetoric about tax returns etc, I'm going to write a little bit about the debates going on concerning same-sex marriage, religion, and fast food. This comes out of a discussion I've been having on Twitter with Matt Moberly, who informed me that supporters of gay marriage are boycotting Chick-Fil-A and Christians opposed to gay marriage are boycotting Starbucks. (Sidebar: Does this seem like a weird way to carry on a debate about marriage rights? Yes. Yes it is.) From there we went on to discuss another rhetorical tactic of the proponents of gay marriage: comparing their cause with the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

Matt then referred me to an article by Voddie Baucham titled "Gay is Not the New Black," published on July 19, 2012 by The Gospel Coalition. I'm sure there are a lot of other articles that present Christian opposition to gay marriage in more well-reasoned terms. (A warning to the highly literate: this one displays poor logic in numerous areas.) I feel compelled to post my own response to the article here, not only because I support marriage equality rights, but because I find that this kind of rhetoric distorts what marriage means to me as a non-religious, feminist woman living in the 21st century. What follows is an excerpt of an email I sent to Matt:

"There are a lot of problems with the logic of that article. But I will focus on the primary one: In the United States, religion (any religion) is not the authoritative basis of marriage. A religious marriage is neither A) required for American persons to be considered "married," nor B) legally binding. The state provides that authority, along with all the legal rights and privileges granted to married peoples.

"This evidence is anecdotal, but bear with me. Dennis and I were married in Cook County marriage court in 2005. We are granted both legal and cultural benefits of marriage. So we have legal rights to each other's property (for example), and cultural benefits of being viewed favorably by the population for appearing to adhere to a hetero-normative bourgeois lifestyle. We don't appear to rock the social boat, so to speak. Religion doesn't enter into it, and frankly, I get a little irritated when folks (like the author of the article) insist that my marriage has any relationship to religious tradition. I have entered into a legal union, the name of which is coincidentally shared by a religious union to which I do not subscribe."

This is a photo of me taken after my non-religious wedding, courtesy of my best maid, Sara Stromer:

"Would you agree, that as a non-religious person, I still have a right (granted by the state, but upheld by the culture at large) to this legal union? I am going to assume that you do, and continue with my argument.

"Ok. So let's do a little hypothetical. What if, instead of being born with a y chromosome, Dennis had been born Denise, and we lived in a state where same-sex marriage was legal, and we decided to enter into the same legal union we have now, but with a gender difference? There would be a certain amount of cultural opposition to this union (religion being just one basis for that cultural objection). However, in this hypothetical situation, there would be no legal objection. Jessica & Dennis get married, or Jessica and Denise get married, it makes no difference to the state. And the state is who we are talking about when we are making claims about civil rights.

"Of course, under this hypothetical situation, there would still be states (most of them, in fact) where Jessica & Dennis would be granted legal rights that Jessica & Denise would not. And in this way, the gay marriage comparison actually does match up somewhat to the black civil rights movement. While we equate civil rights today with cultural and social equality, it was primarily directed at legal exclusions based on race. The civil rights movement didn't outlaw racism, but it did mean that an African-American person had to be treated equally by the laws of New York and Alabama.

"As I said before, the gay marriage/civil rights movement comparison is overstated. The subtle homophobia directed at the LGBT community has qualitatively different effects than the Jim Crow laws of the past. And frankly, I think that the gay marriage debate is a red herring designed to direct our collective gaze away from that more subtle and powerful homophobia, which we avoid by debating whether the state or the church governs marriage rights. But like riding at the front of the bus or sitting at a lunch counter, same-sex marriage has become emblematic of a movement for equal social treatment. What my critique of Baucham's article tries to show is just this: Churches and other cultural institutions don't get to decide who can get married in the United States today, the state does that. But there is a difference between the rights granted by the state, and the acceptance of those same rights by some people in the nation (and they don't all object based on religion). I'm just asking that we recognize that difference, and think hard about the reasons why the general culture accepts Jessica & Dennis but not Jessica & Denise."

If you have managed to read all the way through this rhetorical critique/rant, then let me reward you with some of the (slightly) more lighthearted weirdness that you have come to expect from this site. I recently visited the amazing "Underneath It All" exhibition about the history of women's silhouettes, and the undergarments required to create them, at the Missouri History Museum here in St. Louis. There I saw this:

It's a nursing corset. Apparently there was a time in recent human history when new mothers were expected to wear a corset while nursing their babies. Aren't the nipple flaps kind of incredible? I could go on to make some further point about how, as humans, our expectations for behavior are in a constant state of evolution, and that some of the constraints we have placed on ourselves in the past seem insane to us today. But I think I'll just leave it at that, and let you make what you will of the nursing corset, as well as the rest of it.

Comments welcome.

The New Weird, Or The New Normal?

Ever since the phrase "the new normal" entered the American mediascape following the 2008 economic crash, I have found it to be a curious phrase. No, more than curious, I have found it to be irksome. If you are of the opinion that humanity (and all that it creates) is a work-in-progress, then the phrase "the new normal" probably irritates you too. It carries with it a condescending sense of complacency, as though to say, "Hey, whoever you are, if you don't like the world and your role in it, just shut up. Get used to it. This is the way things are now, so don't go trying to change them."

The New Weird may not have been conceived in opposition to any idea of "the new normal," but in practice these two strike me as opposites. Now I would be lying if I tried to suggest that I have ever thought of The New Weird as a program for social change. For me, it has always been related to the mindset and perceptions of individuals (although I concede that if enough individuals change their mindsets some change might occur on a social level). I still think of The New Weird as a way to become more attuned to the miraculous weirdness that already exists in the world around us. A way to see ourselves and each other better, and in seeing better, we might also do better. Whether that doing is related to making art or making social policy makes no difference to me.

Existing as I do in an ongoing state of revulsion toward the phrase "the new normal," imagine the delight I must have felt when I happened upon this title of a recent article by Mark Spitzer in The Chronicle of Higher Education: "The New Weird: What happens to literary realism when the truth is stranger than fiction?" Go ahead, imagine it: the discovery of a fellow weirdo, someone completely unknown to me who is also writing about The New Weird. Jubilation!

Spitzer teaches creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas, where he instructs his students to combine elements of the normal and the weird in their writing. In this article in the Chronicle he describes some of his theories and methods. In it, he also argues that contemporary American readers have lost their taste for realist literature, because the world we live in is already outrageously unbelievable. Today, he suggests, only the unusual can hold our attention. Spitzer writes:

"Basically, a new chapter has been opened in American lit. This is no longer a world where ordinary peasants visiting elderly relatives with tuberculosis can be endured for 900 Dostoevskian pages. This is a world of action, explosions, conspiracy, war, porn, plastic surgery, rovers on Mars, and Olympic champs smoking bongs on YouTube. Anything less is just plain boring."

Now as a lifetime member of the Hyperbole Fan Club, I understand where Spitzer is coming from. The unreal, the exaggerated, the nonsequitur, the unbelievable is incredibly enticing to me. And I like my cultural products to be just as big, loud, fast, and obnoxious as the next American. But something in Spitzer's argument still strikes me as curious, even irksome. He suggests that contemporary writers have no choice but to be intentionally, transparently, and outrageously weird because they must compete with contemporary news media for their readership. Journalists, he says, have an infinite stream of weirdness to work with. They simply have to record it, while fiction writers have to go out of their way to make up something weird enough to match reality.

Yes, the world is weird, the world is surprising, the world is constantly changing in unexpected ways. But Spitzer neglects to mention that thorough, objective journalism is a minority voice in the contemporary news media. He seems to forget that what passes for journalism these days is more likely to be CNN-style 24-hour infotainment, which is hyperbolic precisely because it has been engineered to be, and not because the events reported on are necessarily epic in nature. In fact, cable news has made an art of hyperbole, turning the absolutely banal into what seems like the most important thing in the world.

And I would argue that Spitzer's approach to fiction writing follows suit. He isn't teaching his creative writing students how to observe the world with a weird eye, and to craft their writing in such a way that others might catch a glimpse of that weirdness. Rather, he instructs them to juxtapose the quotidian with the fantastic, the fabulous, the strangely shocking. Like cable news, it might pass for entertainment, and it might hold a reader's attention. But this kind of writing will not help that reader to gain any new insights into the world she lives in. And for this reason, Spitzer's version of The New Weird seems tawdry to me, superficial, and an unfortunate waste of artistic and intellectual potential.

I maintain that weirdness is more than a fleeting entertainment. It is, I think, a creative approach to critical thinking, and a willingness to open the mind's eye to any and all questions. It is a way to  welcome for consideration the most unlikely thoughts, the morally ambiguous, the previously unaccepted or unacceptable. Weirdness is a way to challenge the status quo of narrow minded thought in any of its various guises. And within the outsider space of "weirdness" we are free to question the underlying assumptions of what passes for normality.