The boys like to work in my studio, but they’re rascals, so we needed to set down some rules.
(Inspired by Corita Kent, Lynda Barry, Tom Sachs, Keri Smith, Seth Godin, etc.)
It’s obviously going to be an evolving list…
This is just to say
I love copying my kids’ drawings and writings into my diary. Copying seems like a mindless activity when you first start out, but by the time you’ve finished your copy, you usually learn something about the thing you’re copying and/or you discover something of your own.
The first grader wrote this poem last night at the pizza joint. (He and his brother have been watching the poetry episode of Classical Baby and reciting WCW’s “This is Just to Say.”)
While I copied the poem, I noticed how he writes his lowercase a’s and how he forms the letters starting from the bottom. I thought about Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems and about how the size of the paper we write on affects what we write. I thought about how quickly kids move towards parody with their own work, and how here I was, again, making a copy of a copy.
When I copied the tablecloth, I noticed that the original pattern could become a skull or some kind of death mask.
When I copied the exploding earth, I wondered what was with the teeth, until I realized they were exploded parts of the poles.
Copying is a way of paying closer attention.
Side note: I find it interesting how whenever I post something “dark” that my kids make, strangers assume that they’re “dark” kids. They’re actually quite cheerful kids… it’s called “imagination,” man!
Take this job and shove it
In his book, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, Malcolm Harris writes about this paradox at the heart of American parenting: On the one hand, we think of childhood as a place that should be free of labor — we’ve decided, collectively, that it’s inhumane for our children to slave in sweatshops or dig in a coal mine — and on the other hand, between the classroom, homework, and the extra-curricular activities picked to make a child the perfect college applicant, American kids work all the time.
[I]t takes a lot of work to prepare yourself to compete for twenty-first-century employment. Adults are happy to remind kids of this, telling them, “Put your nose to the grindstone,” “Stay on the right path,” “Treat school like your job.” When it comes to the right to organize, the dignity of labor, or minimum-wage laws, however, students are forced to be students rather than workers.
Maria Montessori said that play was the work of the child, but it’s obvious, now, that we see school as their job.
I’m inspired by students who walk out on their jobs. Students like Greta Thunberg, who started school striking on Fridays, protesting her government’s inaction on climate change.
Last year she said that “a number of members of parliament have come out to the steps to express support for her position, although every one of them has said that she should really be at school. Her parents think so, too, she said—that she should really go to school.”
And yet:
Here’s a lighter, funnier story from legendary soul singer Jackie Shane about school as unpaid labor:
“I don’t like to be played… At school I was a fast runner. Ooh! Honestly, I’m not bragging, I could run. I just sort of leaped through the air. They asked me to run [in an inter-school competition]. I said, “How much does it pay?” They said, “Well, Jackie, this is your school.” I said, “No, no, no, no! I don’t own this school. If I’m going to perform, I want to be paid.” Everybody said, “Child you’re too much.” No, I found out early that you cannot be too much in this world. You can’t. It’s impossible. If you don’t get your gethers together, people will take advantage of you. I told them “What do you mean my school? I’m not getting a nickel. No, no, no, no honey, you’ve got to give Jackie some money.” All of that nonsense and patting me on the back and giving me a slice of pizza. Give me some money!”
The thief of playtime
Here is an I.W.W. “stickerette” produced in the 1910s, protesting the exploitation of children in textile mills.
I can’t help but think of it when my first grader complains about going to school:
“The day felt like a week!”
“I don’t get to think about what I want to think about!”
“It takes me away from my music!”
His protests aren’t that school is all that bad (he has a great teacher and a sunny classroom) but it’s just too long.
It’s like Chris Rock said in Kill The Messenger: “There ain’t enough time when you got a career. When you got a job, there’s too much time.”
Here’s Jenny Odell (author of How To Do Nothing) on how she tries to slow down time for the students in her classes:
I can’t give my students more time in their lives; but what I try to do is change the way they think about and value it in the first place. My class typically includes students who aren’t art majors, some of whom may never have made art before. I give them the same advice every quarter: Leave yourself twice as much time as you think you need for a project, knowing that half of that may not look like “making” anything at all. There is no Soylent version of thought and reflection — creativity is unpredictable, and it simply takes time.
Emphasis mine. The first grader knows it already, and all too well… and it’ll only get worse!
A one-armed miniature version
“Babies eat books. But they spit out wads of them that can be taped back together; and they are only babies for a couple of years, while writers live for decades; and it is terrible, but not very terrible.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World
Here is a six-year-old photo of Owen and me. A few days ago, at a signing, an expectant mother asked me if I had any advice. “Oh man. I don’t know,” I said. “That first year is rough. Just take it easy on yourself.” Then I thought about all the hours I spent trapped with a sleeping baby under my arm. “Try to find a one-armed miniature version of what you do!”
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