turn and face the strange

I'm cleaning out my attic.

There is no way to literally do this without proverbially doing it as well. The act alone is an exploration, excavation, and ultimately a moment of reckoning about who you've been at various points in your life. It's true. My own pile of awarenesses varies from a pink marabou-covered phone to the written critiques that my work received over the four years I attended art school. And there's quite a bit that makes up the In Between. Part of me is ashamed of having hauled these things with me from state to state, when all they do is sit in attics and basements... And part of me knows I'll do it again. Well, maybe not the phone.

How do we know when we have healthy relationships with objects? We tend to carry on any behaviors that we learn in our childhood, whether we know it or not. At thirty-five years old, I've looked a lot of those "traits" square in the eye and left 'em by the side of the road. But still, we are our parents' children, like it or not, and they were our first teachers. Here's what I have known: A person who has owned a house for roughly forty years, doesn't live there, but refuses to sell it. It is furnished almost exactly as it was in the beginning, apart from basic cosmetic updates. It stands alone. Conversely, another person who has almost never owned property, but rather, is nomadic by nature. They move whenever they deem it time for a change, and that can be anywhere from four months to four years after landing in any particular location. The caveat, is that they have mountains of worldly belongings that have to either move with them, or be placed in storage bins until further notice. That further notice is a vague, distant glow from a lighthouse, miles away. The signal is never received.

I have little-to-no relationship with Normal. I have been close pals with Extreme, Dramatic and Too-Scared-To-Decide for most of my life. However, I tire of them, and have been avoiding them on and off for a few years now. Still, they call. My own home is a museum of who and what I love, and I take great pride in its curation. I like to think that I have shed quite a bit of my material past, and only kept what I find beauty in, whether sentimental or aesthetic (hopefully both). But the boxes from the attic tell a slightly different story. They say that I own everything from my childhood, and don't know what to do with it. That there is no "home" from which I came, at which evidence of my younger self resides, with no pressure. I have friends with that arrangement in place. Their baby clothes and report cards lay lovingly in some closet at their home of origin... Not me. I've got it all. And it's a weird bunch of stuff to have, I'm not going to lie to you. There's a feeling that while some of it may not be that important you, it seems like it should be. And you keep it.  But not today.

Today, I'm looking through the pile, and weeding it out with a very simple set of guidelines in place: If it doesn't contribute to the story of my art, it goes. Books about little pigs and their unlikely adventures: no. Slides from my first group show at MassArt: yes. And so on. At no point do I plan on having a retrospective about how weird and disjointed my personal life has been, but I will however have a show about the path my art has been on since the beginning.  It's actually been quite nice for me to look back through the boxes and read the words of my professors and peers.  I was on my way to becoming exactly who I am today.  My work was visual, conceptual, narrative and heading towards the incorporation of my music (which was happening separately, at the time).  Reading their praises, criticisms and suggestions with older eyes is so illuminating.  I didn't hear them, back then.  I felt unsupported in my department, which I don't think was untrue, but other people saw me, and loved my work.  I must remember that in life.  The loudest voices are the ones closest to you, especially if their words are negative.  There might be a hundred people just beyond them singing your praises... And what will you hear?  The three people up front who focus on what they don't appreciate about you or your process.  It's so boring to be human sometimes.

I have also read through some old letters and notes from people I have known throughout the years. Some of those friendships are still in tact, and some of them are not.  It's ok, though.  We can't hold on to every single person on our journey.  And I've had a long journey for someone my age.  In my adolescence alone, I attended about ten different schools and lived in as many homes.  All of those places came with people, some more than others.  I've shared the stage with many many musicians, and created art with a good number of folks as well.  Life goes on.  This is why we take pictures, and then hoard them in our attics, right?  For me, the work I've created has told the story of who I've been better than anything else.  I'm enjoying honoring it, and giving it a place to live without the company of my old hardcore and punk cassette tapes from the '90's. 

I'm not a parent.  I don't plan on being a parent.  My creation is the art/music.  When and if I move again, this stuff will get dragged along again, and that has to be fine.  Consider it the keeping of the baby booties.

I've got my eye on Balanced.  From what I've observed of Normal, I don't know that she's got what I want anyway.  Normal might be the identical twin of Mediocre, and neither of them are for me.  I know for sure that I'm not interested in either of the living templates that I outlined earlier.  I'm oddly opposed to storage spaces, and have no need to have an empty house just for the sake of having it.  I live in a wonderful space today, and should that change, it all comes with me.  Today, I'm narrowing down what that "all" is.  Just in case.

Thanks for listening.

xo, bu