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.

Dimensions of Dialogue

Dimensions of Dialogue Jan Švankmajer, 1982 

I really love this piece and a lot of our work last class made me think of it, Ariel, Kevin, Patricia....I just wanted to share it. The part which I particularly love (it aches) spans between 5:20 and 8:20 of the 12 min film. That said, all of it is worth taking a look.

Voz

As I struggle to visually depict voice, I think about how objects do this everyday.....I think about the hidden lives in material, in dust, in objects made by, with, and through man and woman.

Bottles and Bullets

I want to thank Valdemar for helping me to share my piece last week. Some things are hard to say because we don't want to seem over-dramatic or self-indulging, even though you want people to know and to understand.

I have had those bullet shells for over a year. I shot them myself, my first time shooting a gun. I found them scarily beautiful, and the act of shooting even more frighteningly so. I liked it. I have been wanting to make something with them for a while and so they have lived in a cigar box with a lot of other tid-bits I have gathered and kept for unknown futures. It was obvious to me, after seeing the other end of the gun leveled at my gut, that it was time to engage with them again, perhaps even necessary. And the words for the week also seemed to fit.....fiesta.....tristeza.....a party and a sadness. I can't think of a better way to describe a spent bullet.

And I still wanted them to be beautiful, to dance, to glitter, to chime. The bottle was first for the noise and then the light and fragility. I only decided to fill it the day of class, and not least because I wanted to feel what it would be like to drink from it....

Cryptic?

(What I just said, about poetry being cryptic, evasively solid, reminded me of another poem I wrote for a friend who was troubled by it.....so I'm putting it in here too.)

Cryptic?

I step outside to see the moon
strung up on the telephone wire
like a single pearl
And it seems an appropriate beauty
Is the one
Who said the poem was cryptic
Was right
As wrong and circumstance
Was right
And crippling encoded
Cryptic coupling kissed
Metaphors tease wits
Spat and coo and cope
With imperfection
Crudely
Like a single pearl 
Still waging wire
Sometimes nights fair better
left unsaid

No soy Indigina

No soy indigena. A a cualquier lugar. And so these songs make me sad today. And instead of longing for place, I long for times that it stopped mattering that I don't have one. For people who made with me place that was ours like places can only belong to people in love.

That is what the poem is about, and the face sort of. I guess it is me a bit too, though I didn't mean it that way. But part of longing for other time-places I think is longing for who we were or could be. And I do miss the person made through me with him and maybe part of me wants her back, the me of particular created time and place. The imagery comes from the particulars of a summer, an attic, a garden, a promise, and a lie. 

Poems are cryptic thus, evasive even if not vague, leaving things which are solid to be other than what they say they are, leaving them always open to new meanings. If I continue to add poetry to this notebook, I would be curious to hear what meanings my poems take on. Please do share.

Anhelo

Anhelo-Longing

The time that wont be had
dark eyes and a smooth face
benieth the eves cracks
we delighted the trains pass
and eachothers backs
We did nothing
but turn the soil

The child that wont be had
in the living room
twisted the quilt red
we delivered dreams stain
into eachothers hands bled
We did nothing
to sop it up

The lie that wont be had
not banished easily
distances whispering baited
we delayed a while longer
would have on rooftop waited
We did nothing
but say I love you