so, i send you this message,
to test something i know not of,
because i wish to help,
even though i'm totally a grouch today.
there.
there's a message.
message.
care, agency, wisdom
Reading that is continually freeing me to (re)negotiate and prefigure a life within the cracks.
\ frē′dəm \
(noun): the capacity to imagine how things might be elsewise, with the flexible support to try, and the hope of possibilities.
(adverb) freeing: the state of imagining possibilities; relieved of the restraints of the singular, opened to the multitudes of potentialities.
(verb) to free: 1. to imagine, illuminate, share, and explore potentialities. 2. to flexibly support, facilitate, or otherwise encourage exploring potentialities.
Often conflated with related concepts of autonomy and agency. Is social as much as personal.
*An entry from A DIY Healing Dictionary of Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Social Being. The dictionary is a work in progress and part of the larger DIY Ph.D. – Prefiguring Learning for the Ecocene performance.
- How well do you know yourself?
- What are your core needs?
- Do you enjoy being by yourself as much as with others?
- What pattern(s) might I be repeating?
- What happens when you don't get your way?
- How do you handle it?
- What is your joy?
- How do you relate to the world?
- Process it?
- And interface?
- What would break your heart?
- How does someone learn about you?
- get to know you?
- Connect with you?
- Deeply?
- What do you like to talk about?
- How do you experience the world?
- What is foreplay for you?
- What role does conversation play in your life?
- How deeply do you think?
- Feel?
- How critically do you think?
- Feel?
- How do you share of yourself?
- Do you? (share of yourself?)
- How many more questions can I get away with?
- How many more questions until I feel like I know you?
- How many more questions until I feel like you know me?
- How many more questions until I know myself?
Freedom?
What about the freedom to care?
Stretched to the limit,
frayed,
torn apart,
the courage to say no,
no, that is too much!
No, that is not acceptable!
No, that is not what I need.
The courage to say no opens up
the possibility,
the mental space,
the emotional wherewithal
to care.
Will we stand
and fight
for the freedom
to care?
I have struggled most as an artist and parent. Living on a single income, with twice the expenses, limits what I can do and where. I can only travel for research if the boy can come along, and has something to occupy him. The same goes for residencies. And the cost of even occasional childcare is prohibitive, let alone regular care. Travel and compartmentalization is fragmentation, causing sanity, time, and financial problems. Again, exponentially even more so with a learning difference. This is in part why my work rejects the artificial division of life, work, family, and environment. And why my practice is integrated, so I can survive and work. Not just survive, thrive. I know, just by the demographics of people who are parents, and people with disabilities, that I am not the only one.
this is not a manifesto. this is life.
A fresh and thought provoking performance at Spilt Milk Gallery in Edinburgh confronting the hidden costs of university for people who aren’t young, male, single, have no learning differences, and no caring responsibilities.
No organization is a monolith. All institutions are made up of individuals, and sustained by collective memories. Memories that are selective, curated, and reinforced with a dominant experience. But there are as many experiences as there are people. My goal is to inspire someone, even if it’s just one person, to take a step back and look critically at what's going on. And most importantly, feel like they can do something. That they should do something. Though it does take time to unlearn what the environment has taught and enforced, it can happen. It just takes one. Then another, and another, and another, and another... and eventually there is a whole group.
Learning how to see, to observe what is right in front of us. Reframing and reforming collective memories. Hopefully to reflect the multitude of experiences that actually exist. And learn choose new ways to be.
References
Gladwell, M. (2002). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Back Bay Books.
Despret, Vinciane & Meuret, Michel. (2016). "Cosmoecological Sheep and the Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet". Environmental Humanities. 8. 24-36. 10.1215/22011919-3527704.
