liminality and pictures

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Hi, everyone, thanks for tuning in. This

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morning, I'm thinking about an article I read about photography

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from an indigenous perspective, and the language of photography:

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of taking, capturing, shooting, and the gun-like violence

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embedded in that. And I'm thinking about one of my oldest

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friends, who when he talks about creating photography talks about

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making a photograph. I never really thought about that. And I

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don't know if he learned that at art school, or if he learned

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that inside himself. But it would fit his deep gentleness.

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Making a photograph. And in this article, they talked about the

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ways in which indigeneity has had to re-encounter photography

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in this modern context, in this colonized world. And what it

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means to decolonize photography, starting with the definitions of

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decolonization, and the definitions of photography, and

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how we do it, and what we do it with, and what it means to make

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a photograph about a thing. And liminality. And they talked,

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there was this one sentence where they said, that "men and

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women and LGBTQIA plus people" as though that was a whole

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separate category And I felt this click in myself, and

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thought, yes, yes, that to me, queerness is a word to describe

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personal liminality. But it's also more than that it's a...

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it's a... it's its own place. I talk about being genderqueer.

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But even using the word gender attached to queer makes it feel

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like I have to somehow genderize my queerness; like there's a a

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way that I have to describe myself as tugged between two

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bodies, when in fact there is no "between two" to be tugged. I am

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all of those things that people think are masculine and

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feminine. And I am not many of the things that people think are

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masculine and/or feminine. And... and. And. It is the most

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embedded part of my identity in the way that I know men who say

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that they are "so men," and women who believe that their

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whole me-ness is wrapped around womanhood. And I never

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understood that. But I do understand my whole self being

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queer. And I'm thinking about the way that queerness and the

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concept of queering things which came into common usage, just

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about the time I was coming through college. I was

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privileged to be able to be at a college that offered some of the

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first formalized Queer Studies classes. And I was privileged to

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be able to take them, and to start to reconceive my entire

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academic and intellectual journey with this centeredness

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of queerness. And now, of course, I sit and try and queer

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everything around me because otherwise it doesn't fit me, it

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doesn't suit me, or it doesn't interact with me, like it's

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okay, that some things around me aren't queer. And some things

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are truly neutral. They don't, they don't need queerness

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embedded in them in order for them to be for me. But so many

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things need that element of me in them somehow; need to know

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how to talk to being not just outside the lines, but outside

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of everything normative and expected and simultaneously,

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deeply normative and expected. Like this is a thing that has a

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place in our culture, and I belong here. And when I take

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this idea, this thought, this practice of queerness into work,

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I can't help but remember my internship supervisor, Brian

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Kopke. I hope he's resting and painting and walking and playing

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his flute well, by which I mean deeply and without any regard

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for what other people think of it.

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I think of my internship supervisor, and how he

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introduced me to the idea of doing our supervisory meetings

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at this sandpit that had been converted to a dog park on the

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edge of town. And so we would take his baby Golden Retriever

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puppy and get in his car and start talking as we drove to the

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sandpit. And then we would walk and walk through the trees and

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up and down and through the gorse. And talk and talk and

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talk and laugh at the dog as she got muddy, and got curious and

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scrambled in and under and over and around things. And we would

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walk and talk. And then when we were done, we would walk back to

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the car and towel off the dog and get back in the car and

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drive back to the beautiful church building, and go back to

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the rest of our work. But what I learned from that, more than

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that I like walking in the woods with a dog, and that that's a

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thoughts and ideas and feelings

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and practices that maybe aren't moving in the stillness of the

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office, it's also a great way to get actual privacy. And it's

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also a great way as it turns out, for someone with ADHD, to

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get a lot more focus on what his intern is saying. He made no

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secret of it. What I learned from that is that sometimes the

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work is better done interleaved with other things in the world.

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Sometimes two things do go together, even if they don't

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look like they do. Sometimes, you don't know what wisdom is

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waiting for you in the middle. Which, you know, actually, I

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knew I had known for a long time. This was not unfamiliar. I

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did an interdisciplinary undergraduate degree. I was

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constantly connecting and reconnecting one subject matter

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area to another until finally I just made it official. And the

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reason that this is up for me now is that I think it is time

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for us to think about what we need to interleave what we need

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to mix what we need to weave together what we need to

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uncompartmentalize. As leaders, it is very tempting to expect

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and hope that people will compartmentalize themselves and

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their lives, that they will leave their feelings out of the

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workplace, that they will leave their work at work and go home

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to things that are not related to their work. But if you have

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ever stayed up late tossing and turning about the passion of

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your life, which is also your livelihood, you know that that

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is not a thing. And so we just try to pretend that it's a thing

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for some reason that I can't figure out. And instead, what if

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we recognize the deep integration of everything with

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everything, which is how life works. When people get pregnant,

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humans, our bodies swell, and change and rewire to favor the

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fetus over the health of the gestating parent. And what does

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that mean concretely? It means that if your fetus wants to, it

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has the power to kill you. And that is one of the reasons why

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we only carry our fetuses for nine months. Because it would be

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a lot more logical developmentally, if we carried

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them for twelve. But if we carried them for twelve, they

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would take so many of the resources from the parent that

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the parent would die before the fetus was born. And so our

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compromise is kind of like a kangaroo. We carry them around

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on the outside for the next three months. We are wired

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deeply with our environments, into our environment. And it is

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true that we extract resources from our environments, but we

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have to do it in a way that doesn't kill them or us. And we

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are wired deeply into our businesses. When we found

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something, we are integral to it and it is integral to us at the

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beginning. And yes, our goal is to create something independent

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that can run around the world without us. That will

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potentially carry on after we're gone. And in order to create

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something that is truly sustainable, we have to remember

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our deep interconnection with it and it's deep interconnection

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with us and that is on the macro and the micro level. So in

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addition to that deep interconnection out there, the

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big one, the what is the purpose of your business? And is it

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destroying the world? Or is it nourishing it? question. There

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is also the small question, the set of small questions, the

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question of how do we make our lives and our being and the way

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that we are in our business, be sustainable, be deeply

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integrated? How do we change from sitting in an office where

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we could be overheard, and we can't really sit still. And we

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can't really have our feelings, to going to the sandpit where we

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can walk, and talk and shout and cry, and throw the stick for the

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dog. Sometimes that is literally the solution. Sometimes you need

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to take meetings off site. Sometimes you literally need to

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take meetings in an unexpected environment. Sometimes you need

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to do things for one another, that don't fall strictly inside

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the bounds of what we think of as appropriate for business.

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Sometimes we bring someone lunch or dinner. It's not your job,

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but we are all each other's business. Sometimes you can't do

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that. Sometimes you don't know what their needs are. Sometimes

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it's just going to make it worse. Which means you have to

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know each other well enough not to do that. And to leave the

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space where the spaces belong. And sometimes, sometimes it

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means giving someone agency and independence. Sometimes it means

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explaining your reasoning so that you can give them agency

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and independence. Sometimes it means admitting that there's a

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little bit of a black box to the way you're running things. And

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that's on purpose. And explaining what you're doing and

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giving people the freedom to come or go as they need to.

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Sometimes a lot of things. And sometimes it means asking

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yourself what should be shared? What should be sacred and quiet?

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When it is appropriate to capture something? And when you

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are simply going to make a photograph.