Come Buy Some Commodified (commoditied?) Navajo Sand Paintings
I've been paying attention to Cap'n Pete's musings on his art not for sale (along with a Gauche's and Adam's discussion on music, and Jared Sinclair's thoughts on the self), and I was reminded of an article I read a while back in the Fall 2003 issue of Parabola. Entitled "Painting With Sand," it described the Navajo tradition of sand painting--a painstaking process meant to restore balance or order to the community when this order has been disrupted, say by an encounter with a ghost or contact with belongings of the dead--some sort of "brush with evil." Though the process itself is intriguing, the most interesting aspect of these paintings is that they are erased at the end of the ceremony--usually at the end of the day.

As I did a quick search for Navajo Sand Paintings, the majority of sites were selling some sort of permanent painting of sand glued to plywood. Quoting the article's author, Sara Jane Sloane, " . . . gluing sand to a board is a far cry from the dispersion ceremonies that are supposed to end sacred Dine (Navajo) drypainting rituals: the wind blowing the sand back to its original entropy, the grains settling into a desert punctuated only by rabbit brush and pinon trees. In their dispersion they represent the fundamental groundlessness of life."

From my own experience, and from what I read of others, there is a sort of guilt about positing oneself creatively, whether through writing, music, art, etc. For some, perhaps this guilt stems from doubting if one's creation is "good enough." For others, the guilt may be from striving to create something that is appreciated by an audience rather than creating art in and of itself. Yet again, perhaps one feels guilt for having the gaul to even posit oneself.

Many musicians describe the muse--the finicky fickle spirit that bestows brief creative genius and beauty. These are the songs I always like the best. When the self is only posited by something outside the self (there is something outside the blog . . . or perhaps not). It's easier to put up with something that I didn't have much of a role in creating.

I've always thought that playing live, even or especially around a beer-can strewn camp fire, is much more enjoyable than jotting voice and guitar down on a piece of plastic. The self is posited not that much and all at once. The moment lives for less than a day. The ephemeral holds the eternal (from the Greek ephemeron, mayfly). A glimpse of the train of the robe. A shrub that burns but is not consumed. I guess that's why people keep asking when my CD is going to be done and my answer for the last year has been, "I'm still working on it." Maybe I'll record myself in some live situations. Can you lessen the commodification of the commoditied compact disc?

I don't know.

Damn.