"La Tortuga"
Workshop Notes — A New Warp
This is a fresh warp for a small death altar cloth for a person who lost a beloved fur friend Luigi. I will be doing a similar type of cloth to the piece I made with Zoe’s fur with some key changes. First, I don’t plan on blending all off Luigi’s fur into my handspun yarn. I am sure that I will to a very minimal degree for to incorporate some of Luigi right into the weft yarn. However, due to the staple length of Luigi’s fur (i.e., it’s long enough), I have the opportunity to place it right smack dab in the middle of the shed and let it poke it’s little head right out. I will just be setting the aesthetic stage for that little pop of Luigi to be a wonderful reminder for the loved ones he left behind.
This brings me back to an essential point that has run through my work since I started doing fiber art: we weavers are more often better thinking of ourselves as mere technicians helping other creatures tell stories that are older than time itself than injecting ourselves into the storytelling. By this, I mean that we are better off letting folx like Luigi tell their story than we are trying to tell a story for them with their fur. I would much rather be a sort of fiber art stage hand setting the stage for Luigi’s fur to shine in the middle of the piece than I try to tell Luigi’s story with symbol or weaving embellishment. No, I am better off setting a plain, almost austere backdrop to let that absolutely stunning Luigi fur say everything that needs to be said in a memorial cloth for that sweet little boi.
This impulse is why I think my fiber death work fits in the realm of moral memory. Moral memory is a concept I picked up from my anonymous friend’s discussion of the Death tarot card in their classic christian hermetic text Meditations on the Tarot. Specifically, our anonymous friend believed that forgetting (and sleep) were the “younger brothers” of death that all “effect(ed) the disappearance of intellectual, psychic, and physical phenomena.”1 Due to this, they noted that the act of memory or recalling things, specifically moral memory, is a work of magic:
“With respect to moral memory,…the remembrance is no longer something which happens but rather is an authentic magical act…. It is love which is at work in moral memory when it recalls things from the past. Here it is admiration, respect, friendship, gratitude, affections, and a thousand other things which have deeply moved you, which render things from the past unforgettable (i.e., evocable at each instant.) The more one has loved, the more one remembers through moral memory… The less one is indifferent, the more one remembers of the past.”2
These death altar cloths are a product of one not wanting to lose that moral memory of their beloved. No, they want a physical talisman, a memorial to hold tender those recollections and rouse those memories to the forefront of each of their days. This is why I have been so adamant in underlining the magical dimensions of this form of fiber death work. Those sorts of cloths operate strictly from that extremely human impulse to hold dear those most sacred memories of their departed, from the realm of moral memory.
Consequently, no weaver or death worker could dare inject their own narrative into such work. Allowing one’s ego to get too involved in such work is the road to ruin. It’s not and won’t ever be about you, HOSS. Save such dramatic flourishes for work where you are telling your own stories. Instead, ply your craft with a light hand, knowing that even the presence of their loved ones hair is enough to bring forth the magic of moral memory which opens a portal and allows a commune with the other side. Well, at least, that’s what I remind myself of when doing this work.
The only real technical thing I am excited about bringing into this piece is some hand-blended chocolate and white shetland handspun. With my own hand-carders, I will be able to create brown yarn of varying intensities, which will allow me to blend the middle band into an ombré effect that will highlight Luigi’s fur in the center even more. I am not sure how I came to the conclusion that this would be a good idea. The design idea came to me one day. I will honor that and try to execute it to the best of my abilities. Right now, I am in the throws of spinning and will still need to block the yarn before I get started. Consequently, I doubt I will have any weaving progress to show you until maybe the first weekend in April.
Quest Photo Essay
I had an early release from work, so I hoped on my Clem Smith Jr-L to QVEST. The quest was simple, meander around town while I dropped stuff off, returned things, filled my belly, caffeinated myself, and visited buddies. I organized my ride route around visiting MAKfam, a newer Chinese restaurant down in Baker with tons of vegetarian and vegan options. I am not a vegan or vegetarian, but I love tofu and prefer it to a a lot of meat. I got an order of veggie spring rolls, a tofu bao bun, and an order of their tofu Jian Bing on a scallion pancake. Uhhh, it was delicious. I followed that up with a ride through downtown over to Larimer Street for an espresso at Crema. Once I was properly caffeinated, I headed over to Treehouse Cyclery where I peeped someone’s completed drop bar conversion for their Rivendell Joe Appaloosa.
Quest Albums
These were the four albums that accompanied me on my quest. I started out with a little post punk actions before transitioning to full head on death metal with two of the older Tomb Mold Records. It was a perfect for a 17 - 20 mile meander around town before a three day weekend.
Devo - “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We are Devo!”
Wire - “Pink Flag”
Tomb Mold - “Manor of Infinite Forms”
Tomb Mold - “Planetary Clairvoyance”
That’s all nor now, dear reader. Please do take good care. I will see you next weekend for another installment.
Best,
James
Meditations on the Tarot, pg 342
Ibid, pg. 346