I, as a maker often get confused about making for fashion, making for art or making for makings sake.
With every day I am getting older these questions hold more weight on me than ever before. Not only do I think about it more, I also react to the question in a curious kind of way....... ‘Why has it taking me so long to do what I want ?’
I always knew that I am not just a maker. A maker of beautiful things, a maker of useful and practical things and a maker with a strong back ground of training. In me lingered the need to create, make funny things, weird things and totally impractical things. Even so the soul, for a better word was screaming at me to do more of it, I, my ego, did often turn a deaf ear to the call. What was I afraid off? Afraid of being judged by my peers? Afraid to fail and be unloved at by a world who does not understand? Afraid to be ignored and talked about behind my back? .....
I am not afraid to say,YES for all those reasons and many more I did make many things in life for others rather than myself.
Some are coat hangers because it is their job and some become coat hangers because someone else tells them what to hang on it.
Why?
As I reflect on these questions often when I drive long distances my thoughts are never far from the people I meet along the road and wherever I turn. Are they free of fear, free of the need for belonging, acceptances and a wish to be loved?
My hunch is they are not. My hunch is that they are more similar to me than that they are different. My hunch is that they hurt and hide just like I do at times and denying their true self just as I at times struggle to do. I guess we all try to make sense of the confused state of our mind sometimes which once upon a time I was under the delusion that I was in control of. After years of meditation mine still jumps all over the place like a monkey.
I am lucky to have access to art and the expression through textiles, colour and shape. I make sense of the entangled , confused emotions at times and make things to see reflected back at me which can be freeing, enlightening or intriguing. I feel the pain for people who have not got the access to art or another form of expression. I relate to the pain of isolation and the devastating consequences such can have.
Loose ends do not mean they need to be tied of in a neat little bow
I have come to see there is no such thing than ‘perfection’. Nothing I know if can be tied up neatly in a bow with a cherry on top. Everything is in a constant flux and therefore passes and changes over and over.
I wish I had known this when I was hurting when I came of age
I wish I knew this when I was crying when I was a young mother
I wish I knew this when tragedies entered my life
I wish I knew all these people who didn’t know it either and had nothing to hold onto to stay in this realm of this life
I know now that all things change, as I know a little more each day and therefore I will NOT stop talking about it and tell whoever I meet and when my voice in my head becomes fearful I shall be reminded of my favorite words...