The people in my life are extraordinary. Some are extraordinary writers; some are extraordinary artists and/or actors. Some are extraordinarily compassionate and open-hearted. Every single one of them is an extraordinary thinker in one way or another. And I’ve spent most of my life just trying to keep up with them.
I’ve spent time trying to keep up with them by rebelling against them of course. By rejecting their favorite authors or directors, artists or schools of thought. Thinking perhaps that if I could shoot down these chosen masters that perhaps even though we disagreed I’d still be at their level.
I’ve also spent time devoting myself to being an utter cultural snob. Only choosing the artsy movies, the indie bands, the out of mainstream books, the underground thinkers. Attempting to elevate myself above the common trends by only exposing myself to the best.
Over the years however I’ve pretty much just accepted that most of the people around me are just flat smarter than I am. And that’s totally cool. I mean first of all, they choose to hang out with me even though they’re smarter and they constantly challenge me and I think that rocks. But I’ve also had to strike a kind of balance between the challenge and just what I like.
And much to their dismay, I really like things like Dan Brown’s books, beat ‘em up blow ‘em up movies, Dawson’s Creek, tomato beers and queso dip made with Velveeta. I could totally overanalyze myself and trace back their etymology to some childhood event or how they may be tied to a very special memory thereby forever tying them to my internal list of favorites. But at the end of the day, I just like what I like. And I’m cool with that. I don’t really care anymore that I look at a piece of modern art and think that The Boy could do it better. I don’t mind when friends laugh at me for getting emotionally invested with teenage TV characters embroiled in overwrought angst.
They love me anyway and that’s just how I roll. I’ll take their challenge any day just as soon as I’m done watching X-Men.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
10/14/09
9/19/09
The Chicken and The Egg
I’ve been thinking about confidence quite a bit lately. Wondering how important it really is to overall success in life. What’s the balance, if there is one, between pure talent and confidence in that talent. Which comes first? I know it’s a chicken and egg sort of question which after much debate you realize it doesn’t really matter which came first as long as they’re both there. But equally as important is that you cannot have one without the other.
I wonder if that dependence plays a bigger part than most realize. I really wish that I knew whether Charles Dickens or Gustav Klimt or David Sedaris or Margaret Atwood had the kind of overwhelming confidence that kept them going through rejection or writer’s block or running out of paint. I wonder if they had the utmost confidence in their abilities or if they just kept going because it was all they could do. That their need to create was completely outside the realm of caring whether or not they were appreciated or noticed or judged as good.
Because I have always been my worst critic. Because I’ve always been the one to hold myself back when it comes to pretty much everything. I pigeon-holed my writing into research based forms because they are widely accepted (and marketable) and I knew that I was good at it. Plus it’s pretty easy not to take it personally when you don’t get a grant because while the writing is important, mostly it’s all about the foundation and the proposed project.
Sometimes I think I might have epic stories in me, vast adventures swirling with romance and intrigue. But then I sit down to write, trying to put down any preconceptions or assumptions and just give myself the freedom to write what’s there. And the wisps of characters and distant vistas start to fade in the face of confrontation. And I wish I had the balls to demand that they line back up front and center. To forbid them from scattering like mice when a light flips on.
Maybe someday I’ll be able to let the possibility of my talent share the room with the whisper of confidence.
I wonder if that dependence plays a bigger part than most realize. I really wish that I knew whether Charles Dickens or Gustav Klimt or David Sedaris or Margaret Atwood had the kind of overwhelming confidence that kept them going through rejection or writer’s block or running out of paint. I wonder if they had the utmost confidence in their abilities or if they just kept going because it was all they could do. That their need to create was completely outside the realm of caring whether or not they were appreciated or noticed or judged as good.
Because I have always been my worst critic. Because I’ve always been the one to hold myself back when it comes to pretty much everything. I pigeon-holed my writing into research based forms because they are widely accepted (and marketable) and I knew that I was good at it. Plus it’s pretty easy not to take it personally when you don’t get a grant because while the writing is important, mostly it’s all about the foundation and the proposed project.
Sometimes I think I might have epic stories in me, vast adventures swirling with romance and intrigue. But then I sit down to write, trying to put down any preconceptions or assumptions and just give myself the freedom to write what’s there. And the wisps of characters and distant vistas start to fade in the face of confrontation. And I wish I had the balls to demand that they line back up front and center. To forbid them from scattering like mice when a light flips on.
Maybe someday I’ll be able to let the possibility of my talent share the room with the whisper of confidence.
6/9/09
Live and Let Live
I have an extremely hard time walking the line between reality and love. There are so many people and things that I love and the boundary between them, with their vibrant colors and fantastical joy, disappears in the face of the cold and stark reality of everyday life. I have so many brilliant and talented people who sing, dance, play music and create amazing works of art with pen, paint and performance. I’ve such deep respect and adoration for these people whom I am lucky enough to call my friends.
The problem is that one of my biggest strengths is also my biggest weakness. I am an eternally hopeful, hopeless romantic. That capacity enables me to be a giver in the broadest sense of the word. I would give anything for my family and friends, especially if it was to help them achieve something they really believed in. It enables me to always see a silver lining. It enables me to always be on the lookout for the light at the end of the tunnel, even when I can’t see my hand in front of my face for the darkness. The flip side, however, is that if one of these people whom I love, has to pass on a gig because they can’t get the time off of work, or they have to shift their artistic style in order to land jobs that will actually pay the bills or they turn their passion into a job that takes them away from everyone who loves them, I get filled with so much irrational anger that I am sure they think I’m crazy.
Anger at the world for low-jacking them in an effort to ensure adherence to a predetermined flight path. Anger that the reality of doing your soul’s work most of the time is not as shiny and ephemeral as it could be. Anger at brilliance compromised.
But even that anger is romanticized I think. Because it goes from one extreme to the other. I think the real problem is not the world, or how artists exist in that world, but my attachment to a romantic vision which in and of itself places limits on love.
The problem is that one of my biggest strengths is also my biggest weakness. I am an eternally hopeful, hopeless romantic. That capacity enables me to be a giver in the broadest sense of the word. I would give anything for my family and friends, especially if it was to help them achieve something they really believed in. It enables me to always see a silver lining. It enables me to always be on the lookout for the light at the end of the tunnel, even when I can’t see my hand in front of my face for the darkness. The flip side, however, is that if one of these people whom I love, has to pass on a gig because they can’t get the time off of work, or they have to shift their artistic style in order to land jobs that will actually pay the bills or they turn their passion into a job that takes them away from everyone who loves them, I get filled with so much irrational anger that I am sure they think I’m crazy.
Anger at the world for low-jacking them in an effort to ensure adherence to a predetermined flight path. Anger that the reality of doing your soul’s work most of the time is not as shiny and ephemeral as it could be. Anger at brilliance compromised.
But even that anger is romanticized I think. Because it goes from one extreme to the other. I think the real problem is not the world, or how artists exist in that world, but my attachment to a romantic vision which in and of itself places limits on love.
4/7/09
4/4/09 - Day One Getaway Weekend
The house we rented is crazy cool and eclectic. It is two octagons joined in the middle by a dining room. It is so much bigger inside that I ever would have thought it was. Underneath the house is the hot spring pool. It’s huge. And the whole property is right on the creek. It’s just beautiful and we’ve gotten to watch huge herds of deer cross the creek several times a day. It’s really very lovely.
All of it is just lovely. We went to Salida today to walk around and check out the town since it had been so long since any of us had been up here and it’s really a very artsy little mountain town. So we spent the morning walking from gallery to gallery until it was time to make our way back to the Treehouse for lunch.
We went into one really amazing gallery called Culture Clash and I found a new artist to love. He moved here after Hurricane Katrina and now lives in Salida, but does shows in Denver as well. He does this amazing industrial art. He makes these rockets out of so many different things, some with old 50’s thermoses for the body of the rocket. And he also made these “Robot Hearts,” that were hearts pieced together and glued onto metal trays made from an assortment of industrial pieces with little pops of color thrown in from bottle caps or old advertisements. Just really beautiful, creative and new. All of his pieces really clicked with me. I’m going to have to look up his next show in Denver.
There were naps and reading and quiet and lots of food throughout the day. We watched “Mamma Mia” tonight before heading to bed. And it’s just such a sweet movie; so rooted in the heart. It totally speaks to the ridiculously hopeless romantic in me. Makes me all weepy and wishy for romance to sail into my life once again. Such silliness. But it was really fun to watch it with girlfriends and sing along to all the wonderful ABBA songs!
Such a killer start to a getaway weekend. Such an opportunity to just be. Again.
All of it is just lovely. We went to Salida today to walk around and check out the town since it had been so long since any of us had been up here and it’s really a very artsy little mountain town. So we spent the morning walking from gallery to gallery until it was time to make our way back to the Treehouse for lunch.
We went into one really amazing gallery called Culture Clash and I found a new artist to love. He moved here after Hurricane Katrina and now lives in Salida, but does shows in Denver as well. He does this amazing industrial art. He makes these rockets out of so many different things, some with old 50’s thermoses for the body of the rocket. And he also made these “Robot Hearts,” that were hearts pieced together and glued onto metal trays made from an assortment of industrial pieces with little pops of color thrown in from bottle caps or old advertisements. Just really beautiful, creative and new. All of his pieces really clicked with me. I’m going to have to look up his next show in Denver.
There were naps and reading and quiet and lots of food throughout the day. We watched “Mamma Mia” tonight before heading to bed. And it’s just such a sweet movie; so rooted in the heart. It totally speaks to the ridiculously hopeless romantic in me. Makes me all weepy and wishy for romance to sail into my life once again. Such silliness. But it was really fun to watch it with girlfriends and sing along to all the wonderful ABBA songs!
Such a killer start to a getaway weekend. Such an opportunity to just be. Again.
1/14/09
Graffiti
I love graffiti. I’m not a huge fan of tagging necessarily, although those who can look at tags and immediately see words and the order they are supposed to go in amaze me. But I really love graffiti. I love the art of it, I love that it can give breath to a city’s soul, I love that it’s something that’s done under cover of night.
When I was a senior in high school and my mom insisted that I get senior pictures taken, I agreed with the condition that I pick the locations. So we went down to LoDo in Denver (the LoDo of my youth, not the yuppie haven it’s become) and took pictures under and around the 20th St. Viaduct (which, incidentally, no longer exists).
There was an old train yard around there as well, so all of my pictures were taken either next to huge walls adorned with graffiti or bright yellow abandoned train cars mottled with rust. It was so much more fun than I ever thought it would be and they turned out perfectly. There was something brilliant about how the bold colors of the graffiti and the train cars balanced against my shyness in front of the camera.
We have train tracks very close to our house now and I get stopped for trains on a regular basis and it seems like the amount of graffiti has decreased while tagging has increased. I wonder what that’s about. Maybe tighter security? Or more graffiti artists finding an audience in less “underground” avenues? I don’t know, but I miss the big pieces on the side of train cars.
If I had one ounce of artistic ability in me, I think I would have been a graffiti artist. I would have loved creeping around at night armed with spray paint and the audacity to inflict my art upon my city. Swirling colors in life size city soul prints.
I know. I’m a bit cheesy today. I’ve just got this totally irrational attachment to graffiti. Part admiration, part envy. It’s just such a free art form. Unencumbered by conventional restraints. And in my current rebellion against convention, it just makes me happy.
When I was a senior in high school and my mom insisted that I get senior pictures taken, I agreed with the condition that I pick the locations. So we went down to LoDo in Denver (the LoDo of my youth, not the yuppie haven it’s become) and took pictures under and around the 20th St. Viaduct (which, incidentally, no longer exists).
There was an old train yard around there as well, so all of my pictures were taken either next to huge walls adorned with graffiti or bright yellow abandoned train cars mottled with rust. It was so much more fun than I ever thought it would be and they turned out perfectly. There was something brilliant about how the bold colors of the graffiti and the train cars balanced against my shyness in front of the camera.
We have train tracks very close to our house now and I get stopped for trains on a regular basis and it seems like the amount of graffiti has decreased while tagging has increased. I wonder what that’s about. Maybe tighter security? Or more graffiti artists finding an audience in less “underground” avenues? I don’t know, but I miss the big pieces on the side of train cars.
If I had one ounce of artistic ability in me, I think I would have been a graffiti artist. I would have loved creeping around at night armed with spray paint and the audacity to inflict my art upon my city. Swirling colors in life size city soul prints.
I know. I’m a bit cheesy today. I’ve just got this totally irrational attachment to graffiti. Part admiration, part envy. It’s just such a free art form. Unencumbered by conventional restraints. And in my current rebellion against convention, it just makes me happy.