Carla Sonheim, Imaginary Bird III all today's art is by Carla Sonheim and we'll be talking more about her later

Welcome to 2020, Zephyrland

I imagined a whole different kind of issue that I'd greet you with

a wintry thing, cozy

but something else demanded to be here instead and we're going to find out what that is.  I think something else demanded to be here because we're starting a thing, a year, even if a year is a fake thing we put on top of real days.

Fake things are real, too.

some fake things = great (art, plays, artificial grape flavor)   other fake things = neutral-ish (i.e. good manners, a mixed bag: pleasant, often but not always a herald of real regard, can be used dangerously)   yet other fake things = dead sucky (you have your own sense of this category)

The way you begin something carries through the whole thing.

While we'll probably curl up hyggily (or tremblingly, or both) under plenty of faux-fur blankets in the days to come, that can't be our energy signature for the whole year. Everything's too important. We'll pause to crumble a bit and go limp and rest and joke as we go  but we're starting decisively and I know what I want for us

 ANIMALS AND CHILDREN, CHILDREN AND ANIMALS

Maybe you're familiar with that jokey old bit of showbiz advice about not ever sharing the stage with children or animals. The idea is that you shouldn't do it because they'll always upstage you. They're too alive, too spontaneous, too unpredictable, too truthful about whatever at the wrong times, etc.  DANGER: They are simply too rad.  Meanwhile, the script! the blocking! what we rehearsed! BY GOD, IT'S ALL OUT THE WINDOW and NOBODY'S LOOKING AT US, the STARS,

and what are they even DOING?  what is the creature DOING?  it wandered over to the table where we're not even supposed to go now and--   oh god,  now it's

BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL  

OH CHRIST   all bets are off

That is 100% what I want for us

this year and from now on.

I want the people around you to go   "Dear god, ______________, what are you DOING?"    and if you even deign to respond, you say

[the equivalent of]

"I'm GOING OVER to the TABLE"

or

"I'm saying HI to the GUY IN THE FRONT ROW"

or

"I'm EATING this PROP APPLE from the BOWL

because it LOOKS GOOD"

and then you glare at whoever asked you like they're a stone moron   

  Please don't underestimate the tyranny of this planet-wide show we've all apparently agreed to act in, with our assigned parts and lines and blocking and other illusory concepts. You do not have to do all the things you feel that you're expected to do and you don't have to not do all the things you feel that you're expected not to do.  

 This has larger implications, political and otherwise.  This is not artsy, hippie indulgence. (Although I'm for that.)  How do you resist where you need to resist if you don't have practice resisting when it comes to things that don't seem important? How do you follow an urgent impulse if you don't allow yourself to follow a non-urgent one, or—what's more—pay attention to or care about the fact that you're having one?   

If we only make the shapes we're expected to make and the sounds we're expected to make there's the danger that we'll begin thinking only the kinds of things we're expected to think

  and, as frighteningly,

feeling only the kinds of things we're expected to feel       and we'll do less and less unless it's scripted, permitted.

     tragedy is born like that

         and why were we born, then?

We voluntarilydiminish ourselves

Right now every day we do that

We diminish the spectrumof what we will (and can) perceive and we diminish our capacities

I don't want this. I don't want it. I think it's a central, causative tragedy for the other ones.

      but

  vice versa go the other way and something else is born

   !

  Now I want to talk to you about the artist and human who's kicking off our year here, the wonderful

Carla Sonheim

I met Carla a couple of years ago at my vital friend H.L.'s birthday party, and then I had the good fortune to get to know her a little better (a good fortune which is still underway!), and I want you to know about Carla and her work if you don't already because   not only is she a beautiful artist she is the kindest, most beautiful art teacher

and genuine, loving agent of freedom for humans trapped by wrong ideas about themselves and their capacities

  You have the right to make art, by the way. Just in case you think it's something that you don't have. Making art is something very good to do for all humans.

• it feels great

• it looks great

• it lets you find things out about yourself

• it occupies you with something alive and A-plus as opposed to many other sketchy things or people you could occupy yourself with

• it's entirely completely democratically affordable (you can make art with old cans, twigs, your body, etc.)

Carla teaches a whole raft of dreamy art classes online, and offers classes by other excellent teachers, too. I got familiar with a big swath of her catalogue of offerings when I was writing a little copy for her, and I was like oh oh oh oh I want to take that one, oh shit that looks good, etc. You should go to her website and swim around and get the hell up in there if you at all have the impulse. She's got a year-long class starting momentarily called Words + Pictures if you want to do a deep dive, and about a billion other options if you'd like to start somewhere smaller.    G O H A V E F U N  

Thank you for reading the ol’ WZ

THIS WHOLE EVERYTHING IS NOTHING WITHOUT YOU

YOU ARE WHO IT’S FOR  XO

gif by sylvia kat