Make It Home
I am apologizing again. I have not been as dedicated to sharing this thesis process as I had hoped to be. I tend to work in spurts and the dry spells are times of anguish and contemplation. I assure you it's lots of fun. I'm on a spurt right now, lots of new work. I appreciate everyone looking in on me!
This is my new thesis, simplified and narrowed in focus. I do feel that every turn is getting me closer to something true. I appreciate all of your feedback.
Make It Home:
Make It Home is a continuing effort to understand and appreciate the process of homemaking and the relatively new phenomena of homes. The title "Make It Home" speaks to the idea of arriving home as well as making a home. In my work I investigate the material and emotional elements of making a place to live that is full of comfort, meaning, and nourishment.
In my teens I started having bouts of sad longing that sometimes escallated into full-scale panic attacks. These episodes were always accompanied by the intense desire to go home. Sometimes I would be in the house where my family lived and all I could think was “I wish I could go home”. Occasionaly I am able to make an apartment or room in a house feel something like a home, but as soon as I think I’ve finally made the right place, I’ll find myself laying in bed at two in the morning, wishing I could just go home.
I am fascinated by and obsessed with process of homemaking. I am mystified by that murky intersection where the practical and the emotional combine to make a place that is really home. There are the material elements of homemaking: wallpaper, paint, curtains, pillows, sheets, furniture, pictures, kitchenware, books, and knick knacks. Then there is the mysterious emotional spark that creates a sense of belonging and acceptance that just wraps around you and truly sets you at ease. I doubt that I could ever quantify the combination of the material elements of comfort with the emotional phenomenon of love and acceptance, but I am making peace with that possibility.
posted by Jamie Murphey at
8:56 AM
3 Comments:
i know what you mean. i talked a little bit about it here.
I think there is something within folks, especially our age, who have not found that "new home" that i guess is supposed to come with the start of a family (?i guess?), that makes us occasionally want to go back to the last known "home" - sort of like getting to the energy room in a video game or something.
the way i talked about it in the LJ entry is a different view than the one above. but both valid depending on the day?
hmmm...anyway....rambling much. how are you?
recent homey moment:
a few saturdays back i was sitting on the loveseat in the kitchen with Garrison Keillor on the radio next to me, the window, darkening, open slightly behind me to the coming of a chilly night, the lamp over my head and _the Week_ in my lap. the rest of the kitchen was in relative darkness so Marc's room glowed warm from the combination of his lamp and orange bedspread, the corner of his room was bright where he was working. He hummed to himself, standing sock-footed on the bed adjusting magazine covers this way and that, stepping back shakily to check out the latest addition to the wall and snapping more tape off the roll. Garrison Keillor's voice spoke soothingly beside me and i sipped my wine, or was it hot tea? it was not even just near, it was perfect.
last weekend a similar experience occured on saturday on the same couch. I was supposed to meet Harry and Marc and later Meredith in the village, but a storm seemed to be rolling in from the east, already covering Manhattan the dark clouds were just beginning to creep across the Brooklyn sky outside the kitchen windows. I pulled my fleece blanket around me the fend off the lovely bite of chill coming through the still bright windows, open, with plants absorbing their first day of sunlight after 8 days of rain. I curled up with Willie Morris, _North Toward Home_, to raed and watch the darkness merge with light afternoon sky, and the air, feel and hear the rain coming, that was not yet rain. I didn't last long with the book and soon hunkered down on the ochre vinyl closed my eyes and just listened the approach of the storm. it didn't rain actually, just threatened to for an hour and i felt so wonderfully comfortable and at home with that possibility.
thanks so much for your comments, guys. They were so thoughtful and beautiful. I love you both sooo much!!!
kisses.
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