a house to dream in

greetings from austin, texas!

I haven't posted in a while, as I've been settling down here, finding a house, several jobs, friends, furniture, the best place to get produce and bulk grains and the best way to get there by bike, putting together a studio and a kitchen and a firepit in the backyard, doing some research into the local craigslist, figuring out how to get the trash taken away and what to do with a stray cat that might have worms/be pregnant that also is terribly cute and sort of lives in your house and oh man oh man. I can't believe its been almost 3 months. I was washing dishes the other day, and I looked out the window onto our little street and I felt how my hips pressed up against the countertop, my weight on one foot, and how it felt different than any other kitchen I had been in because of the way the floor slanted in this particular way as opposed to the other particular slants of places I have lived. And suddenly it all felt real. This is my life. I have a home here.

I've just started reading Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space. I'm moving slowly through it, as I've got my fingers in many pots, but what little I've read has been resonating with me, in my life, and in my work. He writes:

"If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace."

In these moments of reverie that the house allows us we grow and learn, reflect upon ourselves and our place in the universe. I can be standing here against the sink when suddenly I am lost in thought, transported to another time: I am a child at the top of the stairway in my parent's home and I've forgotten why I came upstairs, and in fact I've forgotten just about any other reason for my existence in this place and time. I am a tiny spec in a vast vast universe whose workings I am almost completely ignorant of. I am willing to believe that anything could be true.

"And all the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired, and compromised solitude, remain indelible within us and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this space identified with his solitude is creative."

I think this video is about a search for this solitary space of creativity and reflection, a search for a house to dream in. Its just a piece, part of something I'm working on for this show that Josh is curating. I took some of the footage in Portland, and most of it on my way down the coast from there to San Francisco, from whence I flew out to Austin. I'd like to hear your thoughts and comments on it, and I intend to be posting more bits and versions as the project progresses.



xoxo
cfs