Thursday, August 5, 2010

optimism is in the form

repetitive art tasks means hours upon hours of radio
this petrifying world: interviews about corporate branding and chemicals and television and iraq and government lies.
it is dizzying, hands cutting cardboard, summaries of the scary world piped in through my laptop, bundle of heavy metals and plastic and sheild against loneliness, bundled and hauled and connecting me to friends and music and reading, when so many other objects I count on are otherwise occupied.

Today I am listening to an interview with Emily Henochowicz,
an art student who lost her eye in a protest in Israel.
For the first time all week,
though she is more optimistic than the past few hours of radio garble,
and though there's a lot of personal shit that makes me feel so sad lately,
when she says 'my father came to Israel to help me in the hospital'
I immediately burst in to tear.

Optimism is in the form:
Father, Family, Hospital, Interview, Drawing.
mostly content fails: the litany of all scales of bad things is a constant leeching of hope.
What remains to be beautiful is that we have modes to respond at all,
names for the things we use to keep us going.

This phrase first occurs to me two weeks ago
when I am driving home late at night and listening to a rough cut of a friend's song.
I am distraught about entirely different things than the awful ones he is singing about
he recorded all the parts, some one at a time: 5 minutes of baseline. 3 of guitar.
It sounds lonely.
I feel calmed, but what about any of this could reasonably be described as comforting?
optimism is in the form: car ride, friendship, song.
makes me think about the most moving thing about my big art project, two years ago,
how it's unplanned beauty filled me with energy, when I had been a trodden wreck all year.
and I learned that I was hopeful because I would not be trying to make anything if I were not,
making is hopeful.

sometimes it is so obvious:
I returned the other day from a week at my old summer camp,
try number 2 at making a meaningful environmental program there.
and though my attempt is much less than perfect, again
it is clear what is beautiful that this is happening at all.
that I am contributing to a place that built me up,
trying to make small change in a place where I have the privilege of agency
and that I am said yes to:
that young people are participating, that I am given permission, help, compensation, budget
summer camp. earth day. carnival. workshop: content is imperfect, but these vessels lift us up.
is trying itelf a form? an action, an institution?

most things I struggle to make sense of, I justify with learning. Education as form.
optimism is in the form, and identifying this is a matter of perspective. form is always there.



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