Last week I downloaded my new RSS reader, NewsFire for Mac OS X, and been catching up with all of my blog reading ever since. If you like to read blogs, do yourself a favor and get an RSS reader. You’ll never miss out on another post again. If you don’t have a clue as to what RSS is or what an RSS reader is, check out this post from Stephanie Quilao’s blog Back in Skinny Jeans for the “Oprah Version” of how RSS works. Word of warning, once you start using an RSS reader, you’ll become addicted. I’ve subscribed to at least a dozen new blogs since last weekend.
I was catching up on the Greenjeans blog when I came across a post about the future of craft inspired by an old Esquire magazine. The gist of the post is what if one day, oil runs out, the global economy goes flat and we have to go back to relying on local artisans to provide furniture, clothing, and household goods. Or what if we have to start providing them for ourselves? How do we survive without the convenience of the global economy?
I listen regularly to a variety of NPR programs and one I like to listen to every week is the Thomas Jefferson Hour. For those who never heard of the show, The Thomas Jefferson Hour is a weekly conversation with Thomas Jefferson, or at least a weekly conversation with humanities scholar Clay Jenkinson, who dresses up in a wig and tights and pretends he’s Thomas Jefferson. In the first half of the show, the show host discusses a theme or listener questions with Thomas Jefferson, played by Clay Jenkinson. In the second half of the show, Thomas Jefferson goes away and the host and Clay discuss the first half and the historic context and how it relates to current events. I like the show, not because I’m a particular fan of Thomas Jefferson, but because as well has giving a historic perspective on what Thomas Jefferson did, Clay Jenkinson also paints picture of what life was like back then.
What most people today forget is that back in Thomas Jefferson’s day, everything you needed to live; clothing, food, furniture, and entertainment, you needed to provide yourself. If you felt like a ham sandwich, you needed to grow the wheat for the bread, raise pigs for the ham, grind the wheat into flour, slaughter the pigs and smoke the meat for ham, and turn the flour into bread. Would you like cheese with that? Best go out and feed and milk that cow so you can make the cheese, because that’s how it was done back in TJ’s day. The same went for furniture, clothing, and entertainment. If you wanted music, you needed to learn how to play an instrument and sing. There was no IKEA, no Burger King or McDonald’s, no Gap, you couldn’t pick up the phone and have Domino’s deliver a pizza in 30 minutes or less, and there was no American Idol, Survivor, Project Runway (egads!), or Desperate Housewives (gasp!!) to watch on TV.
Most people back then had some knowledge of carpentry, farming, gardening, and music. If you were a girl growing up back then, you were expected to know how to sew, make soap, candles, and quilts. If you were a rich lady, you were expected to know how to sing, speak several languages, play an instrument, embroider, or even paint. Back then, everyone one was creative…you had to be to survive. One of the things that Thomas Jefferson frequently stressed was that a person can’t be truly independent if they have to rely on another state or another country to provide basic needs. In order to be truly free, you have to rely on yourself, which appears to be a frequent argument surrounding the debate on Middle East oil and the war on terror. People become disconnected from the whole process of creating things to live, and the effort it takes, and how mass manufacturing impacts other things in life. If you get a chip in a ceramic bowl, today’s consumer will throw it away because you can buy a new one or a whole set at Wal-Mart for less than $15.
Don’t get me wrong…I like TV, I like fast food, and I love, love, love my iBook and the Internet. And I don’t think we should go back to everyone living on farms with no electricity and making their own furniture and clothes, and food. But I do think that we need to be more thoughtful about what we buy, how we use it, and how we dispose of it. I also think that the arts and creative skills shouldn’t be such a mystery either. While at craft shows, I frequently get comments on how creative and talented I am. A lot of visitors to my booth also comment on how they couldn’t have the patience to do what I do, or the talent or creativity. While I’d like to think I’m more talented or creative than most, I point out that everyone has talent and creativity at something. And that while talent can make things easier, everyone has the capacity to be creative and the ability to learn creative skills. I’m not trying to demean my work by saying everyone can do it. It took me years and many yards of wire to learn how to weave my Ojos earrings so that they’re so even and straight. If you want to master what you do, you have to put in the time. Art is no different. The only difference between today’s artists and everyone else is that they decided to make their living or at least attempt to make a living by creating art. But there seems to be a growing trend towards people learning crafts, gardening and growing vegetables for food, and buying the work of local independent artisans and craftsmen and food at the local farmer’s market. Slowly, but surely, people are rediscovering what it’s like to be and live more creatively and to.
So what if one day the economy collapses and we have to turn to ourselves to for our basic needs? Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing…as long as we still have Desperate Housewives :).
[tags]crafts, DIY, Thomas Jefferson, creativity, artists, global economy[/tags]
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