That is what I have been thinking a lot about recently: post-industrial small communities and technology (and, to a lesser extent, food). What do I think of when I mean small? I think of former one-trick factory or natural resource towns like those in McDowell County, West Virginia (note that in 1950, there were a 100,000 people counted there in the Census– bigger than Charleston, WV, the capitol) or in former East Germany or those empty factories dotting the countryside in the Republic of Georgia. Is it for the best to let them shrivel up and their contents be scattered to cities, to the dirt, and to the wind? There is a lot of focus on the revitalization of former big cities, like Detroit. Most models of community revitalization, or, for that matter, developing for the first place, rely on outside capital. I have been thinking about the futility of relying on outside capital: it just won’t reach everywhere, and, when it does, what price beyond money comes with it?
So if the term “technology” can refer not only to fancy gadgets and computers, but also to crafts and systems of organization, then somewhere the fate of small communities seems to lie in its hands. How should post-industrial communities reorganize now that the money flow is gone? Should they? Is it better to maintain an H. L. Mencken-like disdain for the backwater town? Better to celebrate that most Americans now live in urban areas? I, myself, have lived mostly in urban areas since high school. Where do I get off suddenly being worried about the places no one else is worried about?
If science requires empirical and rational knowledge, then what am I basing my intuition on that small communities and how they function are going to become a lot more important sometime in the not-too-distant future? This week I have read data that suggests, or rather, proves, that as compared to the current small community model in the US of driving everywhere, city living in the US actually leads to a smaller carbon footprint. I was also reading this week about how when cheap oil from Russia stopped flowing to Cuba, the formerly “outside-the-mainstream” Cuban agriculture specialists proposing city rooftop gardens for providing most of Cuba with vegetables– those folks suddenly got to have their say. While getting this all going, seems that the average Cuban lost 20 pounds, and apparently the place is still not teeming with food, and now though it gets cheap oil from Venezuela, Cuban agricultural policy remains that most food is produced local and in the town where it will be sold. Maybe also not so difficult when you have four-season gardens.
My husband is always pointing out to me where lawns could be used to grow so much food. When we were in Eleanor, WV he pointed out to me that the lawn for the middle school could easily produce enough food to feed everyone in the town for a year (obviously with some canning, drying, curing, and freezing involved– the first three being technologies most everyone knew something about till the 1950s). I also have been thinking about what it would take to get communities to do that. Whom would you fight? How crazy would people think you were to suggest it? I have been thinking a lot about communities or cities and their “Plan B”? These little dead post-industrial towns certainly had no Plan B for when the factory stopped working. What would happen if my home town suddenly had to pull an agricultural stunt like Cuba had to pull? Who would you have to convince now to start Plan B as a way of life now?
I started this entry about a month ago, then life got in the way (as you can see by the differing dates above).
What I wanted to write about was all of the art and the artists I have experienced since being back in West Virginia: frankly, some as good as anything I have seen anywhere….
There is an idea afloat that makers of the larger culture are slowly being decentralized from the large cities… for the most part, innovators in art and culture can’t afford to live in those. Furthermore, the internet allows for folks to sync up with a larger culture without having to pay big city rent. Just a few things I have seen… and been amazed by since being back.
Okay, so they need to change the tag on the far left on the Art Walk Facebook page… but I went to the March Art Walk. I saw a very cool exhibit of banjo pickers and other bluegrass and old time musicians. I met some interesting folks along Hale Street–which is the small, Charleston, WV version of a hipster street, what with its a sprinklin’ of bars and antique stores and gallery spaces. That evening, I also got to see work by friends of friends who now qualify as friends:
Keith Allen–Why didn’t I know this guy when we were in high school?
I’ve had this theory for a while that whatever coping mechanisms you developed to get through high school, you then have to turn around and deal with once you are an adult. Being back in WV has made me realize that this, in some way, also happens with people. I seem to be meeting quite a few folks that I feel as though I would have known in high school, that I-shoulda-coulda-woulda known and we all sorta ended up back where we started, but healthier versions. Keith is one of those people (and so is artist Jamie Miller, featured a little bit further down). Keith asked me an interesting question the evening we met–as I had gone out into the big world, lived in NYC, LA, and Europe and all, did I think those folks that didn’t leave WV missed out on something? I answered that 10 years ago I probably would have said “yes,” but now with social networking in place connecting people from all over, I’m not so sure. I certainly envy the closeness of the art-house crowd in Charleston and in WV…but I also envied similar sets of folks local/native to their environs when I lived in LA and in NYC. Maybe the outsider is just me… In any case, I wish Keith had more of his post-punk art up on the net to share. And, hands down, he is one of the funniest people I have ever met anywhere.
Next up, one of those people that just seems to be brilliant at whatever she does, Amanda Jane Miller. She plays a mean fiddle, can dance, and is also a very interesting artist and illustrator, with work featuring imps from your worst nightmares. She is also immensely entertaining to be around… and, again, one of those people that has carved out an artistic life despite, in spite, of, or due to, our local environs in WV.
I don’t quite know how Jamie and I didn’t know each other, though, I secretly learned that she had been a majorette. My take now–never underestimate where that will all lead to. Jamie Miller–I friggin’ love what I have seen of Jamie’s work. I hear the rich and famous have also admired it. Okay, again, like Amanda’s work, there is a definite stamp of femaleness– and in Jamie’s work, again come the stuffed animals from hell not to haunt, but enlighten you. Here are all the possible links I could find:
Last but not least, Kerry Bingaman–I wish I could find a link to her work on the net. I went over to Keith Allen’s studio for a while the night of the March Art Walk, and, Kerry had a small exhibit up. One photo in particular stood out: an iridescent red photo taken through the window of a laundromat in Brooklyn.
More incredible creative things from the last month
Lori McKinney must be one of the most gracious people on earth. She had invited me a while back to come and visit her and her husband’s art space in Princeton, WV….and, finally, back in March, we got a chance to. See: http://www.theriffraff.net/fr_home.cfm
I grew up near Princeton till I was 10… and I remember shopping on this street thirty years ago. Now, most of the Boulevard is abandoned. But, McKinney and company have brought hope to one corner. They now have two large adjacent buildings, one of which already houses a galley, a performance space, offices, studios, and a living space. Her sister Melissa McKinney owns the building across the street, and recently began a music school that is having riproaring success: http://www.theriffraff.net/fr_home.cfm
I have to say, I would have DIED to have gone to Melissa’s school when I was a kid. She has several all-girl teeny bands on rotation at the space.
The McKinney’s have started a local and downhome arts renaissance in their corner of the world. What they are doing with their local community is inspiring…And, again, pretty amazing to witness.
The one place we didn’t get a chance to see but everyone told us about while we were in Mercer County:
But! We did look in the window on a rainy Sunday afternoon! The storefront is pretty wild…. my dad tells me he did some printing work for Bowling thirty years ago when he apparently tried to get something like this off the ground…. only to come back years later to actually make it work. It is an art space/performance space. What you have to understand that nothing like that existed for miles around… till the McKinney’s started what they started in Princeton.
And, speaking of Bluefield…. this place where I shopped as a child, this town where I was born… has the most amazing buildings. My husband and I walked around on a dreary Sunday afternoon with our mouths agape. Bluefield had been known as “Little New York” in the 1920s… and the remaining buildings bear that out. Again, my father reminded me that many of those buildings were torn down by the 1950s and 1960s… though, the many buildings that are left were built between the 1880s and 1920s. Amazing tin roofs, incredible facades… I even liked the strange nulti-colored panel “mod” facades slapped on front of some of the buildings some time fifty years ago.
We also stood for a while at the train yard, which is still very active… and still very covered in coal dust.
I found these photos already online of Bluefield–scroll down to the bottom of that link for a lot of online photo galleries of art deco, ah, the art deco, work and of the amazing buildings: http://www.pbase.com/kstuebin/bluefield
Lots of huge homes caving in on themselves right up off Downtown. We watched a dude in shorts and a ball cap run back and forth down a hill…. he was a white dude selling pharmas to passing white people in fancy cars. I am used to seeing the hypodermic needle next to the beer bottle in neighborhoods in big cities… here, we saw the little brown pharma bottle and the beer bottle. Certainly, we were anomalies walking around in the near dark in this abandoned downtown… but I could imagine. I could imagine this area revitalized and vibrant. WV is building rich, and, maybe the artists are the ones that will reignite the needed vitality to make the buildings breathe again.
People let me know they enjoyed my love letter to some creative folks I know last week, so I thought I’d try this again. I like focusing on the creative acts that work for me, that have appeal, rather than those that don’t.
Here is the C (creative, Crystal, calibrated, compiled) Week in Review
Writers Workshop at the Charleston Culture Center
Last weekend I was surprised when about 200 (or more) people showed for a day of free writers workshops at the Culture Center in Charleston. I have taken writers workshops with many a master writer and this day was no exception. The morning I spent with
I heard him read two or three years ago with a group of Affrilachian Poets and was impressed with his imagery, topics, and energy. I then subscribed to his creative journal Pluck! that focuses on creative African-American work in Appalachia. In this workshop I appreciated his attempt at boiling down the main elements of poetry: image, rhythm, economy of language, and, I also appreciated his addressing persona poems directly. As a writer primarily of fiction, a persona poem allows me to enter into poetry from a place that resonates in me rather than out of a fear of treading too heavily and stomping all over a genre. I also got to see him read last Friday and was moved and impressed again…
Doug you read about in last week’s Valentine’s post. He subbed in an autobiography class for a writer that couldn’t make it. I don’t want to give away his tricks of the trade, but his exercise was well-thought out and particularly clever. In brief, out of a list of our top ten most significant life events, he had us focus on number 10 rather than number 1. The thought being that most of the top events of most folks’ lives are commonplace (births, marriages, graduations, jobs), but that number 10 is less emotionally charged, but maybe also less commonplace. This lent me more insight into those people that do write successfully about their own lives.
Mid-week Public Radio International ran a piece on the change of mood in Japan from giddy humor and anything’s possible to more somber. This fabulous skit from the Japanese version of the Johnny Carson show from the mid-1980s was used as a pop culture illustration of Japan’s former Zeitgeist. I loved this–everything about it: the costumes, the story, the cheekiness, the kitsch, and how well orchestrated it is. You gotta love this, right?
Japan seemed to be one theme of the week. After scoring organic udon noodles at Big Lots, we did a lot on a pseudo-Japanese food theme this week…. and, then, last night, the Unitarian Church here in Charleston, WV showed last year’s foreign film Academy Award winner for free:
Departures
Apparently it took ten years to put this film together. Really some just fantastic acting. This is also some of the finest screenwriting I have witnessed in a very long time. I had wondered if it were based in a novel or short story (I can almost always tell). Turns out it is roughly based on the autobiography of a Buddhist mortician. Far from being morbid, there are layers of love stories and types of love, lots of inner and outer struggle. The scenery is also spectacular. Sometimes I have found Japanese films too outside my cultural experience for me to really get the full picture of a film event’s significance. Departures struck home with me on universal and modern themes, without resorting to the grandiose. I would certainly watch it again.
The next creative things I am going to do:
After being asked often now for access to print copies, I have set out the task of getting my two books into print publishing shape this spring. For a while I was torn: do I try again with agents and publishers or do I keep giving it a go on my own? Three years ago I gave it a shot at larger scale publishing, only to be told by agents, that although they loved what they read, they felt they couldn’t market Bombardirovka. I know that despite very encouraging and positive feedback, I haven’t pushed the novel enough… but I am thinking that the right time presents itself for each creative work. My goals are to get it and Disco Hillbilly into print form by late spring and available through our new business entity MediaCauseGlobal as our first works out under that creative imprint. I am hoping to end up a sort of Ani DiFranco of publishing and multimedia. DiFranco started her own label back in the 1989: http://www.righteousbabe.com/ and has never worked through a major label. Now, she doesn’t have to.
Okay, maybe I should have started this twenty years ago… but better late than never. This is also what writer Dave Eggers did. He started out in ‘zines, then started McSweeney’s, which now also publishes him.
There is good proof, though, that one’s facility with language and story improves with age. I am hoping this is true of marketing oneself and one’s friends and the creative folks one admires. I guess I’ll find out.
What am I up to this weekend?
Hope to go see see Crazy Heart. The guy that wrote it is from this part of the country from down in Abingdon, VA… and got his start at the Barter Theatre there apparently.
Today, we are starting a photography project (once I get Edward out of bed). We are starting with what we have: ideas and some cheap equipment. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
I also hope to get in some time updating a formatted version of Bombardirovka and also work on the next installment of Disco Hillbilly for the web.
I am also reworking a website of my dad’s…
Next Twyla Tharp questions — from her list of questions that help you figure out your creative DNA
Last time I answered questions from Tharp’s list (see an earlier post) on the best idea I ever had… here are its opposite and the links between the two…
5. What is the dumbest idea I ever had?
I am going to stick with the realm of ideas. We have all done things we regret…so the question focuses on an idea — what is the dumbest idea I actually never realized, that is, made reality?
Maybe trying to potentially set up a service that helps writers get writing work. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
6. What made it stupid?
I didn’t have the infrastructure in place to actually make it work. I spent way too much on a graphic and simple website and that would have been better spent with a consultant flushing out the ideas. My view, though, is that with time, bad ideas morph into somewhat decent ideas. I do thinking owning and starting a business was a good idea. Last summer I thought I wanted the business to focus on the nonprofit sector; now, I think the business has settled into a vehicle for exclusively creative work. Ideas need time to ferment and become what they are going to become. I am pretty happy with the idea of a business focused on creative work…. So, from a stupid idea three years ago comes a pretty good idea this year.
7. Can you connect the dots that led you to this idea?
My MFA program gave no advice or direction on the “what next” part of being a writer. Great. So now you have an MFA. What next? Only so many writing instructor positions exist, and a lot of those are now taken up by folks with a Ph.D. AND an MFA and a hefty publishing credit under their belts. I’d thought about giving seminars on the what next of creative writing, and then, using that to recruit writer-consultants. Frankly, about that time my day job amped up, and I just didn’t have the time to invest in this idea. Then online writing portals really took off, so my idea was so of already obsolete by the time I got around to thinking it.
8. What is your creative ambition?
To complete the projects I have already outlined for myself. These include:
getting Bombardirovka (which I refer to affectionately as Bomba) and Disco Hillbilly out in print and audio forms
investigating and theorizing a school of the arts and technology
becoming well-experienced in multimedia production
become well-experienced in creating art through using digital media, esp. the web
finishing a long list of creative projects: Dogfight film; Chicken Mountain project; several audio and video projects; two more Jada Perlmutter novels; several online interactive narratives; three docu-reality multimedia websites, etc.
to become a creative and learning theorist
to become/remain part of an exchange of ideas and art
I think sometimes about being part of a larger conversation on a larger stage, but I am not sure I even care about that, or have ever cared about it, really. I am not sure what a person gains, other than access to the people also on those stages– maybe more money? I don’t know, though, if that stage door closes behind you once you go through it. That would most definitely not appeal to me.
