A lot of my ponderings lately have come as an expansion on ideas from a discussion in Return of Me, a class from Book Art Studios.
After one session, my mind was swirling with thoughts about labels, and talk about there being 'two sides to the coin'. Both reminded me of my ponderings and anxieties during homeschooling days when I was asked about how I taught 'x' or what my kids were learning when they did 'y'. The longer I homeschool / unschooled, the harder I found it to label my children or to describe their learning, because both my children and life are so intricate and interacting and complex. At first glance there are two sides to a coin, but then we notice that there is a third side which is the circumference. And then we notice that the circumference has a patterned edge, so lots of little mini sides! And then, we notice that the sides are not opposite, they are just the outside of the coin, the external 'skin'. And then we see an old very coin that has been handled and dropped and covered in boiled-lolly stickiness and washed, for years and decades or even centuries and it's almost smooth and we can't see what the picture is or what the writing says. And then we lay it on the railway track and wait for a train and then it has no regular shape left. And then we drill a hole in it and hang it on a chain..... and is it still a coin with two sides? And maybe that's what is being done to me, and maybe that's what art is? Taking things, mixing them with thoughts and feelings and crumpling and soaking and tearing and working and working at them until the labels disappear but the essence remains, and we call it a 'book' or a 'quilt' or a 'statue' but it is made of all the other labelled things and labelled actions but is both less and more than all those things. It is the same but different. And even after it's finished, it is still not a finished thing because every person who experiences it will do so differently, both physically and emotionally.
So if we stop the labelling, and think of the process of learning and adding and chipping away and putting our work out on the railway track and polishing and distressing and layering..... why then we can look at the planning and practicing and hoarding and emotional self-flagellation as all being part of the process, all part of the 'coin', and chose how much is enough of each for ourselves, rather than worrying about anyone else.
So maybe labelling things - people, things, our actions - can become a collection of jars, boxes, tins, vaults, and consequently very restricted and restricting. Maybe if I really feel the need to label, I could use mesh bags instead of glass jars, to allow a bit of flow? Maybe using words like 'sometimes', 'yet', 'for now', could be freeing.
