I Want to Build my Local Fiber Infrastructure
Notes on Longing to Belong
Ok, I have a treat for you, everyone! It’s another free community essay! I should be paywalling stuff, but this is an important essay. 1000 thank you’s to my paid subscribers who tolerate me opening up some essays to the community for free because of the message. So kick up your heels this beautiful, quiet Sunday morning and delve into some thoughts on building up my local fiber infrastructure. There will be more details about the time and place, but Lily (my wife who runs Eli & Barry) and I are gonna do a fiber art meet up for all those weirdo weavers, knitters, and hand stitchers in central Denver. If you are in Denver, we would love to have you. Shoot us a message if you are interested.
As I slow down from my frenzied period of riding bikes way too aggressively that resulted in a bike crash after fainting while riding, I am rooting back into this longing to be among my friends and other fiber artists, rooting back into my desire to belong. Sure, I can connect with my friends on the internet, but I am circling back to older pieces I have written on belonging. This returning to smaller, slower forms of belonging seems a natural thing to do in a period of crisis.
Yes, I said it, I am in a period of crisis as as get sent through miracle machine after miracle machine at $250 a pop to check off all the possible worst explanations for why I fainted on the bike. First, the doctor sent me off to get an MRIs to see if I have a tumor or brain bleed, which came back negative. I was then sent to get a CT Scan to check spots on the MRIs, which came back negative. I did a heart ultrasounds that showed nothing but a boring heart. They put me on a heart monitor for two weeks. The results were painfully boring, according to one nurse practitioner. My heart stress test came back largely normal, but the doctor’s will likely order more tests to rule out one question about coronary artery disease that was raised by my results. The doctor’s who interpret the results of the miracle machines rarely leave you with a sense of finality. No, befitting the rabid capitalist system that we are all embedded in, the miracle machines ask their own questions that can only be answered with more trips to different miracle machines for an additional $250 cost. Since the doctor’s have serious risks related to liabilities, no one is reassuring you that you won’t die. Instead, they stretch a limitless, black void of testing out in front of you.
It’s wild that I didn’t notice that limitless black void sooner, but I am out of practice. It has been too long since I was on that death work roller coaster with my mom while she was battling cancer. I had lost my edge in being able to “bump Isis in a crisis”
I spoke about it a little bit the past couple weeks, just gushing out the feelingscape of being in the medical establishments kafka-esque maze of testing and data. I talked to my therapist about it and she encouraged me to do more feeling.
However, the only thing that really seems to befit a sociologist weirdo like me is to just take stock of what information that I have and operate in the present moment based on that information. Sure, I can body scan myself into infinity about all the fear I have related to the worst case outcomes that I have something wrong with my heart or brain. I did that, and one would think because of my penchant for suffering that I would enjoy that practice. However, I realized that all those feelings are real and valid, but I actually haven’t gotten any information that warrants me to stay in that place. It’s all a castle made of sand that I actually can let slip into the sea. So I am gonna move on from that practice until I get some evidence to suggest that I should be super scared.
Residing in a moment of quiet with my current crisis, I am left with the more pedestrian pursuit I mentioned above: a human’s quest for belonging when a storm blows at their door. Almost a year ago , I wrote the essay “Where Do I Belong?” where I argued against the fictive sense of belonging that masculinity affords and lamented how my own fluid masculinity routinely gets my “man card” revoked in our era of rampant toxic masculinity. In that essay, I argued for more everyday senses of belonging, like belonging at the corner grocery, farmer’s market, or local craft co-op that one frequents, that are afforded when one is woven into the place they live. I concluded:
“Let these forms of belonging crowd out any fictive sense of belonging one gains from social norms or proscribed identity. Let us all throw in our lot and build our communities so we all have a place to belong, with harm to none.”
I feel like what I was laying down in that article makes a lot of sense and I need to revisit its’ advice as an antidote to my own hyper-individualized attempt to ride bikes alone. Ugh, that cliche of white men doing things alone to be a part of a fictive community is so played out. Instead, I want to root back into these gentle, collective ways of being with those around me that doesn’t require super human feats of activity or a specialized skill that places you above others. Yeah, I just want to belong with people who enjoy the same things as me, no matter how much they do it or how skilled they are. I don’t need any more weird barriers to entry that our societies’ groups like to put up. Let’s jettison the fake hierarchies for genuine solidarity for people who share a craft or interest.
I am not great at building that sort of non-hierarchal solidarity, but I am down to try. What do I have to lose? Honestly, not much, because my last two attempts to find kinship with people based on exhibiting skill on the tennis court or supreme endurance riding bikes left me with repetitive use injuries in my legs and a faint on my bike that ended in a crash and an ER stay. I am just so tired of playing out the drama where I have to prove I am worthy of someone’s soldarity, friendship, and kinship. That’s an old story line from my relationship with my dad, where I played tennis to get him to talk to me and act like he was excited to be around me. I can just let that go and venture boldly into a new world where maybe I can find friends who will just like me for me (Queue the Blessed Union of Souls song “Hey Leonardo (She Likes me for Me)” to play the minute I finish that sentence.)
Putting myself out there, I do have a lot to gain. First, I could find friends that help me feel less alone with the spooky, lonely feeling of living while five active genocides are being perpetrated around the globe and climate change events ravage our ecosystems. Our capitalist system would love me to stay atomized and alone and buy my way to satisfaction instead of finding belonging with those around me. However, I could just recognize that structural crutch as a pattern and go a different direction. Yea, that’s what I will do. Specifically, I want to go in the direction where I feel like I belong to a group of fiber artists that live close to me again after losing touch with the Rocky Mountain Weaver’s Guild due to the incompatibility of their meeting times on Saturday mornings with the routines of being a father.
I also already know what this belonging feels like and I have described it as magic before. I talked about the magic of being in “long procession of weavers worldwide” in one of my earliest published weaving essays, “The Magic of Weaving,” which appeared in issue one of the now shuttered Roving Magazine. In that article released in March 2018, I described my experiences attending the Weaving Kind Makerie Retreat and my first Rocky Mountain Weaver’s Guild meeting. My conclusion from my crash course in fiber community was that I was so excited about the abundance of knowledge, wool, and dyestuffs around me in Denver and was excited to embed myself into that community to see who I could become in connection with those other weavers around me. That hasn’t changed. I still am awestruck at how perfectly situated I am to do my craft in the place that I live with materials from sourced from my state. This seems like a worthy magic to try and rekindle.
There are barriers that exist now that didn’t exist then. We lost our beloved Fancy Tiger Co-op from its easily-accessible perch on Broadway in Denver. They moved their store front south to Englewood in search of cheaper rents in an increasingly unaffordable Denver. I can’t just pop into Fancy Tiger on a bike ride anymore like I used to and chew the fat with folks that were working. I also have less flexibility on the weekend to attend weavers guild meetings. I spend every Saturday morning with Juniper and don’t have the ability or means to drive down 35 minutes one way anymore to attend guild meetings. So, I am left with a conundrum. How do I create community with crafters near me as a parent?
Inevitably, this is a question about fiber infrastructure. No, not fiber optic infrastructure, you silly goose. With fiber infrastructure, I am talking about the third places, outside our homes and workplaces, where people can gather to craft or talk about crafts. With Fancy Tiger gone, I have to think about what other close local yarn shops could be open to hosting a potential meet up. In central Denver, Flax and Twine and Yarn Shoppe could both be local yarn store options that may be open to a fiber art meet up. Lily also noted that we could ask a coffee shop to host us if they would be willing. Coffee Shops are perfect third places that host all sorts of community gatherings. Finally, we could also consider doing it in local parks, weather permitting. It is really part of the fun to think about how you can make make any place into your fiber infrastructure, as long as people are open to meet there.
Honestly, the real infrastructure that one needs to tap into when creating a community isn’t the place; it’s the people. People power is what runs community. Places to gather come and go, but the people who make up community keep it alive. I found this to be the case in the electronic music community in Columbus, OH when I was documenting the history and culture of that form of music in my community via my blog Local Autonomy. The clubs folx could spin at came and went, but the artists, dancers, and listeners of the music never left. In an essay from 2014 entitled, “The Infrastructure of Columbus Dance Music: Why The Scene Lives On Beyond The Hype,” I argued that its people’s devotion to each other that kept that scene alive through all the coming and going of various venues across the city and the popularity of various types of electronic music.
I think we can create that sort of fiber infrastructure here in Denver. I think the upsides are worth the administrative squeeze of making a flyer and doing some outreach to ask people to come. It’s also just fun to think about what could come from building fiber infrastructure. I love to daydream of what sort of real utopia we could build out of our collective association with one another. Could we do an annual fiber art show where we hang up one piece that we are really proud of, have an opening where we invite all our families and friends, and celebrate our ability to create art? Could we do skill trades where we expand our abilities and skills by teaching each other to spin, dye, and weave new stitches? Could we gather money together to give one person a scholarship each year to go to some fiber art-related class or retreat? Could we enjoy each other’s company and create a group of people who are all invested in building community around the collective joy we get out of making and being together?
It gets me sort of giddy to think about what is possible by putting myself out there in my community and try to gather people together. That feels like a useful use of my time, not riding my bike 120 miles just to try and prove that I belong because I can ride bikes a certain distance. Maybe I am crazy though and no one will come. That would be all good in my book too. I just have to try. Even if I inspire one of you all to try in your community, that would be enough of a win for me. So who’s with me?
Thanks for being here, dear reader. I hope you have a great week.
Best,
James
Christ on a cracker, fainting and crashing on your bike sounds awful! I was a bike courier for long time and I can imagine how scary that must have been. Sending you speedy healing!
This made me cry. The loneliness is killing us all. Sending ❤️ from Chicago