Reflexion....

I do not love this medium of the online journal and it is strange to see these images that I am used to touching stare out at me from my computer screen. I have taken out ones which require fingering in order to really get, those on wood or cloth. Sorry sometimes things just can't be reproduced.

So I am sorry if my journal has been lacking. I want to share some words here now. I want to touch on the connection to place that is pervasive in these songs, and each of our works, as well as each of us, our beings, characters, styles and tastes. Place is not deterministic (as you, Tony, sometimes make it out to be) for that simplifies too much, separates us from our environments so that we must either act upon or be acted upon by all the things which comprise the places and cultures we come from, and those we live in now. No....that is too simple, for what I feel happens, what I see happen, what I live is constant becoming of where and who we are. We interact with one another each moment, with the materials we use, with our heritage (or rebellion from it), with the landscape, climate, and food we come in contact with, with the languages we speak (or don't)....all this creates the complexity and dynamacy that makes life pungent.

(Note on above: Dynamacy is not really a word....the word is dynamism. I do not like this because the suffix ism-think capitalism, socialism, structuralism, etc-is too fixed, too dictated by rule or structure. There are named and numbered mechanisms behind all isms, and they seem far too rigid to be truly dynamic. Therefore I coin this term: Dynamacy. It is an intentional deviation, and if such blatant linguistic disregard offends the reader, I beg your pardon and hold my ground.)

I have enjoyed watching each of us expiriment and find certain materials that work to bridge the moment which is our engagement with these songs and whatever else is going on in our lives. Some pieces are directly related, as little peepholes into the worlds we inhabit outside these classrooms. It takes courage to bring them before an audience and is a sign of a truly strong community that some of us have felt safe in doing so. Other pieces only hint at our worlds, or depict a sign that hangs over the thing itself. These signs are important, they are our maskaras.......and I think it is important that we learn to paint them (or carve, or colage them)....some of the color is bound to sink through.

So thank you all, for becoming in this space with me, for sharing creations, laughter, pain, and tequilla, for blending our voices and histories.

Love,
Brooke

MILPA / MAIZ

I don't have this sort of connection with a food. I don't base my identity on a crop or even a land in any way close. So I cannot relate to the capacity for love and for devastation that comes with that oneness.
A friend recently spoke to me of his work, which was studying trans-genetics in corn in Mexico. He is from Mexico city, but still he was an outsider because he was an expert, a scientist. His work is important because the transparency is important. But is is also painful in a way that is hard to understand for those of us without such a connection to a plant/food. He said to me that he did a horrible thing. He said he was helping people, bringing them truth, but in actuality what he did was go to people and say "While you were sleeping last night, a stranger came and burrowed into your body....and worse, yet.....the stranger is an American." And when the man or woman would say, "But look at me...I see nothing.", he answered, "That is the worst of it.....It is invisible, but it is there." That is what trans-genetics in corn is to a Mexican peasant. It is worse than a betrayal by a lover, because it is a betrayal of ones own skin.

I will be trying to create this sense through things which I do relate with, but it is a tall order. The love and the betrayal will be there. The coca cola in the hand of the pilgrim, and the transparency that is undesired. But my aesthetic is missing some senses. It is missing taste. My piece is not finished.