A New Years Update - The Management
Happy New Year, guys! Hope everyone enjoyed the day. I've been the good kind of busy, showing my cousins from across the Atlantic around the great state of Texas and prepping my classroom for the kids! Visited the DMA for maybe the fifth time, but they've recently improved their Central African collections, so I was pleasantly surprised. Lots of Kuba and Songye cultural products. The Keir Collection exhibition is still goated, I enjoyed revisiting the Bamana mud cloth display, and the Octavio Medellín retrospective kicked ass.
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<Discord loser voice> Minor mythohistory mistake. Mbidi Kiluwe was the father of the first Luba mulopwe, Kalala Ilunga. He was royalty ofc and represented sacral kingship in opposition to Kalala's uncle Nkongolo/Rainbow, but the Rainbow probably has a better claim to being the imperial founder over Kalala (as the dude who first conquered the bulk of the Upemba Depression) than Mbidi does. All the important stuff is correct, though. Should really get around to my king-oracle and Luba gender post.
Was thinking about making a wrapup blogpost, but I decided against it. Not really that much to wrap up when the blog itself is only a couple months old, yanno. Would be a bit corny.
Really excellent example of Kuba prestige hats. The one on the left is called a kalyeem and has its origin in Kete hats, while the cap on the right is called an mpaan and comes from Pyaang culture - the diversity of the Kuba Kingdom on display.
I've been thinking a lot about Zedeck Siew's post on Dungeon23. His take there is something that I think I dimly felt before reading the post but def couldn't put into words. Considering how personal this particular Dungeon23 project is for me, I've decided that I'm gonna follow Zedeck's lead and keep the work more or less private. Not sure if it'll be as total as Zedeck describes - I'll probably post the better setting, NPC, item, and faction updates (using Emmy Verte's schedule) every so often at least - but we'll see. In lieu of online shaming keeping me on the straight and narrow for the project, I've enlisted the aid of my brother and my roommate. They'll beat me with a rubber hose every day I miss an entry. Unrelated - what do you guys think of Actual Play reports? Couple of my players have thought it could be cool to write up some of our sessions and I'd be willing to let them write some guest posts for the purpose. Kind of different from the usual fare here, but it could be fun!
Wishing everyone health and happiness in 2023 - stay cool, y'all.
I understand wanting to keep things to yourself. When / while I work on something that I think might have real emotional power - the power to potentially touch other souls, as corny and horrendously egotistical as that might sound - I cannot talk about it to ANYONE. I have an almost superstitious fear that doing so will render me unable to finish the work, or at least unable to finish it in the way I had envisioned. It's like in speaking about it I trade away some of its power over me, and in so doing, I have less to put into the piece.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there's all sorts of weird ass Freudian shit that could be read into this, but the fact remains - talk about it and it doesn't get finished, or if it does, it sucks (at least in my view). If the piece doesn't start off containing some sort of emotional power, then why bother writing it? I'm not saying it all has to be melancholy (though that seems to be easiest for me to tap into). It could be joyous - I love reading works that restore my faith in the positive power of human imagination and its ability to redeem us and would like to write something like that someday. But if it's emotionally flat - if it doesn't sing - then to me at least, it's not worth writing except as a sort of intellectual exercise.
I don't have the problem that ZS has where writing to me has turned in to a sort of work in the way he is talking about. But I do understand that in making it un-instrumentalitisable (god, that's a mouthful) he keeps it in a state of "play" for himself which does not serve a "market" or become corrupted by financial forces, or even an audience or lack thereof. I would humbly submit that this is actually one of the beautiful things about being an amateur at anything, is the ability to create without these concerns. I have friends who wound up writing for a living - one of them recently asked me if I would move to LA and help him write screenplays on the condition that a pitch of his goes through. And part of me hopes that will happen. But another part of me looks at the earnestness of some of my recent creations and the philosophy with which they were written (something I call The New Innocence, again I know I'm at risk of sounding like a monomaniacal grandiose motherfucker, lol) and never, ever wants to subject myself to having to do writing as "work" that I dislike, or am ultimately displeased with, or do not see value in myself. I'd rather write pure pornography, which at least someone could get off to.
It sounded a little at first as if you were considering retiring the blog completely (when I saw the words "wrap up post I was like oh...) but I think what you are saying here is more that you are going to keep your Dungeon23 work close to the chest, and since that is going to be a focus for you, alongside the other massive commitments you have in your life, we probably should not expect many updates, or that the nature of where those updates happen might change. I hope it's the latter - I would love to see some actual play reports, for one. But no matter what you decide, I respect your decision and would encourage you along with all artists, in whatever format they are working, to follow their conscience and be true to themselves above all.
Also, happy new year, lol.
ReplyDelete"I have an almost superstitious fear that doing so will render me unable to finish the work, or at least unable to finish it in the way I had envisioned. It's like in speaking about it I trade away some of its power over me, and in so doing, I have less to put into the piece."
DeleteWords from the Book, man. I really truly understand; this tendency runs deep in me as well. It's def kinda pretentious and elitist in my case - I used to have a lot of trouble talking about my pet topics at all. Been trying to work on that these days, and I think I've gotten better, but I still believe there's some small blessing in the obscurity of Cent. African anthropology and history, tbh; there's little "trivialization" because the cost in time and effort to even get acquainted with the subject is unusually high, even by the standards of Africana in general. I'd consider myself decently well-connected in Cent. Africanist circles - least impressive brag in history - and I've only ever met a handful of other dedicated amateurs…all but one of whom were also Africanists (or aspiring Africanists) of a different stripe. The weird fragmentary post-collapse nature of Cent. Africana + the deep rooted perception of the region as a historical backwater means that you have to care if you want to get involved. Not much room for conventional dabbling, honestly. There's relatively little pop hist content and the public-facing content that does exist is either so thin that it won't sate even relatively uncurious folks or quasi-academic itself. I'm sure you see what I mean about the elitism now but y'know. It's hellish in its own way, what with all the freak amateurs who wind up in the art world working for galleries or dealers getting psychotically inflated egos (not even gonna lie man I'm part of the problem, though I would slit my throat before working for Christie's or whatever) while neglecting the fact that we still aren't close to having done the work. Congo researcher extraordinaire Biebuyck went on an insane rant about people like that in a…2010? 2011? paper:
"The demand for African art has increased
prodigiously: there are more collectors than ever and many are wealthy novices guided by fashion, bad taste, and bad advisors; the number of dealers, auctions, and other Web offerings have grown and so have the specimens and choices they present. Many are bad copies or made in the style of traditional objects. In the meanwhile, there is less and less 'globally integrative' expertise and knowledge. Too much of the field has been monopolized by dilettantes and 'interested parties' who abuse or ignore ethnographic and socio-anthropological data, make wild comparisons or analogies. Some dealers, agents, writers of catalogs are arrogant and have no scruples, using secondary sources, hashed materials, without going back to the true compendia of information. Genuine ethnographical, historical, and linguistic knowledge is missing from the entire picture."
DeleteLmao what a tangent. Going back to the point - talking about art. There's an interesting set of Bwami Society philosophical "text-pieces" (speaking of Biebuyck lol) on the nature of art as conversation - many have noted the weirdness around ties between Lega artistic production as a whole and the Bwami institution - Society works of art are not special bits of manufacture; it is rather that manufacture, in the broadest sense of making activities, is special to the society (or us, it's not an uncommon take.) Tools, technologies, dwellings and living spaces, equipment—the stuff we make—organizes us, fixes our habits, and makes us what we are. The Lega (and their relatives that share the Bwami form - the Bembe, the Nyanga, etc) hold that suckling is an early form of conversation and that dancing is one of conversation’s most sophisticated varieties. Conversation is not just talking; it is a dynamic of shared attention and listening. Like suckling, it requires that we lock in, hold on, pay attention, and let go. Partners in conversation don’t merely talk about a shared topic; they get caught up in the flow of exchange. Tempo, attitude, posture, rhythm—all get coordinated even though no one does the coordinating to converse with someone. There's a really cool bit in a Biebuyck paper where a Bwami elder describes multitasking while talking on the phone as not so much a distraction as it is a dislocation, a form of tele-transportation. The phone guy is physically splitting himself between two spaces by being in two conversations (whether the first conversation was with a person or an object or whatever.) Maybe the issue with showing folks stuff your working on, in the reflexive kinda supernatural way that you describe, is that it adds another voice that splits your presence right when you are in the middle of intimate conversation with your work?
I really love this btw -
"I would humbly submit that this is actually one of the beautiful things about being an amateur at anything, is the ability to create without these concerns."
It's coming up a lot (for me at least) recently but there's def something special in the weirdo freak outsider art aspect of games. Maybe it's the OneDnD stuff bringing it out of everybody, tho there's been talk before it like Marcia B's valiant crusade against commercializing trends or some of Sofinho's posts, but it's always been true I guess. Sincerely hoping that you - and your friend! - get what y'all are looking for with the career stuff, ofc. I feel like I understand the writing as work bit, didn't seem nutty at all. How do you think that your recent music post fits into your previous point? I think it's kinda inevitable that the relationship with your writing would be different even in a best case scenario.
And yeah you got to my intentions despite my accidental obscurity lmao. I like the blog! Fully intend to keep it going - I'm actually kinda surprised it's lasted this long. Gave myself maybe a month before I quit on it. I know it's not wise + external validation and all but y'all's interest is def a reason why this wasn't a flash in the pan (yet, I'll see if we can make it a year and then I'll get the non-alcoholic champagne out.) Thanks so much for reading and commenting, fam, it does mean a lot. 2023 is gonna be a great one for freak energy, I can feel it in my bones.
Great question! My relationship with music and with writing are very, very different. I guess what I would say is that music and painting are usually much more somatic to me and writing is much more cerebral, but those things are generalizations and not ALWAYS true. One thing I am very interested in is "flow states" - I'll borrow a definition from an article on Headspace –
Delete“In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time. Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is. It requires a high level of concentration, however, it should be effortless. Flow is used as a coping skill for stress and anxiety when productively pursuing a form of leisure that matches one's skill set.”
It's meditative, right? The feelings that would consume you, or get in the way under normal circumstances (inhibition, hunger, fatigue, aches and pains, distractions) melt away, and all that matters is your dedication to your craft. I think in those moments you get a little closer to the subconscious or even the unconscious; there have been studies that show parts of the brain actually shut down in these moments, which probably accounts for the feeling of full focus, of being fully PRESENT and undistracted.
I think a lot of top athletes have figured out how to enter these flow states more or less at will, whereas for me it’s still almost always a happy accident. There’s a post on Monsters and Manuals about “physical adepts” where I brought this up. This may not be a great example, but one thing I keep thinking about in relation to this is an interview Devin Hester gave (and which I cannot find anymore!) where he talked about how he sees the field when running kickoffs or punts back as a series of “gates” and a kind of “red / blue” dichotomy.
So all this is just to say that when creating music, or painting, it is much easier for me to enter a flow state than when I write, and I think it’s because there’s an element of being IN the body, of DOING, that accompanies those art forms. I find it VERY difficult to enter that state when writing. There have been a few notable exceptions; I wish they happened more often – I’m sure you have heard of writers talking about how it seemed like they were taking dictation when writing a piece – Jim Harrison says he wrote Legends of the Fall in nine days and when it came to revision, he only changed one word before it went to the publisher. There’s an apocryphal story of Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing One Hundred Years of Solitude in eighteen months while living in a hotel and chain smoking cigarettes nonstop all day, after a long period of being “blocked.” If I am lucky I get a couple of paragraphs like this in any given piece, but I keep hoping that I’ll get something in my head that comes through as if I am a conduit rather than a composer!
DeleteThe point you make about art being a conversation is really salient here. It’s easy to see how this extends to dance, or to music – even if the music is (in the case of my recent post) all performed by one person, any piece with multiple parts perforce becomes a conversation between the different instruments. This is even more the case when there are different players and the music is performed spontaneously as in live music – and even MORESO if the music is performed extemporaneously, made up on the spot, as is the case in a lot of jazz or “jam band” material. And if you are performing at that level, then you have to be fully present in that “conversation” as it were.
The elder you mention might very well be right about splitting the attention between conversations as being a form of dislocation rather than distraction – and it may be that we have a sense of how dislocating when interacting with something we are creating could lead to it being “less” than it might otherwise be – like I am giving up the potential for flow when I talk about a piece, that I’ve dislocated and can no longer be fully present in the act of creation – some part of me will be thinking about the dialog I have had with the others about the piece and influenced by their feedback – in other words it allows for a certain self-consciousness to enter the creation process that might not otherwise exist!
In any case it’s very interesting to think about!