>Not politicization in the sense of class struggle over the conditions of
>work but in the sense of work itself becoming more a matter of virtuosic
>performance than of "production".
do you think Tully really only support herself on $5k. she hailing working only part-time. But, by my estimation, she'd actually require over 40 hrs of labor time to support her current lifestyle -- if you accounted for the paid for house, the tax write off for house and the EIC, as well as any child support payments she recieves from the ex (though, hard to say, there's always the deadbeat dad possibility, but if the house was paid for, invariably the house is turned over to custodial parent as alimony/cs.
it's that kind of thinking -- the failure to recognize all the labor time required to support the lifestyle -- that I find odd. not hard to understand, but it's one of the side-effects, methinks, of this approach to political change. i don't just not flush my toilet or reuse coffee filters or never buy garbage bags to save money, i do it because i want to avoid waste and I think about it just as you do. my objection is that plenty of people do those things because they've always done them, not because they woke up one morning and realized they were caught in the rat race.
i was thinking of the performance thing when i wrote this a few weeks ago.
>"craftsmanship" is only dubiously a word,
huh. So, you think we should totally ditch any reference to craftsmanship? To me, it evokes work that is lovingly attended to -- like when I refurbish/refinish furniture. I love it: carefully removing layers of paint, selecting the right solvents, choosing the best methods for preserving patina. When I get after something that has to be completely reworked to get at the wood underneath, a joy! Sanding the wood so that it'll take the stain or oil. Oooo the feel of wood that's been freshly sanded! Then rubbing stain and oils 'til it starts to look the way you envisioned -- or, sometimes, not at all that way but does what it must because of the kind of wood it is, its age, and takes on a different character. Something you hadn't considered, often because the piece has flaws that you can do nothing else with other than let them shine.
Like this 'friday table' piece I've had for years. Found it on the side of the road. It should have had a backsplash, but it was missing, as was the drawer. Couldn't really restore it, so I finally refinished it. It'd been stained a very dark brown--nearly black, the varnish chipped and worn with age. One spot was worn in the shape of a forearm. That's where someone's arm rested as they wrote, ready to dip a pen in the inkwell. As I removed the stain and varnish, I found the big ink stain where someone had repeatedly spilled ink. So blue. Indigo blue on wood that was so light I thought it must be ash. But, as the heavily burled wood emerged, it became obvious it was walnut. Big, ugly burls. Ugly because, unlike prized burl wood, this was a 'Friday table' and it was what the carpenter chucked out as unusable earlier in the week.
The layers of stain and varnish covered up the fact that the Friday table had been put together using odds and ends around a furnituremaker's shop. The story goes that, on Friday, cabinet and furnitureamakers would use up the leftovers, crafting pieces that were not meant to reveal the wood, but to be covered with paint or dark stains. The paint and stain masked the fact that they were crafted from all different kinds of wood or, in this case, the same wood but five angular pieces that had to be glued together to form a rectangle.
I'd thought about enhancing the imperfection, using an ebony stain and a white pickling stain alternately, staining each angular shape to show how a craftsman had put it together. But the wood was so imperfect, so full of clashing burls where two pieces had been put together, the legs cut so the grain runs side to side ( rather than top to bottom) I just had to let the table's imperfections show through.
No ebony.
No pickled white.
Tung oil.
Out came the tung oil. The hard, sanded wood thirstily soaked up the oil, drinking it in and giving itself life. As it did, the table became curiously beautiful as it proudly boasted its imperfections. The ugly grains on the leg looked uglier than they'd been. So ugly they are beautiful once polished with the tung oil.
That's craft. It's skill. It's knowledge. It's lovingly rubbing sandpaper on wood. It's, in frustrated moments, fighting with the wood, the glue, the stain and feeling as if you're not quite good enough to accomplish the vision you have in your head. Struggling anyway because you have an idea of what you want it to be. MOdifying that vision as you realize your vision clashes with the thing you're working on and cultivating a new goal, or letting it tell you what it wants to be.
It's knowing when to glue and what kind to use and how to apply it. It's knowing how much to sand or what to do when you screw up. It's knowing how to let the flaws shine and become beautiful.
If the world doesn't want that kind of joy for people, fuck'm.
Kelley