Conduct Your Bloom

I sometimes think my entire vocation consists of trying to help people find themselves and others interesting and beautiful. In this activity, I have more than one mentor, but my favorite is my partner in crime and matrimony, Sarah Masen, who you’re also welcome to refer to as Sarah Dark. If you know her, I suspect you already love her. If you don’t, you would be well-served by an hour or two of research. She’s an artist with many forms. Here are a few: Singer-songwriter, potter, educator, librarian, illustrator, actress, philosopher, oracle, & sage. She emanates apocalyptic. I am one of myriad witnesses to this fact.

I follow her around with pen and paper and write down things she says and sometimes take those words and deploy them myself without always crediting her. Here are some of her sayings:

Keep your ministry to yourself.

Your doubt is your access to your authenticity.

Hurry up and matter.

Mad is a form of sad.

That may be another definition of evil, to insist it's not personal.

I’m just trying to read from the book of what happened.

I think everything's real. I believe in everything. It's the worst. I'm so tired.

We are a beginning.

Some people don't need to be pushed. They just need to be sat with.

Whatever else I may have been, I am at least her scribe. I am also an eager promoter of her righteous work. In the image above, she has in her hand her own handiwork. Here’s a little more of it.

Productivity can’t be proven. It can only be ascribed. The immediate occasion for this post is the fact of Sarah’s art show coming up this weekend. But I also want to say something about the title of this post (“Conduct Your Bloom”) and our life together. “Conduct your bloom,” is Sarah’s variation on a Gwendolyn Brooks line from “The Second Sermon on the Warpland.” She’s made it a saying, a kind of creative ethic, within our household. With her help, I try to live by it too. Here’s the longer passage:

It is lonesome, yes.  For we are the last of the loud.

Nevertheless, live.

Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

Here’s the whole lovely poem. I like to think the “Nevertheless, live,” part is drawn from Ezekiel 16:6 which I also imagine inspired Eraserhead, but who am I to say?

Conduct your bloom.

Sarah has songs which are also theories of culture. One of my favorites was originally titled, “We See Satan Fall Like Lightning.” The appearance of satan within it can seem strange if you don’t think of satan as a way of naming the drive to oppose and accuse (or the spirit of prosecution and fault-finding). The song is now referred to as “Like Lightning,” and I think it’s one of the most helpful audio recordings there is. I need to let it speak for and do its work by itself, but I also want to hold it out as an example of what Sarah does.

Guy Davenport placed before us a saying of Mother Ann Lee’s. It’s this: Every force evolves a form. Watching and listening to Sarah is an instruction in the truth of this saying. What we do with what happens to us is what we will have done with our lives. “Like Lightning” isn’t pottery, but it’s one of the songs that comes to mind when I think of Sarah’s fascination with sources, ingredients, fire, technique, and the discipline required in managing them well and, hopefully, justly. She works at making delight in all she does, all she notices and treasures. Her force evolves forms.

I could go on and on. Sarah’s put out a shingle over here. But if you somehow can’t access it, I’ll say this: July 17, 2021. Sage Refill Market. 10AM-1PM. Saturday Sage! I’ll also say that she can be very easily reached at a later date if you behold these images and want more of her work in your life. If you’re in the Nashville area and you can mosey over, it would be good to see you and recognize our existence together on this particular timeline. Don’t be strangers.