Thought Residencies

This is Tanisha Taitt and Thought #2. An acquaintance said to me the other day "Well obviously you're a liberal", and although I have no problem being thought of as a liberal, I don't think of myself that way. I tend to consider myself a progressive, and that's because the word 'progressive' indicates motion and movement in a way that the word 'liberal' doesn't quite. I am so passionate and committed to the idea of moving us forward -- forward in our thinking, forward in our ability to connect and communicate -- that 'progressive' resonates with me so much more.

This is Tanisha Taitt. Welcome to my thought residency, and Thought #1. I've been hearing a lot lately that what the world needs now is love, and that's true. But if you think of love as a flower... it cannot grow on its own. What the world needs now is the seed of courage, the soil of justice, the water of forgiveness and the sunlight of truth -- in order to create conditions in which that flower can grow. We cannot leapfrog our way to love. We have to cultivate it.

Hi my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my tenth thought. So my seat mate - the drone-maker, who also referred to Chile as the free-est country in the world - because there are no regulations for business people. He's talking to me about the grey area and wanting to know more about it. I'm really interested in his job - where it's al black and white according to him. And what's fascinating to me about him is he is afraid of violence - and he tells me this.

Hi my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my ninth thought. So my seat mate who makes drones for the US Government, he talked about how one of the most incredible experiences he ever had was when he sat in front of a painting for a full hour at an art gallery and tried to decipher what it was telling him. He understood this whole thing about the grey area he wanted to know more about it - how one goes about looking for the grey area.

Hi my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my eighth thought. So, there I was talking to my seat mate and he was telling me that what he loves about his job of making drones for the US government is that it's black and white, that all he has to do is manufacture these drones and get the bad guys in the middle east. And I told him that my line of work is almost the opposite: it is all about working in the grey area and looking for the complexity of the human experience.

Hi my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my seventh thought. So, speaking of labour versus the art world…I was on a plane yesterday, here in the United States, where I am for a week, and my seat mate was a man who had voted for Trump, and is on the Christian right and whose job it is to manufacture drones for the US government. We had a long talk, a very pleasant talk and he showed a lot of interest in the world of art in the world of ideas

Hi my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my sixth thought. So, I am wondering how to bring that sense of camaraderie that I experienced in the labour world, of being a waitress, or working the assembly line at the factory, which I did, into the world of being creative, into the world of ideas where I spend most of my day staring at a computer screen, wracking my brains and exhausting myself and depleting myself and not having the energy of other people who are all working on the same thing to bring us forward.

Hi my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my fifth thought. So, there I am with my pal at the cafe and he is telling me about how he left the theatre world because he was so tired of the solitude around being an artist and I remember when I was an actress for 4 years in my early twenties and the camaraderie around being a waitress and being around people all day, and how much I miss that, and how can I possibly bring that feeling into my life of creation?

Hi my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my fourth thought. So there I am talking to my neighbourhood pal who used to be a theatre artist and is now a bartender and he's saying how is misses living in the world of ideas, and I am thinking about how attractive the world of labour seems to me in that moment, and he tells me that one of the reasons he left the theatre was because he was so tired of the solitude, that just couldn't deal with the solitude of being an artist anymore, and I think about that.

Hi, my name is Carmen Aguirre and this is my third thought. So, I am talking to my neighbourhood acquaintance and he is talking about how he left theatre school and is now a bartender and that he misses living in the world of ideas, and this gets me to thinking…what it is like to live in the world of labour, the world where you just physically labour…. as opposed to spending the whole day trying to come up with ideas, which can be exhausting on its own.