pearl zone

the nacre in us / "Here, sculpture has the task to interrupt, hold, and prepare.”*

i am finding myself exasperated, frustrated, at a loss these days. there is so much terrible shit happening that is beyond my/our control. beneath exasperation is fear, within the fear is confrontation with my own sense of powerlessness, and beneath that there is definitely a deep well of disappointment.¹

these emotional currents in me and the currents that are getting churned up by the intensity of violence and collapse happening are causing a great deal of friction, of irritation. there’s a reason why we ask, what is the rub?

last fall, a group of artists were part of a show called ‘YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT TO FRICTION’ after the line from June Jordan’s poem — ‘Intifada Incantation: Poem # 8 for b.b.L.’ if anyone can make exasperation and irritation gorgeous, it’s June Jordan. the all caps are striking, it is a forceful lament. so many lines from it hover near me, return to me,including this one.

drawn in by its title, i read an interview about the show and was moved by the way the curator, Delaney Keshena, wanted to center friction as essential to relationship, to love, to intentional adaptation. she says “This exhibition’s format proposes that we embrace ongoing negotiation, to locate a commitment in the process of learning how to choose connective shapes.” how do we chose connective shapes? which shapes are connective, which aren’t? ² there’s no shapeshifting (at any scale) without friction.

the second part of the lines they pull from are:

“YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT

TO FRICTION AND THE UNDERTAKING

OF THE PEARL”

pearls, like many beautiful and shiny things, are born from being bothered.³ ⁴ they cover grains of sand, small pieces of stuff, what have you, that invade their shells with nacre.

pearls, then, are a consolidation of the mollusks’ inner resources. they are a manifestation of the mollusk’s response to irritation.

pearls are tiny sculptures born of friction.

i think (and i pray) that humans have nacre too, have adaptive responses to being irritated, to feeling invaded. Intifada Incantation: Poem # 8 for b.b.L. is a pearl if I ever heard one. What other pearls are being formed?

1. Lama Rod Owens teaches me about the perils of unacknowledged, unheld disappointment.

*Delaney Keshena interviewed by Sati Varghese Mac in Shape is A Promise: On YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT TO FRICTION

2. for a while now, i’ve been characterizing my irritation and frustration as spikes (i.e. i’m feeling spikey, shout out blow fishes). and in this interview Keshena says “Thinking about the spikes almost as a family member.” !!!

3. https://animals.howstuffworks.com/marine-life/question630.htm

4. Radiant Somatics has a meme about pearls that I cannot find right now but check them out for outstanding meme curation and even more outstanding somatics/creative coaching.