January 2020

I have been out of touch, and a bit off balance because of it. January is always a slow work month. The weather has been bad, my husband and dog both got sick. There was flooding eventually and a record number of consecutive days of precipitation. Rather than gnash my teeth or worse, I have been flirting with moderation, reading a lot, dreaming, and I launched a new website for my design business. Here’s what I have been reading and reacting to in the world. My lovely sister gave me the book, “Year of the Monkey” by Patti Smith, for Christmas. I have never been a Patti Smith devotee, I am not a detractor either, I had never really thought very much about her before 2016. I knew about Maplethorpe, I knew about her music a bit. I think the role she played for many young female American artists was for me filled by Canadian Joni Mitchell. I know a few of Patti’s songs and I was very interested in her performance of a song by Bob Dylan during his Nobel Prize ceremony. She was overcome and stumbled a bit, and had to stop singing. She writes about it later and I think it was that writing that I first connected with her as an artist. I mean who wouldn’t be overwhelmed singing a song by a legend, in front of an audience filled with cultural dignitaries and such. Who wouldn’t become hyper aware and lost. I read a bit about her then, she seemed very down to earth which maybe surprised me. So I was pleased to receive the book. It’s light reading, small format, some photos, a rambling travelogue look at an artist making sense of her life. Familiar territory to me. I then immediately read from the “Why I Write” series from Yale University, an essay called “Devotion”. This is a great reminder that the muse cannot be sanctioned into work. So she generated some spark as she does reading and visiting the graves of artists. A strange story arrives inside her in place of the essay she thinks she’s trying to imagine, and she writes it all down, and continues on with her life of visiting the sites of some really interesting humans, and recording her thoughts about her surroundings and feelings. “Devotion” ends with her having a sleepover with Camus’ daughter! What a great gig! So I applaud her for that. She is active in her practice. She does drop a ton of literary names which was annoying at first, and what her writing lacks in interest she more than makes up for with her openness about sharing her experiences with us. The travelogue is an interesting book form and in this case, art form. Books have been important to her and she reminds us of that again and again.  My next books are by my recent favorite Scottish author Ali Smith. I discovered her quite by accident a few years ago in my local library, a fact that I think would please her. As I am writing this I have now read "Autumn" and "Winter" of the seasonal series. Spring is up next, Summer not yet published. She must be flying, working on number four. The subject matter Brexit is current and so its character is developing further. Now Trump has been acquitted! 

I first came across a small edition of hers called “Artful” and devoured it. It was one of those books that contains an answer to a question you’ve been trying to formulate. Completely impossible to describe, informative. Which is an apt word because her play with the novel form is unique and she has tremendous curiosity about language which is inspiring. Her subjects often involve art and thought. Her writing also contains elements of the surreal which coexist easily with the real. Hallucinations, dreams, all play a roll and time shifts all around it like a serpent.

A college friend shared this online recently. 'The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.'
—W.B. Yeats I haven't read much Yeats but I seek that sharpness. I try to thin myself out when I am out in the world, in order to mesh more with those magic things. Ali Smith and Patti Smith both access those magic things in their writing. 

Also read a terrific article in Geist magazine about Yoko Ono, written by Connie Kuhns. Talk about your feminist artist maverick role model. She's been to hell and back but she has kept on, and her vision and voice are so clear. She arrived on the scene early and was quite misunderstood as an artist. She was no pop music singer but she became a pop culture icon. An early multimedia artist, using film and installations, happenings, art as live event. She was a boundary pusher. She also got a ton of push back but she has prevailed with a message of peace and curiosity. She may be my new feminist crush.