mask-making notes and documentation (03.18)

• chronic pain day

• cbg mom grass, my “once a month” coffee

• i pulled my ikea soft storage container from my childhood bedroom closet. just holding a journal/ notebook/ diary… i feel the pain and grief emitting from it. or the emotions that are kind of locked in from that time, all of them. i still smell the mildew in one of the notebooks given to me during my time in humboldt. a bunch of random memories are surfacing.

• flipping through random pages. i’m like, ah yes. wise me.

• the idea of making masks (as tactile play) came about during my most recent diy phd podlet gathering. i was talking about the idea of splitting one’s identity, code-switching, wearing a hat, wearing a mask, wearing a literal or metaphorical suit or matrix costume, in any wage labor position, and maintaining that boundary—and i love that my comrade-peer then talked about and reminded me of the power of literal masks used in ceremony in so many cultures. i was inspired in that moment to make paper maché or beaded masks, and immediately started coming up with ideas.

• i brought this up yesterday with a friend whom i was reading for, who was wanting to explore performance. and i love what they said about utilizing a mask to control others’ perception of ourselves, and reiterating the power that it holds. i was inspired on another level; of these concepts that are not new, but still new to me and live through me in that way.

• and just noticing the fractal of how ideas keep living in our own work or from others’ work and the collective conscious.

• anyway. so i’m choosing journals to release, compost, transform into something different. paper maché past life masks.

• photo descriptions forthcoming.