Ritualize the Analog

It's cliche to say that taking a break from your grind will help you reset. BUT, hey, hi, it's me, a cliche. I took my first week long vacation in about 8 years, and it helped tremendously. As I was pondering what I wanted to take away from this time away from my professional grind this morning, the realization hit me softly, suddenly. I had relearned how to ritualize the analog. I had relearned that subtle art of approach that had been a hallmark of all my disparate art practices when I had dubbed this whole project a quiet practice many moons ago. That's an incredible thing to re-find while fumbling around in the dark of feeling pretty broken by life.

Somewhere along the way I lost that focus on just experiencing reality and contributing to it in my only little corner of the universe. I suppose one shouldn't be too surprised by losing that focus that one can only hold with most gentlest of grasps. Even in the best circumstances, that light touch is easily lost in a sea of people that are all actively yelling at you to get your attention. That's almost impossible to maintain in today's world with: AI-DATACENTER; GENOCIDE; INEQUALITY; LEGALIZED CORRUPTION; BOMBS, BOMBS, BOMBS; YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH; BUY; CONSUME, OBEY; CHEETOHEAD & THE DECPTIKONS; JUST TAKE THIS AND YOU WILL BE EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO BE. You got to be some super human to keep your head glued on straight. I sure as hell am not any super human. I got lost in the proverbial alphabet soup of what folks have been screaming at me. Did you?

So, I took the privilege afforded to me by government entity I work for and used a small fraction of the 4,00 years of paid-time off that I have accrued by never taking a day off, save to care for my sick kids. It couldn't have come at a better time. One could say that the best word to describe me is BEDRAGGLED. Two kids, professional job in public sector, former culture industry business owner (LMAO – I am cackling writing that): that's enough to grind anyone into the ground. I certainly felt that weight in the first 11 months of baby M's life. I mean, I really experienced being at my edge of my own ability to DEAL. I shouldn't be surprised to wake up to find out that I was able to reset upon stepping away from one of those grinds and giving myself time to just be with my family and projects. I have come back from a lot of brinks by making things. This period was no different, and neither was the kernal of truth I walked away with.

The biggest antidote to the onslaught of digital noise, anonymization, and influencer culture is to re-enchant everyday life by ritualizing that which we have taken granted in our embodied, analog existence in our communities. Experimental Hip-Hop group Death Grips has this classic line that underscores my aim in their first LP "Exmilitary" at the end of the track "Lord of the Game" where they proclaim: "F$#% where you from, F$#% where you are going, It's all about where you are at." Yes, It's all happening right here, right now. We can make this exact moment where we are right now into our own initiation into a spiritual order/religion/coven/secret society of our own construction. Alan Moore, writer of V for Vendetta and Jerusalem, did it on his 40th birthday when he proclaimed he was a ceremonial magician who worshipped a diety of his own creation. So, why can't we?

This may seem overly theoretical, so let me speak plainly. Here, I am simply talking about making a lot of pomp and circumstance out of taking a bike ride to get a record on release day for the first time or leaving space to ponder the broad humanist implications of making a woven gift for a penpal. To make a ceremony or ritual out of such actions marks a key distinction for our grey-matter, meaning-making machine (i.e., conscious brain) to jolt us out of that cruise-control, grind mindset that is endemic in the west and lets us slip through a portal into time/space where we can be in conversation with the infinite mystery beyond our knowing. Some people get this in their established religious orders in rituals that help them talk to their god. Me? I am recovering from being indoctrinated into a church without my consent as a kid, so that won't work for me. Instead, I write my own lore and integrate my Irish and humanist myth into the tapestry of my everyday life. Using whimsical terms like Bike Questing or talking about weaving ourselves together through letters and mail art allows me to set down neoliberal capitalist norms and embody an imaginative future where we have moved beyond the stranglehold we find ourselves in. So, quite frankly, So, to ritualize the analog is to to mark specific times/spaces/practices as portals that allow us to imagine futures for art, movement, exchange, and community that exist beyond the extractive, sexist, racist, ableist, homophobic, fatphobic, xenophobic, fascist reality that we are all living through in this moment. This approach is not about avoiding or escaping this reality. It's about recognizing the world we live in and using our imaginative capacity to build a world beyond the current reality we inhabit.

Weaving and Spinning

This is always the cornerstone, rosetta stone to any of my comebacks. Since I started weaving as a way to finish my mom's unfinished work to learn to weave, fiber art has remained my safe place. At the beginning of last week, it was all spinning, which makes perfect sense. Spinning is one of those no-nonsense, no-frills activities that always grounds me back down. You can sure try to make spinning sexy or provocative, but that's a fool's errand in my estimation. Don't get me wrong, I still sit up on the edge of my seat to get a better look when I see a skein of handspun yarn. If able, I would take the skein into my hands and feel the spin and examine the depth of skill it took to make the yarn. I get engrossed, lost in that effort to see where I might go from my own place of craft to the product of another person's craft mastery. However, that is often lost on a general public who yearns to make, to express themselves, or to utter indelible truths of their existence but hasn't the roadmap to get from consumption to production.

It's not like I have a roadmap. I don't even have an easy how-to guide. I just have tried and failed at a bunch of things and gotten kind, skilled people to show me how to do things when I couldn't figure it out on my own. That's what it was like with spinning. Meg took my hands and showed me how to open up the fiber just-the-right-way (TM pending) to let the spin into the length of drafted fiber. Real story: I was so shook by the sorcery in my fingers that I spun everyday for a yern so I wouldn't loose that magic. Now, I can put on a record or tape, pre-draft some lengths of fiber, and spin them up on my trusty $20 Schacht Large Whorl Drop spindle (no this is not a product placement - hehehe). LIKE IT IS NOTHING! I try to always remind myself that I am a master at making the exact gauged yarn that I want for my tapestries. So, if I have any qualms with the quality of my yarn, I will have to submit a complaint to myself.

That is the weirdest thing about this handwoven reality that I get to live now. What once was this absolute foreign form of sorcery that seemed unattainable can just as easily become your everyday reality, a craft you wield. The only thing separating you from making what you view as an impossible reality is the wherewithal to try, fail, ask for help, and continue to practice your craft. I dreamt of being friends with other artists, sharing notes, working toward understanding a craft inside and out, and making meaningful objects for other people. Then I just tried, took classes, practiced at sucking a lot, and got pretty mediocre! Now, I get to be in community with other people who all went through the same process to get where they are at with making things that build the culture that we all share.

Right now, I am weaving the above pictured tapestry for my new penpal Joe in Philly. He said he was gonna send me a record that he cut with his partner Katie who run the Consonant Collective, an arts collective that prints zines and cuts records on vintage lathes. Given my own proclivities toward the analog, I immediately was like, " I will send you a weaving in return!" This is the joy of creative reciprocity and analog culture. We all are just giving each other the opportunity for our work to be presented and received in the world we all cohabitate. That might be the best part of this analog life (working title for my future zine project). We are all just conspiring to help each other feel seen in their work and be influenced by the work of our friends that we get to experience. It's even more special for a tiny little outpost like me to be received with interest by my peers like Joe who have already done so much, especially given all I have ever wanted to do was belong in this world.

As with my last few recent pieces, I am gonna cosplay as big homie Jennifer Mao and do some ad-hoc, organic embroidery over the lifeline at the center of the piece. I always reference Jennifer when I am working with embroidery because I don't think I would be embellishing my weavings with embroidery were it not for her constant inspiration in showing me what is possible with weaving over a finished tapestry. I have this wool embroidery thread that is the same color as an exhausted yarrow bloom that works so well with my nettle dyed yarn. Those two colors compliment each other so well. I love making the hemp line come to life with simple stitches, made at random in the finished tapestry. Instead of relying solely on the texture to draw visual attention, the embroidery brings the viewers eye directly to the undulation at work in the overlapping sumac stitches. In this way, my embroidery is operating the same way that Jennifer's does by asking the viewing to consider what is transpiring at the heart of the piece. Jennifer is smart enough to tell the viewer the mantra-esq concept she wants folks to consider while I leave the conceptual ground to the viewer in considering the lifeline. Regardless, it's the use of embroidery to draw attention to that which we wish the viewer to pay attention to that unites our two approaches.

Once this is done, I swear I am going to start Erl's weaving for his Bantam (bike). I have been so bad about pushing off projects because I do not have a clear idea of how I want to symbolically relay what I want to accomplish with the piece. I have let that paralysis delay me too much. "NO MORE," I say! To the decorative arts we shall return without concern for as much hidden/magical meaning. We shall make a wonderful piece for Erl that will honor the beauty that he puts into the world via his photography and the work he does as a teacher.

With that piece finished, I will finally approach another death work piece for my fren's departed kitten. That piece will embed a vile of the kitten's fur into the warp of the tapestry and some select symbols to create a connective thread between my fren and their dearly departed. I tested this method out recently by making a woven frame for a polaroid, which gave me the requisite audacity one needs to attempt such an odd feat. If successful in this endeavor, I will not be limited in making connective thread tapestries for folks based on how much fur they have on hand from their departed beloved. We can incorporate any bit go fur, teeth, ashes, bone that we can place in a vile and weave into the tapestry to build that magical connection for folks. Finger's crossed that I can pull it off.

Like I said, if I just tend to the spinning and weaving, everything falls into place. This entire first part of the essay just left me feeling more in tune with myself and my artwork. I appreciate you witnessing me writing my way back into this work. For I am nothing but a simple community fiber wizard who makes tapestries of utility that mark special threshold crossings, like birth and death, or decorate your bike quest machines (bikes). hehe

Boards of Canada, Bike Quests, and Photography

A photo essay on ritualizing the analog

Aside from my weaving and spinning, I fully embraced the synchronicity of taking my week off the same time that the new Boards of Canada record "Inferno" released. I knew this would allow me to go to a local record store on Friday morning when they opened and pick up the record. In the lead up to the fateful day, I realized that in all my years of rabid-mega-music-fandom I had never gone to a record store right at opening to buy a record. Consequently, ritualizing this experience by treating it like the big deal that it is became one of my primary concerns.

I had already heavily ritualized my preparation for the album to be released, so it was just in keeping with my pattern of enchanting my everyday life. I designated each of the week's leading up to the record release as the week I will listen to one of their full length records at least once a day. I started with their first full length "Music Has the Right to Children" and proceeded chronologically one week at a time through their full lengths until their most recent record "Tomorrow's Harvest." Digging deep into each record with intention and supplementing my listening with deep dives on the bocpages.org web resource allowed me to refine that careful, light touch I discussed above. I let my inner "deep-sea-diver," a term my music producer friend got me hip to years ago when I was working with him on my previous Local Autonomy project, just pour through the record as if it held the essential meaning to the cosmos in that moment in time. This approach allowed me to really dig into the Board of Canada musical approach, watch how they mutated the project over time, and come to understand what each album meant to/revealed to me.

Since I was raised in the iPod era, I didn't have any of the physical albums in my collection, except a cd copy of Tomorrow's Harvest. Initially, I proposed to address this by bike questing to buy one of the records each week at two of my favorite local record stores, Twist & Shout or Wax Trax. This turned out to be hopeful thinking, even through the plan did hold up the first week. However, subsequent visits came up empty as many others were building Boards of Canada LP collections at the same time. In order to meet the entirely arbitrary criteria I set for the project, I took to Discogs, an online record marketplace, to find copies of the records I needed from local record stores in other parts of the US. Much obliged to the sweet record sellers that deal with my entirely too enthusiastic and grateful messages after procuring a Boards of Canada record from their store.

On Friday, May 29, the quest was afoot. I started my day simply: I got my sunscreen on, loaded my kids into the cargo bike, forced them to listen to Tomorrow's Harvest, and trucked them off to school. As I was deftly traversing morning rush hour traffic in a dutch bakfiets, I was thinking through the logistics for which record store would be the best to secure the record. "Well, Twist & Shout had the listening party last night, and there were a lot of people in the photo they posted of the event. To be safe, I may want to go to Wax Trax to take advantage of their supply of the record not being dwindled by participating in the event." At this point, I was interrupted I'm sure by my daughter J begging me to turn on "Let It Go," which I immediately did to avoid earning the ire of my sweet five-year-old's wrath.

I got back from drop off at 9am, which gave me plenty of time to bike quest over to the record store to pick up the album. As I wheeled through my neighborhood westward toward the record stores in question, I decided that I would let my virgo sun dominate the selection of the record store. Yes, I decided to "play it safe" and go to Wax Trax. In making the "right call," I thought how smart and planful I was. I can only giggle now at recalling the minute features of what it's like to be in my brain on any given day on a bike quest. I am constantly gassing myself up for what potential catastrophes I am avoiding with my overanalyzing and overplanning. if you don't, who is going to?

As per usual, I picked my way through streets I don't normally go down and through some alleys. It was a picture perfect Denver morning: Dappled sunlight from a climbing sun, mid 60s, and not a hint of humidity in the air. The cool morning begged me to take a leisurely pace, even if I did have somewhere to be in an hour. I found a new-to-me ohurt tag and two shuttered corporate chain locations on the way and took photos of them with my recently acquired Konica Genba Kantoku 35mm point and shoot camera. When I stop riding to shoot a photo, my whole demeanor changes. It's very similar to the feeling I get when I start weaving or spinning. It's like I am unhooked from being a human battery in the matrix and my eyes are open to the world around me. I am not trying to get anything done. I am just trying to see the world for the way it actually is without anyone yelling at me to tell me how I should feel or think about it.

I decided to be edgy after finding that Ohurt tag, so I turned right onto 13th, a fast, one-way street into downtown, from Emerson and rode the two blocks to Wax Trax. It's wild to be approaching 40 and still find ways to make yourself feel like the kid you were in your early 20s riding a road bike in cut off khakis with a Timbuk2 messenger bag slung over his shoulder through traffic on High Street at night in Columbus. I just needed a little taste of that danger though. No bike quest is complete without it. You have to touch death just a little bit, even if it is being reminded of a version of yourself that is long gone. Just as that recollection faded back into the recesses of my mind, Wax Trax appeared on the horizon. Before I knew it, I was pulling my bike up onto the sidewalk and locking it to the bike rack. It was 9:50 AM and wax trax opened up at 10AM. I had arrived with a moment to breathe, so I looked around. Right there next to me on the ledge of the metal air conditioning unit shelf was another mini ohurt tag.

I did the equivalent of the Napoleon Dynamite "Yes!" gif in my head and snapped a 35mm photo.

After snapping the shot of the Ohurt tag, I walked over the entrance to wait for Wax Trax to open. I quickly learned that I had outplanned everyone else. There was no line of folk waiting to get into the record store to buy the record. Heck, I had even beaten most of the employees to the shop. I leaned against the gigantic green cement barrier that separated the store front from the one-way traffic that was pour into downtown just after the morning rush hour. One-by-one, I watched the employees arrive to the shop, unlock the door, and disappear inside. Next to me on the cement barrier a crude "No Gods, No Masters" tag provided me an emotional comfort as I waited for my turn to enter the store. Leave it to some of my own culture's essential truisms to make me feel at home in a moment when I was doing something for the first time. I am an anxious elder millennial and all, so I need these creature comforts.

The door finally opened at 9:57 AM, a few minutes early. I stepped into the shop and took a photo of the Boards of Canada release in the New Releases section at the front of the shop. I had my camera on auto flash, but I was still surprised when my flash went off. I looked around in embarrassment, but no one met my gaze with disappointment or annoyance. I was relieved. I picked the record out of the display and went to the check-out counter. I thought about searching for some more records but decided to skip the possibility of larger bill that I might accrue upon finding what I deemed in that quest moment to be a "MUST HAVE" record.

Becca walked up to the check-out counter and told me she just put on Inferno. I told her my whole plan for arriving there early to secure the new record not knowing whether or not their would be a rush and if Twist & Shout's supply would be dwindled due to their listening party. She kindly acknowledged the sagacity of my anxiety planning by telling me about a record release party they hosted recently had resulted in overflowing their Northside location. That was a kindness she certainly did not need to pay me, but I was grateful for it nonetheless. We parleyed that initial little tidbit into a general discussion on analog life and getting off the social media platforms and into actual community in record stores and at listening parties where folks can listen to a record together the day before it gets released. I then gassed up my wife's clothing company Eli & Barry and gifted her a Public Collector's library postcard imploring people to "Leave their Mark." With a line forming behind me, I thanked her for talking to me and walked out of the store. Wanting to make a new friend, I yelled my instagram handle to her on the way out. That practice will never stop feeling like yelling my AOL handle to people in junior high. (LOL) The more things change, the more they stay the same.

With the record secured, I then did what any elder millennial would do: document my analog media with 35mm film and polaroid. I got back to my bike and curated the most perfect shot in the front basket of the Clem-L. As I set up the shot, I kept seeing my dopplegangers go into the record store and leave with inferno record. I forced each one to talk to me by declaring for the world to hear that I was indeed a stereotype for taking a film photo of the record I just bought outside the record store. I later joked to Lily that the time I spent outside the store confirmed to me that all versions of myself in the multiverse had collided in that time/space moment with all of us needing to secure the Boards of Canada record. Luckily, just as fast as time and space folded in itself into a perfect event horizon it unfurled back into its vast multi-layered complexity. I unlocked my bike, secured my record in my front basket, and wheeled off to the next stop on my bike quest to Victory Camera.

Looking up at the light on 13th and Washington, I saw it was red, which meant I had a brief window to get down to Pearl Street without cars bearing down on me. I leapt at the chance, pedaling my trusty mixte bike quest machine down 13th westbound to Pearl. Upon stopping at Pearl, I checked the tags on a USPS mailbox and found a new-to-me Ohurt on the westfacing side. There also was a Lurk tag, which I always attribute to a biker in San Francisco who goes by the lurklurklurk666 on the web. I know it's not him, but it brings me joy to see the serendipitous overlap of worlds. There was also a funny exwife tag on this mailbox that said: "Still sad about your exwife :(." I have seen several variants of this ex-wife tag and each one makes me giggle to myself. Getting to laugh at any point while traversing our neoliberal hellscapes is always the proverbial free square moment of any bike quest when you are looking for examples of the various themes you look for when shooting. I may need to create a "free giggles" category for these exwife tags.

I turned southbound on Pearl St and came upon an excellent example of a beige on biege ("BOB"), a photo category that encompasses all those instances of when a tag is buffed with a neutral paint cover up on an already existing neutral-colored wall. BOB is my friend Cliff's project where he photographs and shares instances of BOB from around town. Naturally, I like to participate in a photo project, because it gives me something to look for and photograph when I am riding around town. I am particularly partial to the BOB instances where paint is flaking off to reveal a shape and rust is included next to a buffed tag. Again, I like that complexity amidst the attempt by some "authority" to impose order by buffing a writer's tag. I initially road by this BOB before I turned around to take my photo.

I attribute that moment where I don't immediately take a photo to my brain needing to reboot out of destination mode and back into quest mode. Even when you have already been shooting photos on a bike quest, it is easy to fall back into destination mode. We are culturally-conditioned to get back into destination mode to the detriment of stopping to notice and soak in a scene. That's the power of a simple film camera or a polaroid and a quest to notice. You can rewire your brain to just sit there and be in an alley. Yeah, it smells like piss, but look at that flocking dumpster. My glob, there's a new ohurt, an exwife, an earthboy, and a bubble-lettered soup! I don't care how bad it smells when I can be in that alley like its the only place on earth in that moment. That direct experience of my city and who is trying to make their name known is light year's more important than what some corporate chain is trying to do by colonizing a section of our blocks with their whack logo. Glob damn, I need a corporate terraformed neighborhood like I need a hole in my head. Give me the home-grown writers over the terraforming corporations trying to extract wealth out of our communities any day.

Once I got done shooting the BOB and inhabiting the perfect moment where some dude with a circular saw is staring at me in an alley in utter confusion, I continued on to Victory Camera. Once I arrived, I did my parked my bike to the side, waddled up to the counter, turned in my finished roll of film for processing, reloaded another roll of cinestill 50d from their stock, and asked 4000 questions of my photography people. All in all, a welcome respite from the grind world where we cannot pause to slip through such portals for too long.

This vacation gave me this opportunity to weave, spin, shoot 4 rolls of cinestill 50d, write over 9k words. In short, this vacation let me breathe. I needed to breathe so bad. This was all the tidal wave of pent up creative energy that needed to be released. This is my second week in row of writing an essay. Am I back? Maybe. We will see. At least I gave myself the shot at making my next dream of a zine come true. If I can write 9k words in two weeks, I can make a zine. If I can shoot 4 rolls of film in a week, I can make a zine. If I can weave a weaving in a week, I can make a zine. I know I haven't written the book yet. I know I said I would, but it's still too big for me. I gotta break it into smaller pieces like writing a zine first. I think the first step of that zine process is to write a short "This Analog Life" zine on one topic to just work through that process. I don't need to write the tome. I just need to see my words/photos/creations in print. I want to make my mark. Glob damn, my heart aches with the need to leave my mark. If you take anything away from me, I hope it's the inspiration to leave yours too. Glob damn, they can take so much away from us, but they can't take away the marks we leave on each other's lives. I hope you can find your own ways to ritualize the analog to carve out time/space for you to imagine new futures beyond the one we inhabit.

See you next time y'all,

James

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