Protect Your Wrongs

This season in the sign of Sagittarius is warm, even if the temperatures isn’t, and I have more social plans lately --normal for holiday times for many people, right?
 
I'm going out with Sister this afternoon to the café at the art institute, if she doesn't cancel because MORE SNOW is forecast. 

I said I'd post Sister's final baby quilt.
These are the pieces.
I was so happy to see that she chose the colors herself, instead of asking the quilter she considers her Color Queen, like she usually does, which makes me sad:
I want people to trust their artistic intuition, even if it's bad.
I want this because everything conspires to make us, to “help” us Get it Right. 

A Procrustean bed that punishes wrong choices squashes creative spirit. 

Don't be afraid to Get it wrong!
I suppose it could be said that Sister's choice of ONE dark piece in the lower left corner is "bad", 
but I wouldn't say so.

In fact, I think it's a bit brilliant:
The weight of the dark color among the bright ones is like a dissonant note in a piece of music--something you want to "solve", but can't, so you're left a little ... jolted. 
Jolted awake.

Or, it's like art that is a little off-center. 
Wrongness invites us to engage.
For example, this woodblock print, below, by Japanese woman artist  Iwami Reika. 
I want to nudge the sun into the center of the wood knot, but the sense is that it'll be moving itself. Rising!

Via Smith College

Of course that was a masterful choice, not a beginner’s fumble. 

My happiness was dashed when the Color Queen pointed out to Sister the disproportion of the dark square. 
That sounds dramatic, but really, I my heart sank.
Sister, though, sounded grateful for the help and happy to "fix" it with a brighter floral print. 

It's correct now––matchy-matchy, pretty. 
Of course that's fine for a baby blanket;
 but the point is, I'd cheered that Sister had made her own artistic choice.

Importantly, I bet her friend didn't even ask her if she liked the dark square there, I bet she just pointed out that it was wrong.
(Hm, I wonder how the dark square would have looked in the center...)

III. "How do we guard our souls?”

Blogger Michael recently asked, "How do we guard our souls?” 
Especially in these days of political madness, he meant, but the question is always relevant. 
There are always forces that work to grind us down.

Simple entropy, for instance: 
things, including our bodies, fall apart. 
It takes energy to maintain them, 
and the Conservation of Energy kicks in--
not the law of physics, but the way a system prefers to use minimum effort.

Laziness is an emotional coping mechanism for me--I tend to let my energy drop. Some of this is good self-protection, 
but INERTIA kicks in, and that's a problem--
once energy drops, it's hard to rev it up again.

Related, there's the problem of 'Why bother?' 
Why expend energy in a world that seems not to care?

So, yeah, I think Choosing Your Own Colors is good, vital work to push back at the dimming norm.
The outcome matters aesthetically and socially, but it has nothing to do with guarding your soul--that comes from simply spending the energy to make the choice. 
And that's of primary importance.

A.I. could choose correct colors. 
It can't guard a soul. 
The opposite, in fact--it wants to make it easy for us to 'get it right'.

But it isn't easy to get it right!
And the effort, the expenditure of energy, to make artistic choices is protective of the soul
---like the way carrying heavy weight makes our bones stronger.

Getting It Wrong is becoming a marker signifying
 A Human Made This.

A lumpy knitted object, a poorly worded thank-you note, an off-balance hand-painted poster---and anything ugly and misshapen. 
Bodies too, as people are sculpting them to their preference, surgically, chemically, and otherwise-- to a sci-fi level.

Be ugly! Make lopsided stuff! Save the Humans!

Guard your soul.

Any thoughts on how?