This is my friend’s very pretty laundry, which you would never see because it is behind her beautiful, well-kept, warm, inviting house, in her immaculate and bountifully productive garden where her three children play with each other and entertain friends while she bakes amazing bread in the kitchen and makes sweets and works in the allotment (a bigger garden on public land to the back of their yard) and her husband helps.
I am thinking about public and private because of my own desire and the desire of the people I am closest to–I should say, the women I am closest to–for two things which often appear to be, and perhaps often are, in contradiction: privacy, a home life, intimacy with one’s project/vocation/work; and public recognition, the monetary, social valuing of our work. Being able to practice what we love and what is actually important to us and also being able to feel that our work is recognised. Maybe that is not possible, you know? Maybe it’s antithetical to making the kind of work we are making, which is completely bound up in the private life–not in a solipsistic way, but in a holistic one–the expectation or desire for recognition. But it is there. I witness it in my friends and I feel it.
I’m not talking about jealousy or schaedenfreude. I’m talking about a real desire to make meaningful work , work we decide the meaning, process, and form of, and desire for that work to be seen–often to be seen on our terms, which are not always the terms of the systems that surround it. This desire conflicts, in my life and the lives of my female friends, with a system of value which is aligned to competition, sales, money, and status symbols or status itself. It’s a system to which one-up-(wo)manship is inherent, if often unintentional: the arts and humanities being what they are (not productive of goods that can be sold, patented, etc.), there are only so many grants, jobs, galleries, and famous magazines/publishers. Which means that the number of socially legitimating ‘prizes’ is few relative to the number of us there are who are writing, making, thinking, and living beautiful, committed, just, equitable lives.
The conflict comes, I suppose, when one does want that recognition. I know that’s when I feel it. I want to have my work seen, appreciated, and even, sometimes–occasionally–made much of. But at the same time I value my own privacy and intimacy with my work as manifestations of humility in it. I really do value the sense of making my work as a way of working out my life, rather than as something which can be bought or sold (whatever the purchasing quantity is). That’s a privilege, but it’s also difficult. Take my friend with the beautiful laundry. She also has a PhD in film. She is smart and talented and driven as hell, just like the rest of us. She goes in cycles of applying for (academic) jobs and then despairing about them: it’s the same cycle I see in many of my other talented (mostly female) friends who are torn between doing the work/making the life that is meaningful to them (i.e., not ordained as valuable by some external, job- or salary- or prestige-giving body) and wanting so badly to be recognised in the familiar and socially prescribed ways (money, title, bragging rights…). I see it in myself, too.
My friend’s work in her garden, her kitchen, her family–this is not separate from her work as a thinker. It is part of it. But there is no protocol for submitting the work of a complete life for consideration. Another friend, a writer of incredible poems–I mean incredible, the work I would love to be able to make–is regularly disheartened by manuscript rejections, the pile of which she balances against the income she could make working a full-time ‘real’ job. She wants to support her partner more. She wants to be able to say, yes, I have a book, it’s published by ____. But despite her small paychecks, and despite the undiscerning eyes of editors, she makes art. She lives a brave and beautiful life.
So what system will we make to value this private work? Or what system do we have? What will I make? How will I value it? How will I support it? What am I willing to sacrifice, give up, pass on, in order to make a place where the private work we do, especially as women, can be seen without the seeing being appropriative or violating or commercial?
And what keeps me from doing things that are more public? When I do feel the desire for recognition? When I do want to bring my work to more people? The sense of privacy. The sense that to some extent my life is my life (my work is my work) and is not up for consumption. Also in my case some fear of rejection. Also exhaustion. Also lack of time (my priority being the work). Also ignorance: I don’t know who to ask for help to do the big things I want to do; I don’t even know how to go about proposing them, necessarily. Also solitude: feeling disconnected from a community that shares my ideals and values my work makes it harder to put the work out there. Also the tendency for BIG LOUD THINGS to attract more attention than small, subtle ones, and my own distaste for being BIG and LOUD about my own work, even when (to myself) I might think it deserves some fanfare.
There’s no conclusion here. Just a long thought on the lives I see around me and value and would like to construct value for. My two friends are case studies–I see the private lives of many female friends, acquaintances, colleagues in many of the same or similar patterns. And I am sure that many of my male friends experience this desire as well (but I don’t observe its manifestations the same way, and we don’t talk about it–and most of my male friends are much more socially supported, with jobs/prizes/publications/accolades, than my female friends). If there is anywhere to go from this at all it is to say, publicly, that if I can do anything: read your work. Publish you. Encourage you. Teach you what I know. Listen to you. Support you with time and space to write or work. Feed you. Give you what I have. Pass on information to you. Make connections and help to build a network for us. I will do it. You can ask me. I am in the mood to make my private work somehow part of the public life I have. To value the work of my sisters in a clear voice. Pass it on.
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I think I understand this post and the dilemma. I think I feel it myself too. I write and regularly send words out into the world. Sometimes I regret doing that and feel exposed and even cannibalized by it. But I feel compelled to try to make my words reach beyond the bends in my brain, to reach others, to help connections form, even if those connections are left unsaid.
The challenge for me is that it’s not just about the work. Blogging is a classic example. It’s very difficult to just write a post and send it out into the world in good faith. People want more. I get e-mails every week asking questions about why I live where I do, my religion, my relationships, diet, routines.
I feel like I’m an open writer and a sharing one and I don’t have strict off-limits rules. But there is a prevailing sense that the work you do and the person you are are inseparable and you can’t share one without surrendering the other. I don’t like this. I want my work to be recognized, but I don’t want it that to entail the surrender of identity it seems to.
Like you, I don’t know the answer. I deal with the push-and-pull, the vagaries of my willingness to be open and my need to go completely turtle and the damning feeling that it’s not worth it when I’m utterly misunderstood.
I’m going to reread this post. Thank you.
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it is wonderful the way you can put these/your/my thoughts into words. i also wrangle with feelings of privacy or the lack of it in many aspects of life; creativity, parenting, consuming, thinking, working to name a few. it is heartening to know that you, as someone whose work and thoughts i admire, recognizes and shares this quandry.
best.
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I find I only ever detach from public affirmation when I invest more in the process of doing rather than the race to finish line. I think this is almost in direct conflict with everything we are taught, where the payoff doesn’t come until the paper gets submitted and graded. The challenge is it’s so hard to share the process or to reward without an expectation of output. Public affirmation is based on what’s ostensibly definable, what we can point to in the world. So I think there’ll always be that dualism, between private self-worth and public affirmation, between the life and the product.
I think the second question takes nothing less than a paradigm shift, but I think that paradigm shift is underway. People value each other and their time differently I think. The challenge is it still doesn’t hook up to larger reward systems. Because there’s little/no financial reward it’s difficult to see these endeavors as more than hobbyism, with all its negative connotations. And I think those of us who want to do something substantial strive for more than that and we tend to use self-deprecating language to describe those things we’re unrewarded for.
I’m clearly spinning here. I have no answers. Value in the ethical / eudaimonaic sense barely hooks up at all to value in the monetary sense and I’m not sure the two can be reconciled, in academia or any other field.
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I’ve been thinking about these issues, too. Sadly, my addled (PPD/PTSD/sleep-deprived) mind can not eloquently share those incoherent thoughts. But, as a would-be academic (who didn’t make it past her 1st year in a Master’s program – see above), I can say that I so appreciate where you’re coming from and love where you’re going!
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You have my mind darting off in so many directions. I sit here inside my near monastic life trying to organize my thoughts enough to share them with a stranger. I want to produce good work. I want that work to make a difference, at least in some small way. At the same time I do not think I would enjoy the life strong recognition for my work would offer. I am too private. Along with both you and Jane, I am thinking. Thank you for putting your thoughts into words here. It is comforting to know that I am not the only one asking myself such questions.
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I like this. I also find it amusing that I had quite similar (albeit not as profound) thoughts just a couple of days ago, when I was re-drafting my skills-based CV for a job application. I had just finished tidying my room—which I genuinely love and also believe I am quite good at—and for a minute there I thought that for the past ten years I have been “making home” with very little wherever I have been, I have been hoovering every three-four days until everything is nice and neat and I am sure there is no dust left in the corners, and I have been organising my stuff in piles according to size, colour or shape with a certain pleasure and dedication; and all of this, it seemed to me, deserved a whole line in my CV under the “resourcefulness and attention to detail” header much more than [insert skill I got from random six-month-long job that I accepted because I needed to pay my University fees]. So, that.
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oh you beautiful amazing talented creative generous person you.
YES.
YES.
and did i say YES !sometimes i wish we could just live on our own little island where things like tempting shoes and unnecessary comparisons could evaporate into thin air. where the WORK really does matter the most and that it is self sustaining in some magical way.
i do still feel – oh so wholeheartedly – that the act of putting it out there – the act of sharing and commiserating and attempting to shift the paradigm is indeed how small cracks and fissures grow and become BIG LOUD important movements. and i hope with all hope that my daughter no matter what she chooses to be her work will not face these types of thoughts as she pursues her path.
i wish it was instantaneous and i wish i had magic fingers to snap and make it all better for us – but part of me wonders if this mode of thinking/walking in the world is in fact part of how and why and the way in which we make. and what troubles me the most is that the inequity that is so genuinely there is now so much more subtle than it used to be and thus harder to name and harder to change and harder to even describe.
you know i’m here.
and come september you will be making and saying something VERY LOUDLY and i will gladly and most gratefully do my part to make it happen.
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THANK YOU for a powerful post about some of the most significant issues you are facing right now. You expressed poignantly and clearly what those of us who are career minded struggle with at some time or other as we go through our professional lives: our needs for recognition (“fame”) and/or material success (“fortune”) vs the need to find our own path in a more meaningful, sometimes very private way. As I think I wrote you before Maria Rilke once advised a ‘young poet’ that the answers the young man was seeking would arise out of his own way of patiently asking and pursuing the questions. Give yourself the time you will need to find your own way through this emotionally demanding maze we all are in at various times in life.
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I don’t even know what to say–I’m so awed by what you’ve written here. I’ve pondered the same questions, even going through dark moments of wondering is my work worth doing if, at the end of my life, it’s NEVER recognized or valued. But…I try to tell myself that that isn’t what doing this is all about.
And this: “She wants to support her partner more. She wants to be able to say, yes, I have a book, it’s published by ____. But despite her small paychecks, and despite the undiscerning eyes of editors, she makes art. She lives a brave and beautiful life.” Oh my. There is something in me that needed to read this. -
I’ll be thinking of your post for (at least) the rest of the day.
I don’t struggle with the private/public issue because I have a very small, not often updated blog. Not very sophisticated, but one thought came to mind in the middle of reading your post is this: Simply telling your “best baker I’ve ever known” friend what her baking means to you may be the only affirmation she needs to hear. The best awards are the ones we carry in our hearts, I think. (At least for me, that is.)
Loved your post. And, “I” think your work is rather special. Cheers~
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Thank you so much for this post. It is so heartening, and such a relief in a way, to hear someone articulate some of the issues I’ve been wrestling with in my own mind of late.
I think for many women these questions are especially complex because if your making and your thinking is in some ways about asserting the importance of traditionally devalued activities, i.e., “women’s work,” then how do you know if that political project is succeeding if you remain completely outside conventional systems of value?
Then too, many of these activities blur the boundaries between public and private in interesting ways. Is that piece of embroidery homemaking, or is it art? Just the fact that it can be thought of as both is interesting, but how do you create the space for a conversation about that?
And then I realize that I am incredibly privileged to be born in a time and place where I can even articulate these questions, turn them into intellectual issues.
I think the desire for “recognition” need not be a negative thing. In the sense that it is natural to want to be recognized–to want to be known, seen, encountered as a fellow human being. And to see your work as a conduit for that. (Just as we have recognized other makers through their work–thought: “Oh yes. I have felt that. I know.”) But it is hard to walk that line that keeps that desire for recognition authentic.
Anyway, your story and those of your two friends are very inspiring to me. Thank you.
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THANK YOU for your courage in sharing such intimate thoughts and feelings about yourself and your work. Your doing this stimulates those of us who read your insights into considering these important things for ourselves.
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Thank you so much for writing this post. I’ve re-read it, the comments and there is a lot to think about. The small, private, portable as opposed to loud and open. The idea of the accolades following the more public person, or as I’ve seen, socially aggressive individual, be they male or female. I was struck while transferring laundry from the washer to the dryer – if I didn’t *have* to do this, what would I be doing? Laundry as an aid to reflection. But I don’t have the luxury to work all hours, time that is my own is a commodity. I think it is very hard to do the quiet work, especially in this particular slice of history – the age of reality shows and celebrity bloggers, where recognition/being seen is a means to an end. Thought, intention, meaning, compassion – I use sincerity to sum up my guiding principal. I want to do the work that calls to me, the ideas that catch my attention. Not simply the salable and a la mode. My hope is that even if it is quiet and small, its beauty will be recognized.
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This is really lovely~I found you through “all buttoned up” and I’m sorry I don’t know who is the author/mama over there quite yet. I have been doing the quiet work for a couple of years now, after doing the loud work (though also quiet, as a librarian
for 10 years. I find that I must reassure myself daily that this work is good and show my daughters that as well. For me, the “exposure” of sharing my work, be it bread, sewing, knitting, etc, with the world is my new accolades. And they feel so good! So rich and right when they come~not often, but the risk is inherent in the reward.
Thanks for sharing. This is all good work we do~And I try to remember, we are all vulnerable, we are all in need~ -
You voiced my thoughts, feelings and dilemmas perfectly (thanks to Lisa’s Musings for directing me this way). I’ve so much to express through my work and want every one to see it, and no-one to see it.
My blog became a huge compromise where I was meeting people with similar thoughts and wonderful varied ways of expressing them but I’ve really limited what I was actually willing to show on my blog and haven’t put on what I think of as my ‘real’ work, so I’m not really sharing myself, for so many of the reasons you mentioned.
Even my own friends don’t know the kind of work I make because I just can’t let anything that has any meaning be seen unless I’m really happy with i, which I sometimes am, until the moment I think someone else will look at it.
I worry that people won’t ‘get’ it. And as you also say, the financial aspect can’t always be ignored, even though it’s not why I make anything. So when I do have something that I think could actually help towards the bills I’m reluctant to put it out there where some ruthless ideas scout will rip it off and mass produce it for a big store before I’ve even been able to make more and get exhibited.
But maybe it doesn’t matter, I do it for me, and it’s the process of actually making that is the most important part to me, the rest is extra, so without the courage to share at least I know I’ve made me happy, in the moment.
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