Name: Paige Stevenson
Age: 43
Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
Job description: Collector, artist
Bio: Founder of House of Collection
Upcoming projects: Easter Potluck
Artists who are part of the HoC family: Not Waving But Drowning (music); Darlinda Just Darlinda (burlesque); Kai Altair (music); Zina Brown (photographer); L. Gabrielle Penabaz (writer/filmmaker;performer/bootlegger); Ali Luminescent (circus arts and fire); Guncle Aaron (photographer/party maven)
Handmade attire from HoC familiars: Lamia Akar (leather gloves); Kat O'Sullivan (recycled sweaters); Sarah Sparkles (fairy jewelry); Ahnika Delirium (adornments); Anne Macdonald (jewelry/photographer)
Artists with work up in the house: Madeline von Foerster (painter); Brian Moriarity (photographer); Molly Crabapple (illustrator); Granite Trudeaux (painter)
Shot at the house: "What's the Use of Wonderin'" (Amanda Palmer); photos by Leslie VanStelton
Select links: "Lost and Found: Paige Stevenson's Trash Decor" (Coilhouse); House of Collection group (flickr)
[Unwrapping packages of essential oil bottles]
A lot of these bottles are expensive but they last a long time. I have a lot of them. You use very little. Typically, if you want to put it on your skin you should use another oil because they’re so strong. And the doctor who prescribes them I don’t even go to anymore because he’s too expensive. Because he to test your levels of everything to know what you need. So the lab quest aspect becomes staggering.
How would you describe your health regime? Do you take any medications?
Not much. I do take aspirin or ibuprofen sometimes, but I try to keep it rare. Recently, we realized there was giardia going around and we took antibiotics for that. It was a parasite and really want to kill it, really happy about the Western medicine approach. But mostly chiropracty and natural pathy are better support, and can address the issues that I have. This internal stuff. I feel like there are better ways to support health that are the holistic ones than the general approach.
Look at all of these: geranium; bergamot; myrrh (which is anti-fungul); juniper berry; lemon…
Raspberry leaf is what's good for girl stuff. It’s a general, light hormone tonic.
Sandalwood is one of my favorites. This one I just got for pretty. Isn’t that nice?
It’s a nice way to welcome spring. Tell me about some of your more prized pieces and where you found them.
One of my main pursuits in life is to save old stuff from the chaos of the dump or whatever, destruction, entropy.
A lot of the pieces were scavenged. It started out with things alongside the road. Like hubcaps and parts of bottles and stuff. When I started to travel around, checking out places that people had forgotten, seeing what was slowly decaying and you [that] could save it, it became a treasure. Like a transformative process, just from picking it out of where it was and putting it where people would see it.
After a time, the collection got established a bit in that way. Because I have the blessing of the space, people started to bring stuff that they found or didn’t have a place for. So I got to be gifted a lot with fun stuff. My friend Dave Siegel, who runs a shop - I don’t even know what his title is at 3rd Ward - saw this piano outside of the building and said, “Wow, you really should get that!”
And this was before. Now, the elevator actually goes down to the street and opens upon the sidewalk. It didn’t used to do that. Back in the day, it used to a freight elevator that had to be manned at all times. We had a rope attached to the handle running through a hole in the floor, so that if you opened up the door and stuffed the electric connection with paper, it would think that the door was closed. You had to grab the rope, get the tension on it from the door frame, and pull it down to get the handle over. And you could sort of call it that way. And that only started after that first row of stairs after you walk up.
So it was getting that thing up that first flight of stairs that was the Herculean task. I think he ended up breaking his coccyx on that. He fell and bumped the very bottom. There’s not much you can do about a broken coccyx, but the piano such an amazing edition. It extends the room and you can still play it harp-style.
Do you know how to play?
No, not really. I just like to strum it sometimes. It ends up being so covered in stuff that it doesn’t get played much. But the idea is that it’s there.
What about the wall collages of objects?
Initially, a lot of stuff just went up as it was found, willy-nilly, so I felt like I got to think out the flow of things a little bit more. But now it’s not so easy just to add a new piece. If I ever find new stuff, I have to find other spots for it. That wall [of metal objects] kind of feels done in a way. But we’ll see. We’re always having plans to reconfigure stuff There’s always little changes. More recently, when Ahnika moved in, she brought amazing stuff from her family in Virginia. So then we were able to open a new room of antiques. The library, the conservatory, what have you. So there are definitely layers.
This is a turkey pelt that I found riding the down the Interstate on the Taconic with a friend. We saw it in the daylight. There’s a real iridescence to the feathers. Taconic is pretty chill so we found a place to pull over. We walked back to it and were thinking, “Oh, we’ll get some feathers.” These things are massive and they’re very attached to their feathers. There’s no way you’re going to pluck the feathers out. So I was like, “Okay, we’ll do it later. Throw it in the trunk.” And I came back down.
I made a plan with a friend of mine to rent her my car for the evening, because she had a catering job. She was this Lower East Side, Goth chick. Bad-ass. So I assumed, not a problem. I left the bird in the trunk when I gave her the car. The thing was, I totally forgot; it wasn’t on purpose. So she I called her up immediately: “By the way, there’s a turkey in the trunk. I forgot about it. Please excuse. I hope you can work around it.” So she said, “Oh, yeah, no problem.” And she returned the truck a bit later rather traumatized, because the turkey was such an imposing presence. It’s a big bird. She was expecting something in cellophane, I think, a turkey from the supermarket instead of this huge creature.
I finally got it home. It got hit on the side and I was able to cut it apart and preserve it. So it’s a nice little emblem in the house.
How did you preserve it? Do you know a lot about taxidermy?
Actually, I had a book on that and was able to find a resource on it. With birds, keep the wings and then clip away everything else. [Books] give you recommendations on where to do that. I just salted it down. There’s a membrane between the skin and the rest of the animal that allows you to separate it pretty easily. Later on, I got borax for it.
What they don’t tell you in the books, but I always found to be necessary, was bug spray. It’s not good for the environment, [but] if you are just drying and curing it, there’s always going to be organic matter there that bugs will want to feed off. I’ve lost a cured - obviously not well cured - skin to little bugs. They’ve been hanging on the walls and suddenly all the hair is gone from the skin. How’d that happen? So I always spray stuff with bug spray as part of the process. It’s a hungry world out there.
And you have an array of rugs.
Yes.
Where did you find them?
They’re all from the street, mostly from the neighborhood. I’ve been lucky to find stuff over the years, and to have a vehicle so that when I find stuff I can somehow go fetch it. I suppose people have handed down some rugs to me, too.
And your plants?
Plants are one of the few things I indulge in buying for the house, anything that I think might live and looks interesting. They are one of those things that are so important to the vitality of the place. And we’re lucky to have lots of windows and southern exposure; I’m definitely taking advantage of that. Some of them make it and some of them don’t. It ends up being a process of giving it your best shot and figuring out what’s going to be happy here. What you see is what’s survived. One of the problems with indoor plants is bugs because there’s no weather to keep them down so they tend to take a plant over easily. Ahnika does a lot to keep them healthy, too. We have a hose to water them with. It just takes tending.
What kind of plants do you have?
This is a dragonia; the ones with the very thin leaves with sort of a snaky body. And that one over there is elk horn fern; it’s a happy one, as well. It’s big and very leafy. And below that I think that’s called an elephant ear. That’s called pathos. There’s a lot of aloe. The aloe grows well here; big, spiky stuff. And then there’s the ficus in the corner. The spider plants [are] ubiquitous. And there’s hibiscus over there, with the iron rod, lady form over it. And that one sometimes blooms once a day. The blooms don’t last but they pop in season. There’s a big fig tree over there that we throw light on for a little extra, so it doesn’t just flop over towards the window.
It creates a little jungle.
You’ve lived at House of Collection for almost 20 years.
Yeah, I moved here in ’89.
How did your space come to be?
It has been an interesting journey. I found the space because a friend of mine, who was going to Barnard at the time, was out hitting the streets looking for loft spaces. She already knew what she wanted. She was an artist and already formed in that way, so she clued me into where would be great to live. I kind of was lucky to know the right people, and I got dragged into it. We needed a group of people to afford the space. It was initially 5,000 square-feet. It was affordable, but at the time it was a lot.
It was completely raw. It needed all of its systems. It had the radiators. Heat was the building’s concern. I got to learn a lot about how to build and the DIY thing that has been invaluable. When I first moved here, it was a bad neighborhood. A taxi on the Lower East Side would not bring you to Williamsburg. They were afraid of it; they thought they were going to get mugged or [have] their tires slashed. It was cracked out at that moment, and a little later it was heroin. The drug scourge of the early ‘90s was real. It took a little bit of badass to come to this neighborhood then, but I was punk rock. So it was perfect. It was cheap. There was a lot of space. And we signed on.
I think there were four of us, initially, and then we decided we needed somebody else. Another one came in and that person wasn’t perfect. Then it became the case of the ever-changing roommate scenario. Which was onerous, frankly. Eventually, after the people who moved in here with me moved out, I had the thought of reconfiguring the space. So I did the home renovation and was covering the rent all by myself, or splitting it with my partner at the time. Then showing it and renting it out. Ever since, it’s been the space that you see today. That was ’93? ’94? It couldn’t be. I get confused. Don’t quote me on the dates. More like ’96? ’97?
In any case, that was a big change that added a level of sanity to my life. I was trying to recreate the commune experience in the city, but without the sense of focus that you have in the country and living on a piece of land. It ended up just being a cheap place for people to live. Nobody was minding their hygiene or doing communal garbage-y stuff. It just ended up being a nightmare. So that was a good impetus to make that shift and have an adult household. Then, slowly over the years it’s become communal again, in a truer way, where people can have potlucks or cook together. And it was something that I felt like the city needed more of. Something that was not a restaurant or a bar or a club - the commercial spaces.
We hold circles all the time, just on the occasion of whatever it is: a birthday; a journey; or a baby. We do somewhat regular ones on the quarters, the equinoxes, and the solstices. That kind of fostering of connection with people is invaluable, and it also lends energy to the space.
When we had a record release party last weekend it was at the forbearance of my neighbors because it’s a concrete building. It’s really loud every time there’s music here, [with] the elevator and the people coming in and out. So I don’t do it super often, but I do love to have that kind of event because it’s just an amazing, nurtured atmosphere that creates an amazing night. We do a lot of work to rearrange things, to make sure everything’s just so when that night is happening.
Tell me about the dinner gatherings that you’ve hosted.
We do an Easter potluck and Thanksgiving every year. And that’s been a tradition for close to a decade now. I am fuzzy with dates. I’m not strict with timelines for myself. Live in the eternal now.
Thanksgiving is obviously self-limiting in that it’s for people who are aren’t already spending it with family. [Those are] the “orphans” that end up coming.
The gratitude theme is big with me.
Easter is also great because it’s spring, a celebration of dress up, and a little bit of the funny hat and wooden creatures. I always am excited to decorate eggs and just have all of the vibrancy brought back through the feast that we all bring together.
Restaurants are awesome. I don’t eat out a lot but I do enjoy it for what that is, for the ease of it and being served. But I feel like preparing and scooping up food together is the next level, and makes you feel like family. There are enough spaces that feel like you’re supported in entering new circles. I know that a lot of new meetings that happen at the gatherings, and that’s awesome. Something that Jeff Stark said to me at the last gathering was really great. He said that he had the epiphany that night that House of Collection was not just a collection of objects, that it was also a collection of people. And it was such a sweet thing because it was so completely true. I had never thought of it in that way. Again, he nailed it and that has come back to me since, and something that I treasure. I’ve always kept cards from people’s events and established the line of promotion cards up above the mirror. We’re pretty much out of space, sadly. But I’ll find new places because that’s another way that I can show off the collection of amazing people to some of the people that are a part of it. Some people help me build amazing, piano walls and some people do burlesque shows with cute cards that I can put up. And I like everybody to be represented.
What was your childhood like?
I was born in Richmond, Virginia. [I] had hippie parents who divorced and alternated years of custody, so I was never in the same place for more than one year at a time. I was out in California for a long time. I was very lucky; I had a lovely, amazing childhood. It was very dramatic, but it was also hitting the great moments and places and times.
I was in Mendocino. We were first were in an old town called Point Arena when I was in kindergarten through second grade. And that was in the moment of communes, so I was living in a teepee in a commune. And then my dad came with his new partner, who became his wife. They were sitting a goat farm there that was off the grid; there wasn’t even hot water or anything. But charmingly beautiful, right near a river with chickens and the whole setup. That early hippie moment was amazing even though I hated it at the time, because we ate beans all the time and were on commodities. Which was before food stamps. It was when they gave you a stock of food. And then we moved to San Francisco. And that was an amazing moment too because it was The Cockette’s moment of drag queen culture. Dina, my stepmom, had a cousin and a childhood friend who were part of that scene. We sort of stepped into that. I got to [get] dressed up as the little girl in the prom dress, with the extreme, cupid makeup. After dress-up, we went to parties.
I was in Washington state some. We were in Portugal for a couple of years, then came back to the US, and lived in Pittsburgh for five years. That was where I grew up and went to high school. I loved Pittsburgh. It’s a great town. It’s got a really awesome mix of the museum culture and the presence of the non-intellectual, non-elite America; it was strong there. And that was a nice balance.
For me, the high/low cultural poles were museums and punk clubs. I went to an all-girls prep school, thanks to funding from my grandparents, and was grateful for the critical thinking experience I got there. The first year was hell since it was eighth grade and I had been out of the country for two years (in Portugal) and was culturally clueless. The following year, I made friends with two seniors who introduced me to punk culture. Which was a huge relief from demands of norms I could never fit myself into and, lucky me, the Electrical Banana – Pittsburgh’s best punk venue - was walking distance from my Polish Hill home. Also, the second-hand shopping in Pittsurgh was optimal; there had been a lot of money from the steel mills, which resulted in some very fine clothes that were not [yet in] demand in the mid-1980s. Some pieces I destroyed before I realized that acetate and rayon are not machine washable. Some I still have.
[Pittsburgh] was where I fortified my love of garbage, parts, and weird, metal stuff. Because there’s a lot of it there. Later, I went back and explored the steel mills [in] Homestead before they tore them down. There were a lot right outside of Pittsburgh. Other towns, [like] Bethlehem, have turned those steel mills into casinos and stuff. But in Pittsburgh they didn’t do that. They were intricate, massive, and amazing play land Jungle Jim’s for adults. And tools to get hold of things that were two times the size of a person. Big wrenches and clamps. What?!
But I think there’s less and less of that existing. I know it’s still out there, but there was a moment when the old was abandoned for the new and a lot of that stuff still hung around. I think the interest in the preservation has come back because I don’t know if there’s still a lot of that left. Which I think is fine. I think it’s great that people have gone in and salvaged things that people saw fit to leave.
In scavenging objects, has anyone ever told you that you couldn’t take something that was garbage?
Yes, actually. There was a moment that was heartbreaking. I’m so glad that you asked that question because it’s a story that I don’t talk about much. It was sort of those “Well nothing came of it.”
It was up in Vermont with a friend, who had a girlfriend who lived there. And she knew a place because she was from around there. I think it was Brattleboro. There was a house that was abandoned, that was just chock full of Victorian-era furnishings and later; I guess maybe it was up to the 40s. I’m not sure exactly. I never found out the story behind this. So we went to this place and were just jumping around crazy. We were up in the eaves looking at the furniture that they had put out in the barn. The old cradles and the rockers were not quite so, but all of it handmade, and just needing a little love. We were starting to pull some things out of there, [to] see what we could pack with us, and we heard exclamations from the main house. One of our friends, who was a musician, was just so excited about an old, pump organ there. It was love at first sight, this decrepit instrument.
I didn’t even make it into the house because, about 20 minutes after we had arrived, a guy showed up in a car. He was I guess a family member, a younger generation. And he just said “You know, this is private property. Please get off.” And we pleaded with him about saving some of the stuff because it was this full house that was just being left to rot. He was completely firm that it was supposed to be left as it was. And we never did find anything more about it. When someone wants to be left alone, it’s what you do.
But it astonished me. Was it some sort of grieving process for the family? There must have been something. To me, if it wasn’t being tended to and kept up, it means that it wasn’t really a loving homage. If it was a memorial, I could totally see that and we would respect that, of course. But just to be left to decay, and to be disused, seems like a very odd practice to me. I didn’t understand it. But, you know, it’s private property. It’s the rule of the land. But that same town also had an amazing find that was a guy who was collector.
It’s always interesting when people who are collectors, who don’t have a lot of family, and pass on. Then their collections are kind of left. It kind of became a mission to save people’s precious things, to appreciate them.
Since everyone eventually passes on, who does a collector pass the collection on to?
Yeah, it’s the rest of the world’s problem. My happy hope is that it gets into the hands of somebody who appreciates it, and it’s not a pain in someone else’s ass.
I recently got rent-stabilization rights here. And that means that I don’t have to contemplate moving my huge collection. Over a decade, I was always in court to contend with the possibility and [to] entertain the thought.
When did move to New York?
In ’85 for school.
What did you study in school?
I minored in French. I was allowed to just minor. I went to Columbia. I got a big scholarship. It was the best scholarship out of anywhere that I applied.
I had already had most of the concentration down because I wanted to take the courses that were the best and most interesting courses in whatever department they were in. I knew I wasn’t going to go on in academia so I wasn’t on any track. And I was happy to have a broader education.
I got to spend a year in Paris. We danced on the fountain in San Sulpice. Some friends did a rendition of the Bacchanal, which involved drinking a lot of wine. So it devolved into a dance party. Apparently, there’s no law against dancing in the fountains. There were nice little levels and platforms on this particular fountain; it was quite a scene. And then the café’s are right there so there’s this built in audience.
How comfortable are you in front of an audience?
I’ve struggled with that. I’ve done belly dance for years and years, but it’s taken me a long time. If you’re going to study dance it’s assumed that you’re going to perform dance. That wasn’t why I started doing it and I had to pushed myself into that comfort zone with performing, and realize that it shouldn’t be about an ego thing. It was an offering. And the more panache you had around it, the better gift it would be. And the happier you would be. So that’s something that I need to remind myself because I grew up with a sense of humility. Which is very valuable, but also a bit constricting in some ways. I don’t know if it’s a gender role thing for me. I think it was a very circumstantial thing with my parents. But that said we all have our crosses to bear and that’s not a bad thing to learn to overcome. I’d rather be going in that direction than the other direction, to be taught compassion. That can actually be harder in some ways.
How strong are your political views?
I am political to the extent that I click on a lot of petition buttons, that I contribute sometimes, that I vote almost always, that I rally less frequently as I get older, but have done in the past. I am not the most informed person, but I do pay attention. And that’s not an easy thing to do these days. It’s kind of painful.
In what way?
The political right wing is really scary. They’re being obscene in their policies and have been for quite some time. It’s so blatant now with the bailing out of the big companies and banks, and taking away of the workers’ rights. If you wanted to destroy the middle class I can’t imagine a better way. And it’s so short-sighted for a capitalist country, too. Who do they think is going to sustain their economy? There has to be something in the workers’ pockets.
So I heard that there was legislation today that was introduced in Wisconsin to withdraw the personhood of corporations from the Federal law, to reverse that law. Which I think is huge. I think that’s one of our fundamental problems with our system, right now. It’s a law that’s responsible for countless evils and misuses. So I’m excited about that. There’s always hope. We were all so excited when Obama got elected, but it appears that The Machine is just really hard to work within. It’s been frustrating. But I’m not yet making plans for immigration.
Where would you emigrate?
In my wildest fantasies, probably the high plains of Bahia in Brazil.
How would you describe your religious views?
I think religion has been responsible for a lot of evil in the world. So I’m kind of anti-religious. That said I think spirituality is something that I’ve grown into and am trying to foster in my life. Because I find it to be a next level necessity for feeling happy and like the world makes sense. I’ve seen the approach have some powerful outcomes and affect a lot of change. It’s neat, the power of intention and community. Beyond that, it’s not something that I can parse. I don’t work a lot with avatars and goddesses, but I definitely love the formulation, the aspect, and all of the different detail. It’s rich and I feel like if it helps individuals access parts of themselves, it’s all to the good. Goddesses and energy aspects are something that have been wrought through culture over time, based on deep truths. They’re useful in that way.
It’s community building. I feel like church is that for a lot of cultures, and that’s one of the things that religion has done for culture. But in general, I think religion has been just didactic and competitive for no good reason. I think that until people are able to sit with themselves and have a little bit of perspective of being there in the connected whole, they’re never going to be super happy. I think it’s a missing ellipse for our culture right now, and it’s a purposefully a missing piece because it drives capitalism. People who are fundamentally unfulfilled and seeking more, aren’t really needed for anything. I think people are really unsatisfied and they are told that buying things will really help that. It drives The Machine not to have a real, spiritual core. So I think [religion] is important in that respect.
What qualities do you admire most and least in people?
I think the quality I admire most in people is that quality of being able to balance confidence and resultant creativity with humility and compassion. [People] who can love themselves and shine in the world, and are not just sticking to their egos but are really paying attention, listening, and being careful about what they do, too.
And the least?
People who are not brave enough to look at themselves, and are arrogant. People who lead unexamined lives.
What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned?
That’s a hard one to parse. I have found most of my life goals have been achieved through steadfast perseverance, and a continuation of daily tending. It’s a rather old saw, but the lesson of the eleven-year, legal battle. I also think along with that goes a faith that things will happen in the right way, so that you’re not constantly fighting with your environment. I’m lucky enough to feel the truth of that, having never had a really incapacitating tragedy. There are also the uses of adversity, so I think that’s a good thing to have in perspective, too.
What’s your philosophy on any kind of love?
I don’t know if I have a philosophy on love. I think it’s based on an empathetic resonance, so that you empathize with [and] feel empathized with. The exchange. And I think that can happen with people who are very different, as well. And that’s exciting because by loving someone you have a chance to experience what it’s like to be in the position they’re in, and have a greater experience of that. I don’t want to sound cliched, but it’s really a gift that you’re given and that you get to feel and choose to some degree. But it just comes when you feel love for somebody. People who experience it a lot for others are lucky. And it’s probably going to make you better in the world, too, to say nothing about reflecting on the object of your love, and how you express [it]. And even if you don’t, I think feeding those energies feeds [yourself], as well.
It’s also really important to mind one’s boundaries. So love is also composed of good boundaries, I think too. It’s something that I’ve been on a learning arc with.
If you could have more of something, what would it be?
Money, time, and freedom to travel. I know that’s several things, but the traveling is definitely something I would enjoy more of. So I would leave it at that.
Where would you like to travel?
I’ve been really wanting to go to Mongolia because a friend of mine, Kat, who makes these amazing sweaters and is a world traveler, went there recently with her partner, Mason.
They live upstate in a beautiful, patchwork palace. It has 48 different colors of paint on it. it’s amazing and they went to Mongolia and told stories about amazing yurts that are very cheap in the market there. So I had the fancy of going on a yurts run, buy up a couple, maybe even more, [and] figure out how to ship them back. I wanted to put one on my folks’ land in Ohio so I would have a little guesthouse. And one on Kat and Mason’s land Upstate so that there’d be another spot where people would come and stay in the woods.
I’ve also wanted to go to Indonesia and that part of the world in that Pacific basin. It seems like Heaven on Earth. I have a friend who’s traveling there right now, so I’ve been seeing images coming from her over the Internet.
It seems like it’s an aesthetic culture, that beauty is one of the pursuits of life and sort of prioritized in a way that just doesn’t exist here in the slightest. I can definitely see that as another aspect of religion, when it results in a creative outpouring. In general, that Hindi approach, the giving of offerings, [as] your religious practice, seems like the ultimate. It seems so deep and simple at the same time, that gratitude is the practice. Like the pinnacle of human culture [to] live in that kind of beauty and peace. And I know it isn’t always peaceful at all. There’s the other side of the coin, I know. In my mind, that seems ideal.
I do have that sense that all these kids in middle America, who are freaking out and killing people or killing themselves, don’t have a sense of their own importance or that they can do anything in the world that would be good. They’re obviously not being given good options. Wouldn’t it be better to be in a world where you actually knew that you were going to do what your dad did, and had the sense that you’re needed to carry on? Then again, if you didn’t want to do what your dad did that was a huge trap, too. We humans can be disgruntled by any number of things when it comes down to it. Whatever we don’t have that somebody else might.
What’s tragic to you?
I consider the impoverishment of the middle class and the further impoverishment of the poor tragic. My fear is that as the trend of more wealth and resources being controlled by fewer people continues, the huge majority that is impoverished will no longer be able to attain their ideals and we will be back to a world when most people's lives are nasty brutish and short.
People can only be their best selves when they feel secure in having their basic needs met. They have to feel like they can share, afford to give something extra, and have some time to be creative. I feel like corporate crunch, the demand for the growth paradigm, is just really short-sighted. That humans are being forced to live meaner, more fraught, and less creative and productive lives because they’re struggling to survive. And it shouldn’t be. It’s such a travesty of our supposed wealth in this country. That’s the economics of human tragedy.
And there’s this earth-shifty tragedy, which is the environmental shifts. The earth will abide, of course, but it certainly will make other life forms living on the earth uncomfortable, and possibly a lot more limited species-wise. I really am a fan of the diversity and of humans, too, but I definitely think that we may need to get knocked back some. I think that’s the thing that I fear and the tragedy, and also in some weird way, what I’m hopeful for.
Age: 43
Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA
Job description: Collector, artist
Bio: Founder of House of Collection
Upcoming projects: Easter Potluck
Artists who are part of the HoC family: Not Waving But Drowning (music); Darlinda Just Darlinda (burlesque); Kai Altair (music); Zina Brown (photographer); L. Gabrielle Penabaz (writer/filmmaker;performer/bootlegger); Ali Luminescent (circus arts and fire); Guncle Aaron (photographer/party maven)
Handmade attire from HoC familiars: Lamia Akar (leather gloves); Kat O'Sullivan (recycled sweaters); Sarah Sparkles (fairy jewelry); Ahnika Delirium (adornments); Anne Macdonald (jewelry/photographer)
Artists with work up in the house: Madeline von Foerster (painter); Brian Moriarity (photographer); Molly Crabapple (illustrator); Granite Trudeaux (painter)
Shot at the house: "What's the Use of Wonderin'" (Amanda Palmer); photos by Leslie VanStelton
Select links: "Lost and Found: Paige Stevenson's Trash Decor" (Coilhouse); House of Collection group (flickr)
[Unwrapping packages of essential oil bottles]
A lot of these bottles are expensive but they last a long time. I have a lot of them. You use very little. Typically, if you want to put it on your skin you should use another oil because they’re so strong. And the doctor who prescribes them I don’t even go to anymore because he’s too expensive. Because he to test your levels of everything to know what you need. So the lab quest aspect becomes staggering.
How would you describe your health regime? Do you take any medications?
Not much. I do take aspirin or ibuprofen sometimes, but I try to keep it rare. Recently, we realized there was giardia going around and we took antibiotics for that. It was a parasite and really want to kill it, really happy about the Western medicine approach. But mostly chiropracty and natural pathy are better support, and can address the issues that I have. This internal stuff. I feel like there are better ways to support health that are the holistic ones than the general approach.
Look at all of these: geranium; bergamot; myrrh (which is anti-fungul); juniper berry; lemon…
Raspberry leaf is what's good for girl stuff. It’s a general, light hormone tonic.
Sandalwood is one of my favorites. This one I just got for pretty. Isn’t that nice?
It’s a nice way to welcome spring. Tell me about some of your more prized pieces and where you found them.
One of my main pursuits in life is to save old stuff from the chaos of the dump or whatever, destruction, entropy.
A lot of the pieces were scavenged. It started out with things alongside the road. Like hubcaps and parts of bottles and stuff. When I started to travel around, checking out places that people had forgotten, seeing what was slowly decaying and you [that] could save it, it became a treasure. Like a transformative process, just from picking it out of where it was and putting it where people would see it.
After a time, the collection got established a bit in that way. Because I have the blessing of the space, people started to bring stuff that they found or didn’t have a place for. So I got to be gifted a lot with fun stuff. My friend Dave Siegel, who runs a shop - I don’t even know what his title is at 3rd Ward - saw this piano outside of the building and said, “Wow, you really should get that!”
And this was before. Now, the elevator actually goes down to the street and opens upon the sidewalk. It didn’t used to do that. Back in the day, it used to a freight elevator that had to be manned at all times. We had a rope attached to the handle running through a hole in the floor, so that if you opened up the door and stuffed the electric connection with paper, it would think that the door was closed. You had to grab the rope, get the tension on it from the door frame, and pull it down to get the handle over. And you could sort of call it that way. And that only started after that first row of stairs after you walk up.
So it was getting that thing up that first flight of stairs that was the Herculean task. I think he ended up breaking his coccyx on that. He fell and bumped the very bottom. There’s not much you can do about a broken coccyx, but the piano such an amazing edition. It extends the room and you can still play it harp-style.
Do you know how to play?
No, not really. I just like to strum it sometimes. It ends up being so covered in stuff that it doesn’t get played much. But the idea is that it’s there.
What about the wall collages of objects?
Initially, a lot of stuff just went up as it was found, willy-nilly, so I felt like I got to think out the flow of things a little bit more. But now it’s not so easy just to add a new piece. If I ever find new stuff, I have to find other spots for it. That wall [of metal objects] kind of feels done in a way. But we’ll see. We’re always having plans to reconfigure stuff There’s always little changes. More recently, when Ahnika moved in, she brought amazing stuff from her family in Virginia. So then we were able to open a new room of antiques. The library, the conservatory, what have you. So there are definitely layers.
This is a turkey pelt that I found riding the down the Interstate on the Taconic with a friend. We saw it in the daylight. There’s a real iridescence to the feathers. Taconic is pretty chill so we found a place to pull over. We walked back to it and were thinking, “Oh, we’ll get some feathers.” These things are massive and they’re very attached to their feathers. There’s no way you’re going to pluck the feathers out. So I was like, “Okay, we’ll do it later. Throw it in the trunk.” And I came back down.
I made a plan with a friend of mine to rent her my car for the evening, because she had a catering job. She was this Lower East Side, Goth chick. Bad-ass. So I assumed, not a problem. I left the bird in the trunk when I gave her the car. The thing was, I totally forgot; it wasn’t on purpose. So she I called her up immediately: “By the way, there’s a turkey in the trunk. I forgot about it. Please excuse. I hope you can work around it.” So she said, “Oh, yeah, no problem.” And she returned the truck a bit later rather traumatized, because the turkey was such an imposing presence. It’s a big bird. She was expecting something in cellophane, I think, a turkey from the supermarket instead of this huge creature.
I finally got it home. It got hit on the side and I was able to cut it apart and preserve it. So it’s a nice little emblem in the house.
How did you preserve it? Do you know a lot about taxidermy?
Actually, I had a book on that and was able to find a resource on it. With birds, keep the wings and then clip away everything else. [Books] give you recommendations on where to do that. I just salted it down. There’s a membrane between the skin and the rest of the animal that allows you to separate it pretty easily. Later on, I got borax for it.
What they don’t tell you in the books, but I always found to be necessary, was bug spray. It’s not good for the environment, [but] if you are just drying and curing it, there’s always going to be organic matter there that bugs will want to feed off. I’ve lost a cured - obviously not well cured - skin to little bugs. They’ve been hanging on the walls and suddenly all the hair is gone from the skin. How’d that happen? So I always spray stuff with bug spray as part of the process. It’s a hungry world out there.
And you have an array of rugs.
Yes.
Where did you find them?
They’re all from the street, mostly from the neighborhood. I’ve been lucky to find stuff over the years, and to have a vehicle so that when I find stuff I can somehow go fetch it. I suppose people have handed down some rugs to me, too.
And your plants?
Plants are one of the few things I indulge in buying for the house, anything that I think might live and looks interesting. They are one of those things that are so important to the vitality of the place. And we’re lucky to have lots of windows and southern exposure; I’m definitely taking advantage of that. Some of them make it and some of them don’t. It ends up being a process of giving it your best shot and figuring out what’s going to be happy here. What you see is what’s survived. One of the problems with indoor plants is bugs because there’s no weather to keep them down so they tend to take a plant over easily. Ahnika does a lot to keep them healthy, too. We have a hose to water them with. It just takes tending.
What kind of plants do you have?
This is a dragonia; the ones with the very thin leaves with sort of a snaky body. And that one over there is elk horn fern; it’s a happy one, as well. It’s big and very leafy. And below that I think that’s called an elephant ear. That’s called pathos. There’s a lot of aloe. The aloe grows well here; big, spiky stuff. And then there’s the ficus in the corner. The spider plants [are] ubiquitous. And there’s hibiscus over there, with the iron rod, lady form over it. And that one sometimes blooms once a day. The blooms don’t last but they pop in season. There’s a big fig tree over there that we throw light on for a little extra, so it doesn’t just flop over towards the window.
It creates a little jungle.
You’ve lived at House of Collection for almost 20 years.
Yeah, I moved here in ’89.
How did your space come to be?
It has been an interesting journey. I found the space because a friend of mine, who was going to Barnard at the time, was out hitting the streets looking for loft spaces. She already knew what she wanted. She was an artist and already formed in that way, so she clued me into where would be great to live. I kind of was lucky to know the right people, and I got dragged into it. We needed a group of people to afford the space. It was initially 5,000 square-feet. It was affordable, but at the time it was a lot.
It was completely raw. It needed all of its systems. It had the radiators. Heat was the building’s concern. I got to learn a lot about how to build and the DIY thing that has been invaluable. When I first moved here, it was a bad neighborhood. A taxi on the Lower East Side would not bring you to Williamsburg. They were afraid of it; they thought they were going to get mugged or [have] their tires slashed. It was cracked out at that moment, and a little later it was heroin. The drug scourge of the early ‘90s was real. It took a little bit of badass to come to this neighborhood then, but I was punk rock. So it was perfect. It was cheap. There was a lot of space. And we signed on.
I think there were four of us, initially, and then we decided we needed somebody else. Another one came in and that person wasn’t perfect. Then it became the case of the ever-changing roommate scenario. Which was onerous, frankly. Eventually, after the people who moved in here with me moved out, I had the thought of reconfiguring the space. So I did the home renovation and was covering the rent all by myself, or splitting it with my partner at the time. Then showing it and renting it out. Ever since, it’s been the space that you see today. That was ’93? ’94? It couldn’t be. I get confused. Don’t quote me on the dates. More like ’96? ’97?
In any case, that was a big change that added a level of sanity to my life. I was trying to recreate the commune experience in the city, but without the sense of focus that you have in the country and living on a piece of land. It ended up just being a cheap place for people to live. Nobody was minding their hygiene or doing communal garbage-y stuff. It just ended up being a nightmare. So that was a good impetus to make that shift and have an adult household. Then, slowly over the years it’s become communal again, in a truer way, where people can have potlucks or cook together. And it was something that I felt like the city needed more of. Something that was not a restaurant or a bar or a club - the commercial spaces.
We hold circles all the time, just on the occasion of whatever it is: a birthday; a journey; or a baby. We do somewhat regular ones on the quarters, the equinoxes, and the solstices. That kind of fostering of connection with people is invaluable, and it also lends energy to the space.
When we had a record release party last weekend it was at the forbearance of my neighbors because it’s a concrete building. It’s really loud every time there’s music here, [with] the elevator and the people coming in and out. So I don’t do it super often, but I do love to have that kind of event because it’s just an amazing, nurtured atmosphere that creates an amazing night. We do a lot of work to rearrange things, to make sure everything’s just so when that night is happening.
Tell me about the dinner gatherings that you’ve hosted.
We do an Easter potluck and Thanksgiving every year. And that’s been a tradition for close to a decade now. I am fuzzy with dates. I’m not strict with timelines for myself. Live in the eternal now.
Thanksgiving is obviously self-limiting in that it’s for people who are aren’t already spending it with family. [Those are] the “orphans” that end up coming.
The gratitude theme is big with me.
Easter is also great because it’s spring, a celebration of dress up, and a little bit of the funny hat and wooden creatures. I always am excited to decorate eggs and just have all of the vibrancy brought back through the feast that we all bring together.
Restaurants are awesome. I don’t eat out a lot but I do enjoy it for what that is, for the ease of it and being served. But I feel like preparing and scooping up food together is the next level, and makes you feel like family. There are enough spaces that feel like you’re supported in entering new circles. I know that a lot of new meetings that happen at the gatherings, and that’s awesome. Something that Jeff Stark said to me at the last gathering was really great. He said that he had the epiphany that night that House of Collection was not just a collection of objects, that it was also a collection of people. And it was such a sweet thing because it was so completely true. I had never thought of it in that way. Again, he nailed it and that has come back to me since, and something that I treasure. I’ve always kept cards from people’s events and established the line of promotion cards up above the mirror. We’re pretty much out of space, sadly. But I’ll find new places because that’s another way that I can show off the collection of amazing people to some of the people that are a part of it. Some people help me build amazing, piano walls and some people do burlesque shows with cute cards that I can put up. And I like everybody to be represented.
What was your childhood like?
I was born in Richmond, Virginia. [I] had hippie parents who divorced and alternated years of custody, so I was never in the same place for more than one year at a time. I was out in California for a long time. I was very lucky; I had a lovely, amazing childhood. It was very dramatic, but it was also hitting the great moments and places and times.
I was in Mendocino. We were first were in an old town called Point Arena when I was in kindergarten through second grade. And that was in the moment of communes, so I was living in a teepee in a commune. And then my dad came with his new partner, who became his wife. They were sitting a goat farm there that was off the grid; there wasn’t even hot water or anything. But charmingly beautiful, right near a river with chickens and the whole setup. That early hippie moment was amazing even though I hated it at the time, because we ate beans all the time and were on commodities. Which was before food stamps. It was when they gave you a stock of food. And then we moved to San Francisco. And that was an amazing moment too because it was The Cockette’s moment of drag queen culture. Dina, my stepmom, had a cousin and a childhood friend who were part of that scene. We sort of stepped into that. I got to [get] dressed up as the little girl in the prom dress, with the extreme, cupid makeup. After dress-up, we went to parties.
I was in Washington state some. We were in Portugal for a couple of years, then came back to the US, and lived in Pittsburgh for five years. That was where I grew up and went to high school. I loved Pittsburgh. It’s a great town. It’s got a really awesome mix of the museum culture and the presence of the non-intellectual, non-elite America; it was strong there. And that was a nice balance.
For me, the high/low cultural poles were museums and punk clubs. I went to an all-girls prep school, thanks to funding from my grandparents, and was grateful for the critical thinking experience I got there. The first year was hell since it was eighth grade and I had been out of the country for two years (in Portugal) and was culturally clueless. The following year, I made friends with two seniors who introduced me to punk culture. Which was a huge relief from demands of norms I could never fit myself into and, lucky me, the Electrical Banana – Pittsburgh’s best punk venue - was walking distance from my Polish Hill home. Also, the second-hand shopping in Pittsurgh was optimal; there had been a lot of money from the steel mills, which resulted in some very fine clothes that were not [yet in] demand in the mid-1980s. Some pieces I destroyed before I realized that acetate and rayon are not machine washable. Some I still have.
[Pittsburgh] was where I fortified my love of garbage, parts, and weird, metal stuff. Because there’s a lot of it there. Later, I went back and explored the steel mills [in] Homestead before they tore them down. There were a lot right outside of Pittsburgh. Other towns, [like] Bethlehem, have turned those steel mills into casinos and stuff. But in Pittsburgh they didn’t do that. They were intricate, massive, and amazing play land Jungle Jim’s for adults. And tools to get hold of things that were two times the size of a person. Big wrenches and clamps. What?!
But I think there’s less and less of that existing. I know it’s still out there, but there was a moment when the old was abandoned for the new and a lot of that stuff still hung around. I think the interest in the preservation has come back because I don’t know if there’s still a lot of that left. Which I think is fine. I think it’s great that people have gone in and salvaged things that people saw fit to leave.
In scavenging objects, has anyone ever told you that you couldn’t take something that was garbage?
Yes, actually. There was a moment that was heartbreaking. I’m so glad that you asked that question because it’s a story that I don’t talk about much. It was sort of those “Well nothing came of it.”
It was up in Vermont with a friend, who had a girlfriend who lived there. And she knew a place because she was from around there. I think it was Brattleboro. There was a house that was abandoned, that was just chock full of Victorian-era furnishings and later; I guess maybe it was up to the 40s. I’m not sure exactly. I never found out the story behind this. So we went to this place and were just jumping around crazy. We were up in the eaves looking at the furniture that they had put out in the barn. The old cradles and the rockers were not quite so, but all of it handmade, and just needing a little love. We were starting to pull some things out of there, [to] see what we could pack with us, and we heard exclamations from the main house. One of our friends, who was a musician, was just so excited about an old, pump organ there. It was love at first sight, this decrepit instrument.
I didn’t even make it into the house because, about 20 minutes after we had arrived, a guy showed up in a car. He was I guess a family member, a younger generation. And he just said “You know, this is private property. Please get off.” And we pleaded with him about saving some of the stuff because it was this full house that was just being left to rot. He was completely firm that it was supposed to be left as it was. And we never did find anything more about it. When someone wants to be left alone, it’s what you do.
But it astonished me. Was it some sort of grieving process for the family? There must have been something. To me, if it wasn’t being tended to and kept up, it means that it wasn’t really a loving homage. If it was a memorial, I could totally see that and we would respect that, of course. But just to be left to decay, and to be disused, seems like a very odd practice to me. I didn’t understand it. But, you know, it’s private property. It’s the rule of the land. But that same town also had an amazing find that was a guy who was collector.
It’s always interesting when people who are collectors, who don’t have a lot of family, and pass on. Then their collections are kind of left. It kind of became a mission to save people’s precious things, to appreciate them.
Since everyone eventually passes on, who does a collector pass the collection on to?
Yeah, it’s the rest of the world’s problem. My happy hope is that it gets into the hands of somebody who appreciates it, and it’s not a pain in someone else’s ass.
I recently got rent-stabilization rights here. And that means that I don’t have to contemplate moving my huge collection. Over a decade, I was always in court to contend with the possibility and [to] entertain the thought.
When did move to New York?
In ’85 for school.
What did you study in school?
I minored in French. I was allowed to just minor. I went to Columbia. I got a big scholarship. It was the best scholarship out of anywhere that I applied.
I had already had most of the concentration down because I wanted to take the courses that were the best and most interesting courses in whatever department they were in. I knew I wasn’t going to go on in academia so I wasn’t on any track. And I was happy to have a broader education.
I got to spend a year in Paris. We danced on the fountain in San Sulpice. Some friends did a rendition of the Bacchanal, which involved drinking a lot of wine. So it devolved into a dance party. Apparently, there’s no law against dancing in the fountains. There were nice little levels and platforms on this particular fountain; it was quite a scene. And then the café’s are right there so there’s this built in audience.
How comfortable are you in front of an audience?
I’ve struggled with that. I’ve done belly dance for years and years, but it’s taken me a long time. If you’re going to study dance it’s assumed that you’re going to perform dance. That wasn’t why I started doing it and I had to pushed myself into that comfort zone with performing, and realize that it shouldn’t be about an ego thing. It was an offering. And the more panache you had around it, the better gift it would be. And the happier you would be. So that’s something that I need to remind myself because I grew up with a sense of humility. Which is very valuable, but also a bit constricting in some ways. I don’t know if it’s a gender role thing for me. I think it was a very circumstantial thing with my parents. But that said we all have our crosses to bear and that’s not a bad thing to learn to overcome. I’d rather be going in that direction than the other direction, to be taught compassion. That can actually be harder in some ways.
How strong are your political views?
I am political to the extent that I click on a lot of petition buttons, that I contribute sometimes, that I vote almost always, that I rally less frequently as I get older, but have done in the past. I am not the most informed person, but I do pay attention. And that’s not an easy thing to do these days. It’s kind of painful.
In what way?
The political right wing is really scary. They’re being obscene in their policies and have been for quite some time. It’s so blatant now with the bailing out of the big companies and banks, and taking away of the workers’ rights. If you wanted to destroy the middle class I can’t imagine a better way. And it’s so short-sighted for a capitalist country, too. Who do they think is going to sustain their economy? There has to be something in the workers’ pockets.
So I heard that there was legislation today that was introduced in Wisconsin to withdraw the personhood of corporations from the Federal law, to reverse that law. Which I think is huge. I think that’s one of our fundamental problems with our system, right now. It’s a law that’s responsible for countless evils and misuses. So I’m excited about that. There’s always hope. We were all so excited when Obama got elected, but it appears that The Machine is just really hard to work within. It’s been frustrating. But I’m not yet making plans for immigration.
Where would you emigrate?
In my wildest fantasies, probably the high plains of Bahia in Brazil.
How would you describe your religious views?
I think religion has been responsible for a lot of evil in the world. So I’m kind of anti-religious. That said I think spirituality is something that I’ve grown into and am trying to foster in my life. Because I find it to be a next level necessity for feeling happy and like the world makes sense. I’ve seen the approach have some powerful outcomes and affect a lot of change. It’s neat, the power of intention and community. Beyond that, it’s not something that I can parse. I don’t work a lot with avatars and goddesses, but I definitely love the formulation, the aspect, and all of the different detail. It’s rich and I feel like if it helps individuals access parts of themselves, it’s all to the good. Goddesses and energy aspects are something that have been wrought through culture over time, based on deep truths. They’re useful in that way.
It’s community building. I feel like church is that for a lot of cultures, and that’s one of the things that religion has done for culture. But in general, I think religion has been just didactic and competitive for no good reason. I think that until people are able to sit with themselves and have a little bit of perspective of being there in the connected whole, they’re never going to be super happy. I think it’s a missing ellipse for our culture right now, and it’s a purposefully a missing piece because it drives capitalism. People who are fundamentally unfulfilled and seeking more, aren’t really needed for anything. I think people are really unsatisfied and they are told that buying things will really help that. It drives The Machine not to have a real, spiritual core. So I think [religion] is important in that respect.
What qualities do you admire most and least in people?
I think the quality I admire most in people is that quality of being able to balance confidence and resultant creativity with humility and compassion. [People] who can love themselves and shine in the world, and are not just sticking to their egos but are really paying attention, listening, and being careful about what they do, too.
And the least?
People who are not brave enough to look at themselves, and are arrogant. People who lead unexamined lives.
What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned?
That’s a hard one to parse. I have found most of my life goals have been achieved through steadfast perseverance, and a continuation of daily tending. It’s a rather old saw, but the lesson of the eleven-year, legal battle. I also think along with that goes a faith that things will happen in the right way, so that you’re not constantly fighting with your environment. I’m lucky enough to feel the truth of that, having never had a really incapacitating tragedy. There are also the uses of adversity, so I think that’s a good thing to have in perspective, too.
What’s your philosophy on any kind of love?
I don’t know if I have a philosophy on love. I think it’s based on an empathetic resonance, so that you empathize with [and] feel empathized with. The exchange. And I think that can happen with people who are very different, as well. And that’s exciting because by loving someone you have a chance to experience what it’s like to be in the position they’re in, and have a greater experience of that. I don’t want to sound cliched, but it’s really a gift that you’re given and that you get to feel and choose to some degree. But it just comes when you feel love for somebody. People who experience it a lot for others are lucky. And it’s probably going to make you better in the world, too, to say nothing about reflecting on the object of your love, and how you express [it]. And even if you don’t, I think feeding those energies feeds [yourself], as well.
It’s also really important to mind one’s boundaries. So love is also composed of good boundaries, I think too. It’s something that I’ve been on a learning arc with.
If you could have more of something, what would it be?
Money, time, and freedom to travel. I know that’s several things, but the traveling is definitely something I would enjoy more of. So I would leave it at that.
Where would you like to travel?
I’ve been really wanting to go to Mongolia because a friend of mine, Kat, who makes these amazing sweaters and is a world traveler, went there recently with her partner, Mason.
They live upstate in a beautiful, patchwork palace. It has 48 different colors of paint on it. it’s amazing and they went to Mongolia and told stories about amazing yurts that are very cheap in the market there. So I had the fancy of going on a yurts run, buy up a couple, maybe even more, [and] figure out how to ship them back. I wanted to put one on my folks’ land in Ohio so I would have a little guesthouse. And one on Kat and Mason’s land Upstate so that there’d be another spot where people would come and stay in the woods.
I’ve also wanted to go to Indonesia and that part of the world in that Pacific basin. It seems like Heaven on Earth. I have a friend who’s traveling there right now, so I’ve been seeing images coming from her over the Internet.
It seems like it’s an aesthetic culture, that beauty is one of the pursuits of life and sort of prioritized in a way that just doesn’t exist here in the slightest. I can definitely see that as another aspect of religion, when it results in a creative outpouring. In general, that Hindi approach, the giving of offerings, [as] your religious practice, seems like the ultimate. It seems so deep and simple at the same time, that gratitude is the practice. Like the pinnacle of human culture [to] live in that kind of beauty and peace. And I know it isn’t always peaceful at all. There’s the other side of the coin, I know. In my mind, that seems ideal.
I do have that sense that all these kids in middle America, who are freaking out and killing people or killing themselves, don’t have a sense of their own importance or that they can do anything in the world that would be good. They’re obviously not being given good options. Wouldn’t it be better to be in a world where you actually knew that you were going to do what your dad did, and had the sense that you’re needed to carry on? Then again, if you didn’t want to do what your dad did that was a huge trap, too. We humans can be disgruntled by any number of things when it comes down to it. Whatever we don’t have that somebody else might.
What’s tragic to you?
I consider the impoverishment of the middle class and the further impoverishment of the poor tragic. My fear is that as the trend of more wealth and resources being controlled by fewer people continues, the huge majority that is impoverished will no longer be able to attain their ideals and we will be back to a world when most people's lives are nasty brutish and short.
People can only be their best selves when they feel secure in having their basic needs met. They have to feel like they can share, afford to give something extra, and have some time to be creative. I feel like corporate crunch, the demand for the growth paradigm, is just really short-sighted. That humans are being forced to live meaner, more fraught, and less creative and productive lives because they’re struggling to survive. And it shouldn’t be. It’s such a travesty of our supposed wealth in this country. That’s the economics of human tragedy.
And there’s this earth-shifty tragedy, which is the environmental shifts. The earth will abide, of course, but it certainly will make other life forms living on the earth uncomfortable, and possibly a lot more limited species-wise. I really am a fan of the diversity and of humans, too, but I definitely think that we may need to get knocked back some. I think that’s the thing that I fear and the tragedy, and also in some weird way, what I’m hopeful for.
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