music that makes holes in the sky
shock and awe
Video I didn’t know was being taken after I naively consented to help with a raku glazing, unaware that I would technically manage a “garbage fire” for like an hour. Had I seen anyone else do this first or known what I looked like I would have said absolutely not, so I guess the lesson is you can do all kinds of things as long as you don't know what exactly it is you're doing, what you look like while doing it, or that you're being captured on camera. When it was over we fished out all the objects and scrubbed away the ash in buckets of cold water until we had crustaceans. It was the day of the solar eclipse. I was in the path of totality (not on purpose!) and it was the most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen, mostly because it looked like something was wrong, but nothing was wrong. It looked like a hole in the sky, if a hole could have nothing on the other side. It looked like a 3D shadow that also somehow glowed. The color of the sky was like sunrise or sunset but the sun was UP THERE, fucking with us! It made no sense to my brain or my body, it felt like something was wrong, I was crying and shaking enough that someone asked if I was okay. And yet it was totally natural and normal and ancient. All that was happening was alignment. It seemed like a contradiction; it was just alignment. I wrote in my diary: Maybe contradiction is a form of alignment. And in fact this alignment was only a matter of our perspective; the event was our placement, not that of the sun and moon, who find each other all the time, whether we can see them or not.
The second most awe-inspiring thing I have ever seen was also this year: Joni Mitchell live. She wrote so many songs about time passing when she was 20 and 30 and 60 and now she was 80 and after spending the last few years re-learning how to speak and sing she sang songs by (letters from?) her younger self and it sounded like she'd written them the day before. It wasn't like the songs had stood the test of time. It was more like: What test? What time? She is telling us exactly what she has to say right now. She was also giving permission. Pass the time, self-revise, do it again. The miracle of “Both Sides Now” is that you listen to it throughout your life and all the previous After-Sides then become the Before-Sides and maybe that’s why she was laughing so much onstage. Earlier this year I was enraged when the I Ching told me to laugh at shock. Like shock is God telling a joke. You thought you were in control? Ha ha ha! That’s God, giving you Shock. The I Ching was saying that instead of WHY IS THIS HAPPENING THIS ISN’T SUPPOSED TO BE HAPPENING (as though anything is “supposed” to happen?), go ooooh, go wowww, go contradiction is a form of alignment. Feel so much shock and awe and anger and rage that eventually it all becomes nothing, “active nihilism” perhaps, and that’s where the permission comes in. What do you have to say? Say it. “Talk to me.” Say what you have to say and make what you have to make in your short time on earth.
Here’s a playlist of Joni songs that I made a friend when I was trying to explain why by the end of the show I felt like I NEED THIS TO END NOW AS I CANNOT POSSIBLY FEEL MORE AWARE OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME. I just totally underestimated how profound it would be.
*I’m sure I’m missing a bunch because there are whole albums I still don’t know…you can’t feel this much all the time!
**The artwork is an ad that she apparently disliked because it’s obviously like ;-) but I have decided to take it as a reminder to let projects take the time they demand
Now I’m tempted to compile more memories from this year but “2024” feels like such an arbitrary way to group things together when my whole LIFE is making PROJECTS that connect experiences according to MEANING so that I can move PAST them. I do know I feel lucky I got to work on so many things I loved. How absurd. Happy New Year to those who celebrate, I now mark time in Sides only!