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There’s a copy of Transitions by Julia Cameron in my cabin. This one line from one of the meditations struck me: “I am large enough to care about the small things that loom large to others.” I think about the tiny arrowhead the couple I interviewed yesterday gifted me after I turned the microphone off. Recorded interviews aren’t always awkward but they can impede what to me feels like the real conversation. The power of a good interviewer lies in deep listening and curbing one’s inclination to suggest words or speak over them to get to the next question. I’m so guilty of the latter in my daily conversations—I tend to be in a hurry—to get to the meaning, to get to the part where I agree, to get to the part that I understand. Staying silent for audio while interviewing someone has also been a challenge. I find myself furiously shaking my head “yes!” or mirroring my interviewee to let them know I’m listening, when really, the anxiety of silence emanates from inside myself. Sitting still with silence is a practice and as the painter Mark Rothko said, it’s so necessary.
The Valley has a saying, “You don’t choose the Valley, the Valley chooses you,” and it gives you signs. After our interview, which was in a quiet back room at a enclosed lush hot springs rec center called the Greenhouse, the couple showed me their rocks (lol). The woman and I sat on the ground while she pulled a grinding stone out of her purse and two ziplock baggies bursting with arrowheads they’d found on the ground. To me, they’re living a dream: they told me on their best days they wander their own property “looking at the ground.” I related; earlier that morning, a group of us were on site at Orisons and as we walked through the work, my eyes were glued to the valley floor, looking for treasures. It took all my energy not to stop and pick up pastel pieces of wind-blown desert glass and while recording (and having to stand very still) I focused on a round volcanic rock that I longed to touch. I left it there.
All this to say, we shared a love for looking and finding, which to me is integral to enjoying art in any capacity. Art is hard to break into, especially when its meaning is gate-kept or stored away somewhere where no one in the public can see it, let alone understand it. As I interview more people tied to this project and the Valley, I long to stay large enough to hold the small things that make someone else’s world turn, to be strong enough to hold another’s fragile or sensitive or soft idea of how the world works—to quite literally keep the tiny arrowhead from shattering in my luggage or pocket, itself evidence of a connection made that I won’t soon forget.
Do I think the Valley’s chosen me? We’ll see. ☼
Recommendations:
☼ It’s official, aliens are real y’all! We all owe Tom DeLonge an apology! On this special occasion please enjoy this link to the UFO Archives where a cache of poorly executed drawings of UAPs by government officials sits, waiting for us to enjoy. They’re so bad they’re good!!!
"shared a love for looking and finding, which to me is integral to enjoying art in any capacity."
BEAUTIFULLY PUT.
A friend recently shared that a kind of rest (especially from the restlessness of scrolling and clicking) that she gives herself is to just sit in front of a work of art, looking.