Benedictine labors
One of the pieces of writing that has stuck with me most this year is an essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal about how monks in the desert work. The author, burned out on academia and U.S. work culture generally, visits a Benedictine monastery in New Mexico (a concept that, to quote the brilliant Emily Nussbaum, is “so up my alley it is practically chopping onions in my kitchen”). The monks spend most of their time praying, eating, and studying, but they also work for four hours a day, no more, no less. They clean the guest rooms, staff the gift shop, catalogue library books, and brew beer. For a few years in the 1990s, they built webpages. Their work must make money for the monastery, but it also must be completely ego-less and contained in the pre-determined space between prayers.
This is how the author describes this kind of work:
“Un travail de bénédictin—literally, a Benedictine labor—is a French expression for the sort of project someone can only accomplish over a long time through patient, modest, steady effort. It’s the kind of thing that can’t be rushed: illuminating an entire Bible, writing a thousand-year history, recording the position of stars at each hour of the night and each day of the year. It’s work that doesn’t look good in a quarterly earnings report. It doesn’t maximize billable hours. It doesn’t get overtime pay.”
I am lucky. My job doesn’t require that I work all the time (though as a freelance writer, I would make more money if I did). My time is not being surveilled. If I don’t check email or Slack after 6 p.m., no one notices, or at least it doesn’t bother them enough to mention it. But like any creative job, mine is hard to shut off and walk away from at the end of the day. I’m always thinking about it, I talk it about constantly, and it’s deeply entwined with my identity. It’s not something I feel I can pick up, work on for a while, and put down again, satisfied and at peace with my efforts. In the year of our lord 2019, you apparently have to be a literal desert monk to view your capital-generating job like that.
But reading this essay, I realized I do know how to do that kind of work. My crafts have always been Benedictine labors. I’ve been cross-stitching since I was a child, and I also knit and crochet. In Mexico I started making alebrijes, intricately painted paper mache monsters. I relate to these projects in a completely different way than I relate to my writing. I start projects I never finish, or set aside for months or years before returning to. Or I work on something for years, only to never look at or think about it again once it’s done. My mom and I once worked on a joint cross-stitch project for at least a decade, finished it, then put the final product in a drawer never to be seen again. (In our defense, it was a calendar of costumed teddy bears, a true classic of the dark days of 1990s cross-stitch patterns.)
I’m not entirely ego-less about my crafts, like a monk would have to be. (For evidence, you can follow me on Instagram, where I document my alebrije progress week-to-week.) But I never think about the finished product. Only the process matters. And that’s the attitude I want to start bringing to my writing, which also happens to be my work. I am working on a Very Big Project, one that I can’t finish in a matter of weeks or months. It’s already taken years, and it’ll take many more. I need to finish it if I ever want to make money from it. But to have any hope of finishing it, I have to stop thinking I will. I just have to pick it up every day, write a few words, stitch a few stitches, and know that that’s enough.
Recommendations
Piel de Alebrije Taller. You didn’t think I would get through all of those words about crafts and not show you a picture of one of my alebrijes, did you? I make them at the Piel de Alebrije Taller in Colonia Roma, led by alebrije master Saulo Ibarra. You can and should follow all of our work, including Saulo’s truly incredible pieces, on the workshop’s Instagram. This is Violeta; I finished her in February, after 18 months of work.
The Cave of Forgotten Dreams Soundtrack. Writing a lot means I’m listening to a lot of classical music, specifically early music (Renaissance and before) and new music (now). This album, by Ernst Reijseger, is the perfect combination of both. And it’s the soundtrack to The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Werner Herzog’s documentary about the Chauvet cave paintings, just to really stick the landing on satisfying all of my idiosyncratic interests.
Glow. Glow is back! GLOW IS BACK!!!! I love this show so much. It’s about a cult women’s wrestling TV show in the 1980s, with a spectacular cast of characters and some meaningful things to say about craft and creativity in the age of high capitalism. But the thing I love most is that it takes friendship just as seriously as any other kind of relationship, if not more. All three seasons are on Netflix to be binged and re-binged to your heart’s delight.