I have been doing different kinds of work over the last six months. It is creative in its own way, and frustrating like creative work, exhilarating like creative work, exhausting like creative work...but doesn't feed me in the same way. Local politics has taken me over, as I battle with a growing group of Burlington residents to fight the incursions of the real estate industrial complex and a collusive city government engaged in selling off our city, destroying our community-driven zoning and planning, deregulating development, and undermining democratic processes. You can see some of this activity on this other blog: www.CLCburlington.org. It is the same thing that is happening everywhere, but we are fighting back hard here, with some good old fashioned Vermont grass roots tactics and chaotic non-partisan energy. And we appear to be winning for now, having gotten a nasty zoning change on the November ballot. If we can muster the populace to vote in their own interests, we will vote down the zoning change and show the City and their developer friends who is boss! Shaping one's city and world is a creative, collaborative process, but very difficult, since there are powerful, monied forces working to shape it in opposite ways at the same time. It is a shame that so much of our creative, world-shaping energy is defensive rather than truly generative!
Once that is over, November 9th, I will be returning to my other Work. The work of writing and painting and thinking. There has been some of that, but precious little, over the last six months.
Here are two photos of me and my giant book, taken by April Patterson at the Art Hop in early September (last time I was in my studio! Ah).Also, in the meantime, my essay on conceptual art and re-materialization has been published in The Georgia Review, Fall issue, and my Almandal Grimoire essay was a runner up for the Best American Essays 2016 volume, edited by Jonathan Franzen. Another essay, Making Meaning II: Italian Journeys, will be in Numero Cinq this month. While I was fallow, the seeds were sprouting? In any case, I promise myself I will put aside worldly things come November 9th, and I hope to be sharing some more words and images here soon.
