Assignment 15: Catharsis
Yes, it's a metaphor!
Dear friends,
Today, your art assignment is…
Assignment 15: Catharsis
Step 1: Take something apart that isn’t working.
Step 2 (Optional): Put the pieces to use in a different way.
Side Note
I logged out of Instagram a couple weeks ago. I was barely factoring the election into my decision; I just needed to clear the time and cognitive space that Instagram had been gobbling up. To no-one’s surprise, my recently diagnosed ADHD has eluded get-better-quick schemes and instead has me easing into habit shifts with much longer timelines. Part of that includes peace-ing out on that platform for a good long while. ✌
I’m really grateful I did that for myself. I’m getting grounded by connecting directly with my people, and enjoying the longer form writing I see on substack and elsewhere—thoughtful, nuanced investigations of current affairs rather than the split second hot takes that IG encourages. Someone (my therapist?) called it response over reaction. I like that. I logged in a couple times when I was having lonely, lost feelings; after all, it’s my 12-year habit to turn to Instagram to take the pulse of the world around me. But each login further affirmed my decision; it’s just not the place for me right now. So far, the time I’m not spending on Instagram has been reallocated to dog belly rubs and doing the dishes. Win-win!
Here’s one of my favorite pieces of writing from the last week:
Katherine May also posted this:
She’s really the best.
Catharsis: Rag Rug
A while ago, I picked up a rag rug from my neighborhood Buy Nothing group. The previous owner had tried cutting it in half to make a smaller rug, not realizing that by doing so, the whole thing would begin to unravel. She didn’t want to throw it away, and I didn’t want that either, so I decided to take it on myself.
I do this often: save something from the trash, become paralyzed by indecision about what to do with it, fold it up, and stick it in a pile of similarly broken things, until a bad man gets elected to a position of great power and I desperately need to TAKE SOMETHING APART and FAST.
So, on Wednesday afternoon last week, I wrestled the rug’s unraveling halves into the middle of my living room and began unweaving them.
Unweaving a rag rug to reclaim its materials for future use is not a particularly valuable act in the eyes of capitalism. It takes a long time, and you’re salvaging rags, as in, fabric that has no remaining use except to be walked on. But, my hands needed doing, and my heart needed the feeling of taking something apart that wasn’t working.
Then, a surprise.
As I pulled each rag from the tangle of warp threads, I began to notice the fabric itself: a mix of denims, silks, cottons of various colors and patterns, even a material that looked like it had come from a sari. The rags were many different lengths, which suggested that they’d been cut from garments or garment waste, and they were clearly cut and woven by hand.
What started as a frenzied, panicked act of deconstruction transformed into curious exploring! And in that curiosity, I found space, and complexity, and connection with the person who made the rug in the first place, and closeness with the people who had walked on it, and discovered questions about my own intentions and responsibility for the materials once I’d finished the job.
By now, I’m pretty sure you know I LOVE an extended metaphor. Let me try to wrap it all back up…
I have a lot more of this rug to unweave, and at that point I will need to decide what to do with the materials. What should I keep? What should I compost? Or throw away? What will I make with the parts of it that I save?
Let’s ask those questions of our culture, our politics, our communities. What isn’t working? What needs to be taken apart? How can we use creativity and curiosity to do so, and to imagine better futures for as many beings as we can?
Catharsis: Back to Work
This is a human being assignment, and it’s an art assignment.
What do you want to deconstruct and repurpose in your creative practice? How does one deconstruct a drawing? Or a sentence? A photograph? A performance? A song? Consider the permanence of the act of taking something apart. You can reassemble a sentence, but you can’t do the same with a tree.
And then, what happens when you repurpose the parts? What new work do you create? What shifts in you during the process of un-making and making?
As always, I really appreciate you being here. Thank you, thank you. I’ve made my substack completely free for the time being, and removed all paywalls from previous posts. I’m having a think on what it means to share and whether or not it’s meaningful to me to monetize any of it. If you enjoy what I’m working on here, now is a great time to share it with a friend! And tell me! Tell me what you enjoy about what I’m doing here!
xo,
Sara