Dear readers,
I haven’t gotten too personal on this blog thing yet, but I’ll let you a little closer this time.
It’s the day after Christmas and it really wasn’t the happy-clappiest time this year because my family is facing some rough circumstances together. It’s not dire or impossible, we’re not depressed, but there are things in the world worth getting pretty angry and sad about. I’d even go so far as to say that it expresses love to allow those strong feelings to be there and not numb them; they acknowledge the weight of what’s wrong, and they are a sign that something right exists.
Sometimes it’s hard not to sterilize these feelings and find the balance of giving yourself permission to feel, but not be dragged under what you feel. Just like how it’s hard not to brush off kind compliments rather than receive them gracefully, it can be hard to accept compassion sometimes because you (I) don’t want to be pitied, that’s awkward and weak.. and it makes you accept that the thing you don’t want to be real for you is real.
Also, sometimes there’s just too much to explain and it’s tiring to go there. But I really think it is valuable. I am still learning how valuable.
I was thinking about writing a post on grief pre-xmas because I know that is more relate-able than any other tradition for a lot of people around this time. Sad but true… so why not bring it up? We’re all missing somebody.
Last summer was the 10 year anniversary of my mom’s death, which is a strange fact, and I grieved in a new way. I grieved her as a kid, and a teen, but now I’ve arrived somewhere else and I feel her absence (and in other ways her blessing) here.
The new summertime grief was unexpected, and it only surfaced certain days. But it was real to me, and gradually became more apparent as it lingered. Eventually it found a crack to get out through a song called Spark, and that’s how I knew there was something needing to boil over, it wasn’t clear before. That’s partly what the song is about too. Not just grief and what it does, but other things that get mixed in with that and help/make you see differently.
I made a rough recording on my computer the same night I wrote it and I think the roughness suits it well, like a messy sketch.
Please take a listen:
* * * * *
Walk another hallway across Bre’s mind……………..
This summer I joined an art collective which is also a book club. Cool right?
We’re called Open Book Art Collective and we are a bunch of visual artists who make artwork and curate shows based on books we read together. I used that song as a part of my piece for our first book which was The Death of A Beekeeper. It was tough to slug through in the summertime: it’s written from the perspective of a guy dying slowly from cancer and exploring the experience of pain (and existence) in his journals. It brought up a lot of material to work with, and I wanted to make something that centered on the necessary physical manifestation of grief, loss, and the human compulsion to memorialize.
Near the start the protagonist receives a letter which is his diagnosis about his cancer, and he decides to burn it before reading it because he would rather not know and just live his life. So, I decided to burn my copy of the book and put the ashes on display to reflect back this idea of irretrievable loss of information that is death, the decay of the body, and the intangible remains that outlast the physical reminders of someone. Someone responded to my piece saying that losing a loved one is a bit like a library burning down.
All the titles of the pieces at the show in October were taken from quotations. Mine was:
“But now I’m beginning to wonder what I have let myself in for, when, for instance, I burned that letter without opening it.” [You will never read this book.]
This is the only line of the book I didn’t burn, and sits on top the little pile of ashes.
A cd player with ‘Spark’ playing was attached to the plinth, forcing a solitary reflective experience of the work.
My artist statement:
To see a photo gallery of the show and the other artists’ fantastic work, click here.
Also, we were just accepted for a second exhibition of this show in a new gallery space. Details will be announced soon! You can keep in touch with us at www.openbookartcollective.com.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and please don’t keep your grief all to yourself.
-Bre
