Artist Residency In MotherHood-- When Is Yours?

When I was invited by Stella Fiore, writer-mama and curator of the hit radio show Cut + Paste, to be part of an Artist's Residency in Motherhood (ARIM) this month, I said YES impulsively and before thinking through anything even vaguely like the Logistics.  She was setting up a Facebook group (NOT ANOTHER FACEBOOK GROUP BUT YES) for that very purpose, and we could opt in if we wanted.  Stella and I were colleagues pre-baby eons ago at as instructors at Sponsors in Education Opportunity. Our reconnection was random and fortuitous.

Her CUT + PASTE group differed from Every Other Facebook Group your Random Friend invited you to because of one thing I can hardly find the words for-- people showed up.  Even the lurkers lurked well; but the moms who were posting were a brilliant balance of heartfelt ambitious and real(ist); fired up equally by dreams and delays on dreams. Each mom was participating in whatever way she could in an Artist's Residency--self-hosted, self-directed, self-sustained-- loosely scheduled over the weekend of Feb 2-5. 

Lenka Clayton created this concept and inclusive shelter, Artist Residency in Motherhood, and I must say she is a MacArthur Level Genius. As an artist and newmother, she saw how art and motherhood are too often pitted as incompatible, inside oneself and by the world at large. Clayton decided to say a Fertile Fuckit, and make her art out of the materials of motherhood instead-- quite literally.  Rather than see her two callings and practices as in conflict, she did brilliant recycling, for example: fished things out of her baby's mouth (when her baby was in that EVERYTHING ORAL stage) and used them to collage. Nap-length works, at the pace of a baby's fickle developing nervous system. 

The deal is such: many mothers pull more than their weight around the home, and work damn hard for big and tiny bosses, for rough inner bosses, for the good of their families; and as kids come into our lives, it is harder and harder to justify time for ourselves-YOURSELF- to focus on your art. This is ESPECIALLY so if you are the (considerable) breadwinner (EVEN IF THE BREAD YOU WIN IS KINDA LIKE SHITTY OLD WHITE BREAD, IT IS STILL YOUR BREAD!) and EVEN IF your art is part (or, lucky lady, all) of how you win that bread.

It is something about prioritizing our needs --and to MAKE (ART) is a NEED-- that can rub us-- or is it the patriarchal culture?-- the wrong way. 

Over the weekend, all kinds of moms did all kinds of things in all kinds of ways.  We leaned into villages we didn't even know existed as such, or partners and friends who gave us time and spaces in which to write. Some of us had three hours to dedicate, some could take 36 or more.  But behind whatever concrete time we had was the feeling and solidarity of all the moms-- and it was an international group-- doing Something that was theirs, that was from their making heart, that was about the Something Else we need to do in the world, even if it's intimately entwined in our mothering or parenting.

What did I do? Nothing, I hid out from the fam and read Samantha Irby and Lucy Grealy and ate dinner by myself in a bar where two men fawning over each other were exceptionally, teenagers-out-of-school-on-Friday type loud!  Well, let me revise that: what I did was revise, and pour myself into something I knew would not be interrupted by anyone else's MASLOWISH TYRANNY. 

My first goal was to have no goals-- because what good is a residency if it only leaves you disappointed in yourself? I wanted to revise personal essays, difficult ones, that had been sitting in my drafts too long-- but ones that aren't posted here because-- well, I want to publish them, and sometimes when you want to publish, outlets specify it can't have appeared EVEN ON YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S FRIEND'S UNCLE'S BLOG.  These essays were about personhood and love and uncertainty (always) and my husband's challenging ex and my students who showed me a photo (or tried to) of a huge poop. They were, like life, about everything.

I meant to submit them; I didn't.  But I got my pitches ready, and I got to saturate in the feeling that we were all doing something worthy and supporting each other, hard.

It's actually not hard to support each other. 

My husband didn't clean while I was gone (boo) but he did say, "Everything was just so easy with the toddler!" Proof that 1. I should go away more because it's good for the toddler's grasp of etiquette and 2. Family doesn't cave in if a pillar goes for restoration. 

And, finally: My old friend insomnia came to visit during the night.  She is an orgy gal and rarely hangs with me when I am alone these days (because I never am?) but there she was. So I got to read books in the middle of the night, and do yoga nidra, which I highly suggest for you when INSOM comes to call.