As I suffered through the ranting screaming noise being piped down the telephone while I waited to speak to a Real Person at the IRD (as opposed to the stilted soliloquies I had already endured to discover which phone buttons to push in order to move me closer to my Ultimate Goal of talking to a Human Being who would listen and answer me), I wondered why they don’t just let us sit in silence. Then I realised the silence would go on for so long that they might think we think they have forgotten about us. But by the time we got on to the third song I was thinking that anyway. I surmised I’d have preferred silence from the beginning.
Fortunately, halfway through the second song I managed to switch off from the agony of “how will I ever know” and “I thought it would be forever” and other unrequited love cliches. I took the time to digest what I’d just read on No Impact Man instead. He was up on another one of my soap boxes, and rather than merely repeat what he said, I thought I could add a little.
Everything he said about music, applies equally well to clothing.
Huh? I hear you wondering. Well it would pay you to click on that link above and have a read of his thoughts first, if you’re going to make any sense of mine (which you still might not, but at least you’ll have got something useful from Mr NIM).
He suggests we don’t make music together, because we have technology to relay to us someone else who does it 100 times better than we ever could. And so we listen.
I want to suggest that we don’t sew our own jeans because (among other reasons like inherent laziness and the lack of time to *make* as many things as we could *buy* and the desire for our things to look exactly like everyone else’s and other probably-more-reasonable-excuses) someone else is more expert. You see, when I sew anything I have to sew every single seam myself (even the hem, which I have been known to leave – or the buttonholes, which I still haven’t done on a little suit I made for J12 before she was born and then swore would be finished for each subsequent child, but never has been). This is different to the pair of jeans you buy off the rack – whether that’s a rack in an op shop or a rack that charges $300. Those jeans were made by 73 people – each person does one part and because they sew exactly the same seam every day they get Very Good at it. So when I pick up my slightly-wonky-with-a-wee-wrinkle-not-quite-perfect anything that I’ve sewn, it just doesn’t look as good. (BTW, my been-to-the-factory-in-Cambodia-and-seen-jeans-being-made correspondent says it’s actually more than 85 people….but 73 sounded better, and I certainly can’t be accused of exaggerating)
But just like Mr NIM concluded that it’s not about perfection in music, I would argue it’s not about perfection in our other creative endeavours either. When you start with something from the op shop there’s the rescuing of unwanted products that others are throwing out and turning them into something special. There’s the enjoyment of *producing* instead of simply consuming. When you use second-hand materials, there’s also the satisfaction that comes from knowing you have used something that will now not sit in landfill and has not used up more water and electricity and chemicals and pesticides and petrol to get it, as a new product, to the shop where you just buy it. There’s the peace that comes from living intentionally.
Of course you might now be saying “But I like my Levis” and “I like Brooke Fraser” and “you shouldn’t condemn me for making different choices to you” and “who are you to tell me where to shop?”…..to which I will repsond, I like Brooke Fraser too and I’m not condemning you or telling you where to put your buck. OK? I was just thinking about being producers….and it’s probably just as well the Real Person on the other end of the phone arrived just before the third song finished…or I may have had something to say about the fourth song too;-)
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