Art + Friendship
Drive west of Washington, DC, past the hip neighbourhood of Clarendon and mansions of McLean and you’ll come to a small strip mall in Vienna, Virginia. Pull into the skinny parking lot, and you’ll see that, sandwiched between the Walgreens and Advance Auto Parts, is Jammin Java, an independent concert venue that might otherwise be mistaken for a strip club. The mornings bounce with babies and toddlers clapping along to children’s music shows. The evenings buzz with local songwriters and touring bands peddling their merchandise. I spent almost a decade living and playing music in northern Virginia, and Jammin Java was the hub.
The dark, sticky sweet bar was an inviting place for everyone—skater kids and lobbyists alike. So it was no surprise that the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation, and Culture, a think tank, was hosting an event at Jammin Java. A college friend was the Institute’s program director at the time, and he knew I frequented the venue. They were anchoring the evening around the renowned painter Makoto Fujimura, and my friend asked if I would play an opening set for Mako’s address. Intrigued by the chance to mash my music with a think tank, I said yes.
The night of the event, my band and I settled into Jammin’s green room, a cornucopia of stickers plastering the walls. We took the stage, shared our songs, and scurried off. Mako was waiting in the wings, surrounded by cracked cymbals and backline drum gear. He turned to me and said, “Excellent job. Your voice sounds like it will thrive on the margins.” The margins? What aspiring pop artist wants to be told their voice will flourish on the margins?
In Mako’s seminal book Culture Care, he describes artists as “border-stalkers”—people who bob and weave along the margins of coherent communities, and in doing so become the menders of culture wars. He explores how creativity often emerges from these verges, cross-sections where novel things thrive.
It would be years before I would read Culture Care, but Mako’s intuition that I was a “border-stalker” intrigued me. His naming of a pattern in my artistic life, a pattern I often viewed as a weakness, opened up a surprise horizon.
Read the full article in Comment Magazine Online.