GOOD BONFIRE: Writing on creativity and contemplative practice by artist Hannah Burr

how i create community by knitting with ballpoint pens

10/18/2017

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Sometimes I will be full of shit. And that's why you're here. I can't know myself without you, and similarly, without the ones in your life, you are the tree that falls in the forest - Did you make a sound, or was that just the sound that doritos make in your own head as you eat them?
You will never know unless there's someone else there with you.
In other words: Community.
Leaving Boston last year made me pull up the carpet tacks on so many lovely groups of people that week in and week out, I'd see and see again. It didn't dawn on me til I was all the way over in Michigan that I can't have those people in my life, you, like I did, by just braving Boston traffic for 45 minutes in both directions, anymore. Those communities are going on in other forms, as I show up to forge new ones.
My first attempt at community in Michigan was to go to a knitting group on a Monday night at the local cafe/brewery in Ypslianti. All of my needles were in storage, and I only had two small cards of thin repair wool on hand. I wanted to make a cozy for my reusable coffee cup, but more importantly, I just needed to get the F out of the house. I shrugged, and decided two ballpoint pens with scotch tape on the tips would surely work fine for needles, if only I could remember how to cast on.
I arrived, sat down, and thought, yes, I can do this! I know how to knit, I'm just a hen among hens here. And then I pulled out my ballpoint pens from Eastern Bank, with tape on the ends, my repair wool, and set about in a group of complete strangers, trying to remember how to cast on. It was at that moment that I realized: Dorothy Honey? you're not in Kansas, Massachusetts any more. You are as good as completely insane to these women. I do have a tea cozy to show for that brave effort, as well as the tender experience of accepting help, the loan of some actual needles, and even a couple of phone numbers. A young lass with a hip uneven haircut even complimented me on the cup cozy a week later.
Community for us humans is essential, like vitamin B or the sun. We're like grass blades. We don't do very well on our own, regardless of how independent we might think we are.
I want to create community with you, for you, that uses the incredible free and easy technology of the airwaves to be all over the world, in each other's livingrooms, and also still in our pajamas, together. I'm figuring out the details now, but I want to invite you to join me in your livingroom, in recorded form, all to yourself, or live with a group of gorgeous grass blades like you and me, with their own magnificence to spark yours and vice versa. Please check keep your eyes out for a new Creative Pioneering Institute with Hannah Burr coming soon! and encounter opportunities to bond with, support and learn from other genius grass blades figuring out this earth plane and how to cast on, eat doritos, and thrive in embodied expression and creation together.
 

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    Hannah Burr is a contemporary artist and author. Originally from Boston, she lives in Ann Arbor MI.

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