Just Keep Going

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I am participating in the Tour De Fleece, which is an international online spin along that happens alongside the Big Ole (BIKE) Race Around France (BORAF). I am not doing any challenges or trying to win anything. Nah, I am just using it as a reminder to spin the mountain of white, grey, and black shetland fiber that I have around me at all times. Accompanying that wee little effort, I am generally just making videos of me spinning to keep myself honest to spin everyday and to inspire others to pick up their spinning or learn how to spin. Its interesting to be sharing more on social media, because I really don’t do it as much as a I used to. Like a lot of people, I don’t love taking videos of my craft process sometimes, so I will go a long time between bouts where I care about online storytelling like that. With this most recent flurry of storytelling, It dawned on me how hard it is to reach people nowadays and I wondered to myself: Is all the effort worth it? You might of asked yourself the same question recently if you also are trying to tell stories online.

Me? I still think it’s worth sharing stories online. We are in an odd moment where it feels like people are pulling more and more back from the online spaces. I can’t pretend to know why. It’s likely some mixture of the difficulty of witnessing multiple genocides in real time, feeling disillusioned with the false liberation offered from online visibility, and the saturation of these mediums with advertisements. Regardless of reach or what’s going on in the world, I still like to fire up the old digital printing press though and throw my little stories out into the public square. Even if that public square grows smaller and smaller due to machine learning algorithms that are trying to optimize engagement from those opening a social media application, it is personally meaningful to me to share my stories.

Finding meaning outside of metrics like reach means looking inward for one’s validation rather than finding it from the attention offered by others. Fickle is the validation that other folx can provide for your art. People who support your work will come and go. You know what isn’t fickle? Your own interest in the craft that you are engaged in. Your embrace of the process of exploring the nooks of crannies of a craft to see what you can make. Your own interest in the real human stories you can document, archive, and share with other people with the skills that you have cultivated in your hands. Those processes of exploration, learning, and storytelling are where the deeper meaning lies for me. Would it be great if folks loved what I did and celebrated my work? Sure, but that will always be secondary to the artistic process of bringing designs to life and imbuing them with the magic that I hold in my heart.

Isn’t it that artistic process that hooked us on creating in the first place? Sure, it’s cool to make friends and have people recognize worth in your art, but that’s always going to be secondary for me to following that passion deep in my heart for a artistic tool that allows me to explore myself and the world I live. In the end, it really makes no difference who is watching or reading. Only capitalism and other structures that we have constructed in our societies tell us any differently, creating false hierarchies of worth based on value systems that have no concern for humans or artists. Art making can literally be a tool of personal practice that no other human ever sees. That practice is just as valid and important as those who regularly display their work in galleries and museums. Why? Because any art practice that has meaning and worth to the person practicing is valid.

In this moment, I think its more important than ever to retain space in our lives to just be quiet do our art. In the April 2024 issue of Wire Magazine, there is a feature on ambient music artist Steve Roach that features a particularly relevant piece of advice relevant to our discussion:

Roach’s call to go into your space and make your art is precisely what he did. He has been showing up to his Timeroom home studio everyday for about 30 years, building immense sound worlds for his listeners to inhabit without any distractions. I offer this advice, especially to myself. At some point, I just need to turn off all the gadgets, go sit on my couch, and carry on with making the art that makes my heart sing. I find that to be a balm that few other things replicate. That quiet crafting time has completely changed my perspective on many matters and helped me refine my values system. It has helped me become the person that little me always wanted to be: an artist and writer.

Now, I just want to amplify my little human stories for others that I find in the quiet. Though I am in the stories I tell, they aren’t really about me. I am just a character in the stories to illustrate broader themes that I feel like are important to put out into our public square alongside all the news of facism, war, and domination. My stories don’t aim to make people “drop out” out of a society where all those spectres are real threats to all of us. No, they are just meant to remind people that they are magic, to make space for their feelings of grief, live a value-aligned life, and that they have the power to shape the future they want to live into.

I feel these are important reminders in our day and age where depression and despondency in the face of so much death and destruction is such a real problem we all face. I would know. I have suffered from each while navigating becoming a practicing lay sociologist devoted to pushing back against the worst of societal trends and parenting amidst the collapsing empire we are surrounded by in the US. Having come to the other side resolute on drawing attention to our resiliency, interconnectedness, and power, I remain devoted to a project of what ambient music artist Laraaji noted was his aim: to alter folks’ trance frequency:

“The power of suggestion in music thus lies in its ability to help dislodge us from whatever trance we were previously stuck in and provide us with a new, more beneficial register to inhabit. “Rather than saying ‘put people into a trance’, I’m saying ‘alter their trance frequency’ – the frequency at which their trance is vibrating,” he explains. “If we can shift the frequency of our trance, we will experience a different version of the universe. And the version that we’ll experience will probably look like something that was in progress before we shifted to it. Each trance frequency might have its own past and future, so it might be possible to shift to a trance in which you didn’t have a bellyache 15 minutes ago.”

Laraaji in conversation with Emily Pothast in December 2021 Issue 454 of The Wire , pg 37.

Just like music, our art and words are vibrations that are experienced by folx, which have the power to alter their waking life path. I believe that deeply and take it seriously each time I decide to share something with folx. I ask myself each day: How is this story going to build people up to make people believe they are capable of the sort of changes that they need and we need collectively to make broader collective shifts towards societies that be devoted to a fundamental reorganization of our society toward justice, reparations, and mutual aid? I am devoted to building my people up and letting them know I believe in them.

The bigger question one can ask based on this working theory of art’s effect is: Who will this piece effect and what will they do with this message? That’s one of those great big human questions that pokes big, gaping holes in the notion that we are all individual makers building little worlds in isolation. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. We are nothing but Weird Woven Webs of association with those still here and the living accumulated knowledge of those who have departed. I couldn’t build the world that I inhabit without the aid of my mom, William Morris, Phillip Carr-Gomm, John Michael Greer, Steve Roach, Laraaji, Thich Nhat Hanh, Vincent Roscigno, Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebrve, my craft community in Denver and online, and countless others. It’s fun to think of myself in that great anonymous community mass that might inspire someone to soldier on with their artistry, even if just for themselves. it is To keep the fire lit and help stoke the fires for someone else walking a bardic path is one of the greatest hopes one can have for their craft and storytelling.

Thanks for letting me be a part of your inspiration-scape. I hope you do something creative for yourself today. You deserve it. Just know that your work matters and is inspiring someone out there, whether you know it or not. Whatever it is that lights you up, just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t let anyone take your light away.

New Mix - “Hazy Calm”

I made an ambient mix for you to play while you “lower the shades” and turn inward toward yourself. I named it “Hazy Calm” for the general sense of late day warm that the music evokes. May the music hold you in its embrace and bring you to a place where you can settle into your favorite form of pondering the universe or co-conspiring with it to make something, whatever that is. Each song is one that has brought me a sense of peace over the years. My relationship with Steve Roach’s Structures from Silence is basically elemental now. I no longer know where it ends and I begin in some respects, having spent entire days listening to the song on repeat while trying to soothe my frayed nerves.

I am participating in the Tour De Fleece, which is an international online spin along that happens alongside the Big Ole (BIKE) Race Around France (BORAF). I am generally just making videos of me spinning to keep myself honest to spin everyday and to inspire others to pick up their spinning or learn how to spin.

That’s all, folx! Thanks for being here.

Best,
James