The Acorn Economy

In the Audience of The Colour of Ink

After the credits rolled, after the Q & A, I walked out of the lights and off the stage. A woman who looked familiar, but I was sure I’d never met before, intercepted me in the aisle and handed me a wine bag with a bow, which was about the same weight and size of a bottle of celebratory champagne, except that it was more of the ink maker’s champagne— a tall glass jar packed with just the caps of hundreds of acorns. The woman was Kristine Mifsud, an artist I’ve been following for years and wrote about in a previous letter which you should read. It was great to see the real person and have that gift of carefully collected real acorn caps that she knew I would love. And it felt for a minute like I was part of real network of real people really engaged in real things. People that care about each other. People that would collect acorns like they are money and even separate them into caps for inking and seeds for squirrels. The beautiful ridiculousness of that. And thinking about this acorn economy, I thought about something Thomas Little (the extraordinary alchemist that turns guns into ink and reads the future through slime molds) says in The Colour of Ink. He says that for him what really defines ink is its preciousness. And that its power and value come from what we invest in it. And I think the word investment, if it could be like this, sounds beautiful, possible, alive.

I will be taking Kristine’s acorn caps to the workshop I am doing tomorrow in celebration of The Colour of Ink’s theatrical debut across Canada. If you come, we can make some silver acorn cap ink together with them. If you can’t come but join the Colour Lab, or are already a member, I will send you photos from the experiments this weekend with these acorn caps and some recipes or tips. I do charge a nominal $5 US a month fee to read all the posts and be fully a part of the Colour Community because I want to keep writing to you and making the Colour into more and more of place for exchange, and because we are not yet fully living in the acorn economy. So, to keep growing the Colour Movement, I need time, and to get more time, I need more money which is where you come in with your generous support.

Until next week,

Jason