Field Notes: Spin/Measure/Cut
The Mythology of Sewing
These are Field Notes: real-time reflections prompted by The Artist’s Almanac as I make throughout the season.
These are my notes in the margins, where I scribble out my own words, reaching for what lies beneath.
Read the current edition of The Artist’s Almanac here.
The theme I chose for the Winter Artist’s Almanac is Intimate Immensity; a concept borrowed from The Poetics of Space, describing the experience of grandeur in mundane moments, like watching dust particles float in the light of a window.
I see the technological capture of public attention a serious problem with serious consequences. I chose this theme for the winter almanac, as I see it as the role of artists to illuminate the immensity that can be found in any life.
Through creating space to recognize the immensity of our most intimate moments, we recognize the immensity of all people. This recognition is named in the dictionary as the word sonder, which is defined as the awareness that every passerby has an inner life as rich, deep, and complex as your own.
I experience intimate immensity when I sit down to sew by hand. The repetitive motions slow down my thoughts to match the natural pace of my body. As I sew my seams, I come into contact with my own inner immensity and ancestral lineage.
I experience sonder when I look at the seams of my clothes and imagine the people in the factory who sewed them together. I reflect that this task that is so pleasant and soothing for myself is grueling and imposed on the other.
What could be more intimately immense than the humble sewing needle?
Its design has changed very little since it was first invented in prehistoric times. Once made from bone, ivory, wood, or antler laboriously filed to a point, it is now mass produced in steel, available for sale anywhere.
Most people think very little of the needle today, but as a textile artist I am keenly aware of them, so that I don’t leave one in the couch to sit on. For our ancestors, the sewing needle meant life or death.
As I sew, I can see why textile production is a prevalent theme in the ancient myths. Even though my tools were manufactured industrially, I fall into the same trance making repetitive motions; unraveling my spool of thread, measuring it against my arm, cutting, and threading the needle.
The ancient Greeks personified fate as 3 sisters spinning, measuring, and cutting a length of thread that represented a human life.
If this is true, I think that the goddesses must have put each thread to good use. Every life must be a thread cut to sew some kind of seam together. Both thread and fabric were scare in that time.
But, as our contexts have greatly changed since The Three Fates were imagined, the mythology does not quite work alongside the reality of globally connected supply chains and sweat shops. With barges delivering fast fashion to every port, we do not experience the scarcity of cloth that imagined this kind of myth.
Even still, I think that it means something to submit to the process and put a needle in your hand.
What kind of myth would help us understand the world today, where there is far too much cloth?
Let’s Try Rumpelstiltskin
Sometimes the task we are given is an impossible one.
In Rumpelstiltskin, a miller offers his daughter to the king. He tells the king she has the talent of spinning straw into gold to seal the deal.
And so the king demanded she spin a room full of straw into gold, or else she would be put to death. And the next 3 days, with increasingly larger quantities of straw to prove her worth.
A small and impish man appears to her while she is in great distress, and offers his magical assistance for a fee. She barters everything of value on her person until she offered all she has left—her first born child. The only way to earn her liberty is to learn his name.
On the day he comes to take her child from her, she hears him gloating about his name in song in the forest. We know the names of the impish men selling us oppressive technologies to perform our impossible tasks, and yet this still does not bring freedom.
It seems that to name something is no longer enough. Submerged in a false perception of reality, it is easy to loose sight of the significance of the humble sewing needle.
There are now 52 seasons in fashion—one for every week of the year! While this seems dubious for many reasons, there is at least plenty to add to our stash.
I don’t know what story will work, but I think it has something to do with someone picking up a needle.
…love/hate/endure that idea that we can name those who have invisible powers on us yet still that won’t release the power…curious also about the power of these names, and mildly amused at the thought that some fast fashion company will inevitably be named rmpl or stltskn…personal asidei loved the three fates, have never heard of clotho, and somewhere deeply in me wants to make more myths and explanations for all the unexplainable magic that existence allows…
I really enjoyed reading this. I sometimes forget who I was before the weight of “earning a living” and responsibility crushed me into submission. I used to sew. For fun and briefly for a job. I own two industrial sewing machines and countless books on tailoring and needle craft. Yet a pile of repairs looms up over my head in a rubbermaid tub on the deck of my straight stitch in my studio. Last time I went through the pile I found pants in need of patching that my son had long since outgrown. I’ve let technology and capitalism cloud my view and steal so many years of my life. But damn, it is hard to throw off that yoke. I’ve purchased a blackberry in hopes that its comparatively clunky interface will dissuade me from reaching for it to distract and pacify me when a quiet moment arrives. Unfortunately my service provider doesn’t support blackberries so I need to switch providers. Nothing about taking back your life or taking off the yoke is simple. They design it that way. But I’m reaching the big “F” point. The point where I’m getting frustrated enough to say fu@k it all and just have a flip phone. Nothing like a t9 keyboard to make a phone back into a tool for me instead of a tool for them.
The things I will miss if I do that… easy group chats with distant friends and family. Easy communication with clients and colleagues. Genuinely interesting and thought provoking writing like yours….
But what I would gain! Time, so much precious time. And freedom. And clarity and space for my brain to unfurl and remember who I was before all the pressure and all the little hooks got ahold of my attention, my focus, my self, and then pulled me in every direction. Pulled me down and kept me tethered to a system I didn’t consciously choose. A system designed to steal attention and time. The truly valuable things we all have.
I just want to be free again.