Welcome to the Weekend Edition of Monday Monday : written when I have thoughts, over the weekend. In our first weekend edition I am here to talk about setting the bar exceptionally low and answer a few YES YES advice column questions
I am finding that every day I set the bar exceptionally high for myself. I set the bar as if I am in a stable and thriving condition. As if I have no physical or emotional pain. I set the bar as if I don’t need to rest, pause, or take time for myself. I set the bar as if I had a team of 25 people working for me. I set the bar as if I didn’t have a dog to walk or sobriety to tend to. I set the bar as if I was living seaside in a mansion with no debt and every meal was cooked for me.
Today I said to myself : I am going to set the bar at zero. I am going to lower the bar to the ground and then I am going to bury the bar.
In Nicole Antoinette’s newsletter she recently wrote about not having goals :
Which is to say that wow, maybe I do not need goals in order to show up to my practices. And I certainly do not need to show up to those practices every single day in order for them to be fruitful, to be worthwhile, to be nurturing for me, because look what happened here.
I don’t want to have goals today. I also do not want to trick myself into being proud of myself. While I was throwing June her ball at the dog park I thought - see, when I get home maybe I will finish the quilt. I have given myself permission to NOT finish the quilt, so anything I do will be even better if I ACTUALLY DO IT.
Wait! No no no no. The bar is low so that the bar is low. Not so that I overcome the lowest bar. What a trip.
May your goals be few, your bar be low, and the simplest task feel mundane in its maintenance
🌼 QUESTION : How, when 'good' habits feel hard, how do you keep up with your practice? How can your practice help? Basically, how to push through the pain...
ANSWER : I do think that keeping up with habits is the hardest thing for me. I perhaps talk about rituals and practice as if it comes very naturally for me. With so much Capricorn and Virgo in my chart it makes sense that I LOVE a good habit, I love a productivity hack, and I love to do the same thing every single day and see where it takes me. Then we throw in so many planets in Gemini, mental illness, addiction, and living in capitalism and it’s like - what even IS a habit am I right?!
So, in returning to habits when we stray I always suggest we return to devotion. What is it that we are devoted to? For me it is : being of service and being a channel of god in my art making. I don’t know who my work is for on any given day. You dear reader, it is for you! And I have a general inclination for who reads my work and who it is for, but I don’t technically know each person who will interact. And this - is the spell! The blessing is to be a vacant and holy channel for art to come through us. We then release it into the world without expectation of how it will land or what it will accomplish.
It is this that brings me back to the habit of creation, morning pages, walking, threading the sewing machine. I really loved reading Atomic Habits and have been thinking of giving it another listen.
And also, set the bar low. Set the bar so low. So that when you do return to the habits, you are wildly kind to yourself.
🌼 QUESTION : Who takes all these photos of you? Self timer? Friends? Paid photographers? A mix? How do you navigate this vis a vis all images being of you being observed? It feels like the "male gaze" in many ways.. although this obviously isn't a strictly gendered occurrence. And to what degree should we curate these images of ourselves? I'd love it if you would weigh in. Especially just the how? How to amass a collection of photos of oneself that helps create connection?
ANSWER : Most pictures you have seen of me in the last three years have been taken professionally by a paid photographer named Chloe Sells, my friend and collaborator who lives in Detroit. I call Chloe a collaborator because although I hire them we have truly created a visual language together that is woven into everything I do, how I talk about my work, think about my work, and document my work. Most polaroids you see of me are taken with a self timer polaroid camera I got at Target. Pictures of me dancing are often screenshots of dance videos.
I documented all the residents at Have Company and Center using a polaroid camera - I find that shooting film and polaroids helps me document the world the way I see the world. I don’t think - how do I amass images of myself - I think : I want to document this process of my life, of my hosting practice, and of my art practice. The documenting is just as much part of my art as the art itself is.
Investing in photo shoots with professional photographers, trading a roll of film with a friend, or even some simple instax pictures is not only a beautiful way to archive and document your practice, but it keeps you in the noticing of how objects are used. For instance I have had this quilt top sitting around for a few months and I know that it is not “an unfinished quilt” but it is a backdrop for a photo, something to drape over a table, an object in and of itself.
I don’t just “take pictures of myself” I am documenting my aliveness, definitely not for the male gaze. Hopefully for a very gay gaze, hopefully for the gaze of people seeing non binary and queer people taking space in the world, making a practice out of nothing.
Thank you for tuning in
Hope to see you at Dance Class next week Saturday where we will set the bar so low it will be as if you have never even heard of the bar in the first place
xo
Mar
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