today is my brother's birthday and my birthday is on friday.
when we were kids, more often than not, we'd celebrate our birthdays together. two birds, one stone = two kids, one cake. :) and even though i didn't really like that at the time, the memory is very sweet now.
a few weeks ago, my brother started a conversation about the importance of trying, in any small way, to make this week somehow different than all the weeks that have come and gone. the blur of time and routine. and he made a charge to hold that as a weekly goal.
and we talked about how reading a book or taking a walk is very much a political act these days. every choice endorses a particular way of life. how a person chooses to spend their time states a preference about what a person values. and making those choices thoughtfully gives rise to positive action. as a form of Resistance to the deep level of consumerism/greed that our nation currently resides in, taking a walk or sitting on the floor of a used book store and reading some poetry for free is a very good way to begin. while i'm doing these things i'm outside the nagging feeling of Powerlessness. i'm outside that circle of defeat. instead, i begin struggling toward a deeper faith. faith in anything. faith in everything. but faith nonetheless. my conscious comes forward and i can look at the world through a new lens that encompasses compassion and realizes the need to keep sight of what Nietzsche said:
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
or this statement by Albert Schweitzer:
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
these are very hard things to do. very. but the attempt toward maintaining one's honor and personal values in the face of anger and outrage is so so so important. there is a heavy wind of angry blame blowing across our country. maybe it has always been there but, the current level of hate-mongering that seems to have become permissible (if not outright acceptable), is scary to me. it is alarming to me. and it has taken a huge amount of personal strength to not fire back at people who practice hate speech (in whatever form).
it's one reason why i was so quiet on my blog last week. i've been trying to swallow my own advice and apply it.
and so today, in honor of my brother's birthday and the massive triumph he has accomplished in overcoming our personal past, the fact he IS a self-made man who employs an inspiring amount of dedication toward the goals he has chosen for himself, i will undertake the huge 3.5 mile run this morning. when i come home, i will eat a healthy breakfast of fruit and greek yogurt, i will get back to my work, i will draw and write and read and learn something. learn anything. and i will make a conscious sustained effort to not inadvertently practice (and thereby endorse) modes of interaction that i find to be unethical, abusive, and yep immoral.
blame is a superficial emotion. guilt does not require blame in order to exist. and anger is not wrong or bad- it is how a person chooses to express it that is either positive, negative, or of no consequence whatsoever. i will choose to express my anger by focusing my attention on my own morality and see where I missed the mark... find the place where I slipped, look for the site of improvement that exists within myself and take action there.
my brother is 32 today. on friday i'll be 30. :) i am looking forward to this new number in particular. i'm enjoying seeing a grown-up Womanhood take hold of my body and mind. i'm enjoying noticing how i am coming in to my own now. i'm enjoying seeing my brother grow and change and become stronger and more and more dedicated to ethics. i'm enjoying figuring out how to blend lived experience with theory and philosophy and the creative impulse. and, for however hard it is to accomplish, i enjoy the charge to somehow make this week of my life different from all the others. i can start by making myself, my inner world, a bit different. to make my insides match my outsides and vice versa. to live what i believe. and to choose what i believe with care, love, and lots of self-examination.
happy birthday, andy. i love you and i am so proud of you.
Showing posts with label personal integrity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal integrity. Show all posts
Aug 30, 2010
Aug 24, 2010
the regular fears
my internet connection has been failing off and on for the past week and half and has become totally unreliable. i called customer service and they let me know our modem is bad and so a man is coming out today to check it out and hopefully give us a new one. the upside to this is that yesterday after posting about kate's book, my internet was down all day- effectively hog tying me and keeping me from deleting the post... which i sorta wanted to do and was in a panic all day long, waiting for my phone to ring, and going over and over in my head fear-driven conversations and how to explain the difference between art and life, how to use one to inform the other, and that creative license and honesty are an imperative of our times, etc etc etc. ha!
and then i started thinking about lady gaga. yep. she is a recent fascination of mine. and i thought how a lot of people in this country seem to think she's the spawn of Satan and, looking at her work, listening to her songs, and paying attention to her message of self-acceptance and self-love... i really have no clue where these attacks on her are coming from. it's one thing not to like her work, a totally other to label her as "poison for the minds of our children". and i thought: here's this 24 years old girl that has somehow managed to acquire enough strength and stamina to endure such a massive onslaught of hatred and malice, and here i am, a 29 year old girl, fretting about a "review" i wrote about a book i love and posted on my personal blog. a blog which doesn't get a ton of traffic anyway. at least i don't think it does- i disabled the tracker on it months and months and months ago.
but there it is- the thing every person needs to overcome if they expect to be a writer (in the public sense of the word): getting beyond the fear that you will anger or embarrass your family, and speak from a site of truth and strength. let come what may. this is a very very VERY hard thing to do. very.
i love my family. of course i want them to be proud of me, the work i do, and the person i am. we've been through a lot of shit together and have come out on the other side with a deeper understanding of what it is to be resilient, capable, and how to truly practice forgiveness. still, there are some stories that need to be told. they need to be told because silence seems to have (strangely) become the dominant mode of our era. these stories we have need to be shared. and when i stumble across a piece of writing that i am able to see my own life story in, i feel such a huge comfort. i become stronger. i become more confident, more able to not only stand up for the rights of others, but also for my own. i also become more able to forgive, to see the other side. silence prevents forgiveness.
and so, i must find a way to let my words and work keep their wings. i must find a way to shake off fear, run right through it, and just keep digging digging digging. it is a strange world and a strange life and our stories have such value, such power, such music in them. i want to be strong enough to let that fact sit on high and not apologize for the life i have lived and the life i have found as a result.
and then i started thinking about lady gaga. yep. she is a recent fascination of mine. and i thought how a lot of people in this country seem to think she's the spawn of Satan and, looking at her work, listening to her songs, and paying attention to her message of self-acceptance and self-love... i really have no clue where these attacks on her are coming from. it's one thing not to like her work, a totally other to label her as "poison for the minds of our children". and i thought: here's this 24 years old girl that has somehow managed to acquire enough strength and stamina to endure such a massive onslaught of hatred and malice, and here i am, a 29 year old girl, fretting about a "review" i wrote about a book i love and posted on my personal blog. a blog which doesn't get a ton of traffic anyway. at least i don't think it does- i disabled the tracker on it months and months and months ago.
but there it is- the thing every person needs to overcome if they expect to be a writer (in the public sense of the word): getting beyond the fear that you will anger or embarrass your family, and speak from a site of truth and strength. let come what may. this is a very very VERY hard thing to do. very.
i love my family. of course i want them to be proud of me, the work i do, and the person i am. we've been through a lot of shit together and have come out on the other side with a deeper understanding of what it is to be resilient, capable, and how to truly practice forgiveness. still, there are some stories that need to be told. they need to be told because silence seems to have (strangely) become the dominant mode of our era. these stories we have need to be shared. and when i stumble across a piece of writing that i am able to see my own life story in, i feel such a huge comfort. i become stronger. i become more confident, more able to not only stand up for the rights of others, but also for my own. i also become more able to forgive, to see the other side. silence prevents forgiveness.
and so, i must find a way to let my words and work keep their wings. i must find a way to shake off fear, run right through it, and just keep digging digging digging. it is a strange world and a strange life and our stories have such value, such power, such music in them. i want to be strong enough to let that fact sit on high and not apologize for the life i have lived and the life i have found as a result.
Aug 22, 2010
2 things
it would behove me (and every artist on the planet) to remember:
"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."
~John Stuart Mill
and
we have fallen to a strange era, it seems, where politicking has replaced integrity. the affiliation, the cord between names is king.
silence quickly follows.
if artists don't risk being laughed at, shunned, who will? if artists don't speak frankly about injustices, large and small, who will? if artists don't stick to their guns, who will? who will inspire others to investigate this world, unearth the abandoned ethics, search for meaning, create meaning, give us all a reason to fight, and believe that life isn't pointless? if artists can't be brave, who can be?
since the time of the renaissance, it has ceased to be in the job description for an artist to do what they are told. we work for no king other than King Art itself.
i've said it once and i'll say it again because I need to hear it and maybe other artists do to:
integrity is NOT a rear-guard notion.
"The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time."
~John Stuart Mill
and
we have fallen to a strange era, it seems, where politicking has replaced integrity. the affiliation, the cord between names is king.
silence quickly follows.
if artists don't risk being laughed at, shunned, who will? if artists don't speak frankly about injustices, large and small, who will? if artists don't stick to their guns, who will? who will inspire others to investigate this world, unearth the abandoned ethics, search for meaning, create meaning, give us all a reason to fight, and believe that life isn't pointless? if artists can't be brave, who can be?
since the time of the renaissance, it has ceased to be in the job description for an artist to do what they are told. we work for no king other than King Art itself.
i've said it once and i'll say it again because I need to hear it and maybe other artists do to:
integrity is NOT a rear-guard notion.
Jul 28, 2010
the facts
i've been a good girl since last october when the diagnosis came. resisted the urge to go online and freak myself out by reading the research available about pancreatic cancer.
but i've stopped being a good girl. it's a member of my immediate family. i am reading it. i know what the statistics are.
relatives have been calling, getting in touch through Facebook, reaching out to me and my siblings.
based on what i've read, surviving this since october is, itself, a miracle.
i am so grateful for that.
and also, for as hard and painful and scary as this whole thing is, i'm grateful for being forced to look at mortality close-up, in a new way- a way that is biological, not theoretical. it's easy to expound upon the horrors of the world from a safe distance. theories show their holes when you get up-close and personal. the importance of love and hope starts to shimmer. the shimmer builds in to a beautiful shine. we begin to twinkle in our moments together. we begin to feel thankful. certain histories finally find a resting place.
other histories don't. beasts i thought had been conquered, or at least put in to a deep, unbreakable hibernation, have come slinking out of their caves. the beasts awaken. writhe. scream. blood in their mouths and caked to the claw.
i feel lost some days. i spend a lot of time feeling afraid of the world but, somehow, still loving it. somehow, still wanting to help. somehow, not sarcastic. still... this weighty fear. fear that i will make the wrong decision, the wrong turn, waste my time, waste the time of others, and staring with my gaping O of a mouth at how horribly short Time is.
all i can think some days is hurry hurry, get the paintings out so she can see them. so she can see i accomplished something. so she can be proud of me.
there are lots of mornings when i want to ignore the alarm clock. i hear it and think what's the fucking point? plenty of mornings where i wake up feeling so stunted and small, just like a little girl. floundering and frail and just so bent up by fear. the dark. no night-light. no angels. no open door. there are mornings i wake up crying.
i reach for my notebook. i reach for my pencils. i make drawings.
the amazing/odd thing about it, is that i'm doing the best work i've ever done. at least that's the way it looks to my eye. somehow this fear has armed me with an unexpected drive to push the work further, go deeper, take chances, be brave in a way i hadn't yet learned to do.
there is a lot of anger in it. there is a lot of sadness. but i think there's also a lot of hope.
it's the hope that lives in these pieces that are the most important part. it is the portion of the work that i am most proud of. it is the site i try to lay down in. i live so far away from her.
since the beginning it seems, our little family has been a magnet for tragedy. i know we're not exceptional in that. tragedy is not as rare as people like to believe it is. nevertheless, the division and splintering and unfixable things that have resulted are really hard to look at some days.
the divorce. the swimming accident. my father. ambulances. hospitals. halo bolted to skull. poverty. ugliness. abuses. falling in with a bad crowd. bad mean boyfriend. scary situations. and then the work of repairing one's mind, one's broken heart, one's dream of life. and now cancer. now chemo.
these are the things i'm writing about in The Letter- the 9,000 words that have been typed out and are morphing in to something else. i have no clue what yet but it just keeps on pouring pouring pouring on days when i'm strong enough to be a vehicle for it.
this is the well that all the new work is rising from.
and the new work brings me closer to the kind of artist i want to be. the kind of human i want to be. to find a way to create some sort of beneficial, hopeful thing out of all this. but it also leads me away from certain ideas, certain places. it has to. it's unavoidable. the lineage has become clearer.
it's time to take certain risks.
it's scary and sad and overwhelming, but it's also a very positive action. ask any baby bird about the terror of the free fall when they are first urged out of the nest. that's the stage i'm in. it is a necessary stage.
because if i say i mean it and i say i believe in the power and worth of art and i say art saves lives, then i am charged to follow a particular road. a road that has all sorts of barricades across it and all sorts of pitfalls and potholes, a road that has no caution signs, a road that will be dark and lonely at times. but i must follow it. i must. i have to try to be brave. and so i cut away my safety net, in spite of all the things that are going on within my family... or maybe because of them. maybe it is because i see how short and uncertain a single life is. how full of opportunity, how full of chance, how full of the inexplicable...
i've asked to be released from my contract. the gallery agrees it is time. it is sad for both of us even though it is best for both of us. we've been building toward this moment for a year. it's time for this baby bird to jump. it's good to have support in this. it's good to find myself in the position to take a good hard look at my work and the kind of artist i am. this is an opportunity for me to get very specific about my goals as an artist, to work and struggle as hard as i can. i'm lucky to have so much encouragement from the people in my life. i'm lucky for the open door that remains. i'm lucky to have the friendship and support i've received. i'm very lucky.
and mostly, lucky to have art in my life. this outlet. this desire to make maps out of all these things. maps and poems and portraits. documents of hope. documents of desire. documents of my passage through this world. i am not joking when i say ART SAVES LIVES. it does. it has saved mine, over and over again, since the very beginning. and i am blessed.
i am very very very blessed.
but i've stopped being a good girl. it's a member of my immediate family. i am reading it. i know what the statistics are.
relatives have been calling, getting in touch through Facebook, reaching out to me and my siblings.
based on what i've read, surviving this since october is, itself, a miracle.
i am so grateful for that.
and also, for as hard and painful and scary as this whole thing is, i'm grateful for being forced to look at mortality close-up, in a new way- a way that is biological, not theoretical. it's easy to expound upon the horrors of the world from a safe distance. theories show their holes when you get up-close and personal. the importance of love and hope starts to shimmer. the shimmer builds in to a beautiful shine. we begin to twinkle in our moments together. we begin to feel thankful. certain histories finally find a resting place.
other histories don't. beasts i thought had been conquered, or at least put in to a deep, unbreakable hibernation, have come slinking out of their caves. the beasts awaken. writhe. scream. blood in their mouths and caked to the claw.
i feel lost some days. i spend a lot of time feeling afraid of the world but, somehow, still loving it. somehow, still wanting to help. somehow, not sarcastic. still... this weighty fear. fear that i will make the wrong decision, the wrong turn, waste my time, waste the time of others, and staring with my gaping O of a mouth at how horribly short Time is.
all i can think some days is hurry hurry, get the paintings out so she can see them. so she can see i accomplished something. so she can be proud of me.
there are lots of mornings when i want to ignore the alarm clock. i hear it and think what's the fucking point? plenty of mornings where i wake up feeling so stunted and small, just like a little girl. floundering and frail and just so bent up by fear. the dark. no night-light. no angels. no open door. there are mornings i wake up crying.
i reach for my notebook. i reach for my pencils. i make drawings.
the amazing/odd thing about it, is that i'm doing the best work i've ever done. at least that's the way it looks to my eye. somehow this fear has armed me with an unexpected drive to push the work further, go deeper, take chances, be brave in a way i hadn't yet learned to do.
there is a lot of anger in it. there is a lot of sadness. but i think there's also a lot of hope.
it's the hope that lives in these pieces that are the most important part. it is the portion of the work that i am most proud of. it is the site i try to lay down in. i live so far away from her.
since the beginning it seems, our little family has been a magnet for tragedy. i know we're not exceptional in that. tragedy is not as rare as people like to believe it is. nevertheless, the division and splintering and unfixable things that have resulted are really hard to look at some days.
the divorce. the swimming accident. my father. ambulances. hospitals. halo bolted to skull. poverty. ugliness. abuses. falling in with a bad crowd. bad mean boyfriend. scary situations. and then the work of repairing one's mind, one's broken heart, one's dream of life. and now cancer. now chemo.
these are the things i'm writing about in The Letter- the 9,000 words that have been typed out and are morphing in to something else. i have no clue what yet but it just keeps on pouring pouring pouring on days when i'm strong enough to be a vehicle for it.
this is the well that all the new work is rising from.
and the new work brings me closer to the kind of artist i want to be. the kind of human i want to be. to find a way to create some sort of beneficial, hopeful thing out of all this. but it also leads me away from certain ideas, certain places. it has to. it's unavoidable. the lineage has become clearer.
it's time to take certain risks.
it's scary and sad and overwhelming, but it's also a very positive action. ask any baby bird about the terror of the free fall when they are first urged out of the nest. that's the stage i'm in. it is a necessary stage.
because if i say i mean it and i say i believe in the power and worth of art and i say art saves lives, then i am charged to follow a particular road. a road that has all sorts of barricades across it and all sorts of pitfalls and potholes, a road that has no caution signs, a road that will be dark and lonely at times. but i must follow it. i must. i have to try to be brave. and so i cut away my safety net, in spite of all the things that are going on within my family... or maybe because of them. maybe it is because i see how short and uncertain a single life is. how full of opportunity, how full of chance, how full of the inexplicable...
i've asked to be released from my contract. the gallery agrees it is time. it is sad for both of us even though it is best for both of us. we've been building toward this moment for a year. it's time for this baby bird to jump. it's good to have support in this. it's good to find myself in the position to take a good hard look at my work and the kind of artist i am. this is an opportunity for me to get very specific about my goals as an artist, to work and struggle as hard as i can. i'm lucky to have so much encouragement from the people in my life. i'm lucky for the open door that remains. i'm lucky to have the friendship and support i've received. i'm very lucky.
and mostly, lucky to have art in my life. this outlet. this desire to make maps out of all these things. maps and poems and portraits. documents of hope. documents of desire. documents of my passage through this world. i am not joking when i say ART SAVES LIVES. it does. it has saved mine, over and over again, since the very beginning. and i am blessed.
i am very very very blessed.
May 20, 2010
hard look
all these things lately- The Catcher in the Rye, The Land of Green Plums, The Triggering Town, A Clockwork Orange, the letter of intent, my practice itself, writing, writing, writing, the list of deadlines for art opportunities sitting to my right, memories, overcoming past hurts, relationships with family members, the big snarling dog painting on my wall...
all these things begin to point, as glaring as a neon sign, toward one thing: figuring out who i am and how i want to live.
i'm sure i must sound like a broken record on this blog sometimes but self-knowledge is a big issue for me at this point in my life. i need to free myself from a wealth of very large and strange expectations of myself that, when i really sit down and look at them, i have no clue where they came from and yet i nevertheless allow them to exact a very hurtful influence on my opinion of myself, my work, my life, my everything.
for the past several weeks, the last sentence i write in my journal each morning before i get rolling on my day is Believe in yourself. every morning for weeks and weeks and weeks, i have written this sentence. it's finally beginning to make sense in a particular way that lets me know i've misunderstood what believing in one's self really is. today, i realized that the big reason i struggle with believing in myself is because i get focused on whether or not other people believe in me too. when i've allowed this to happen i trade my instincts for their preferences and this has only ever been detrimental to my life in a very sweeping, all-encompassing way. and the nuttiest part about it is that it's basically seeking approval from people who traditionally aren't really even capable of giving it to me anyway. never have been. it's a fucked-up brass ring. an accomplishment spurred by masochism. it's stupid. and in addition to being stupid, it's super destructive.
as i read all these books and write all these winding blog posts and come to the end of another page in my slang-filled journal, i come in to confrontation with myself... how fear of being displeasing has sabotaged a great many things in my life and within myself. in short, i've been holding back... and holding back some very good things.
the latest collection of paintings and drawings have given me a taste of what it is to be fearless again and to practice integrity. it has given me a warmth and hope that i had been living without for a long time it seems like... and that it doesn't really matter if other people approve of what i'm doing and who i am, if i'm happy with what i've done. why this has been such a hard understanding to maintain, i don't know. but it's high time to pretty much say fuck it to other people's definitions of success and their expectations for me. i need to begin the self-assured mantra of i don't care.
i think artists wrestle with this issue a lot. not just professionally, but privately as well. feeling misunderstood and unsupported was the state of affairs for most artists i went to school with. i can't tell you how many people i know whose families scoff at their pursuits, find art and poetry to be laughable, think that it's merely some display of ego. sad. and very hard to overcome. it hurts.
The Storialist left this link in the comments stream of one of the posts below and i keep going back to it. it deals with being present and not worrying about whether or not anyone likes you. it helps me and it got me on track with really thinking about the role i play in feeling minimized in certain relationships, professional or otherwise. it comes down to something as big and bad and basic as the ills of approval-seeking behavior. no good, friends. no good. and it takes a lot of acceptance and guts to get beyond that shit, for sure.
all these things begin to point, as glaring as a neon sign, toward one thing: figuring out who i am and how i want to live.
i'm sure i must sound like a broken record on this blog sometimes but self-knowledge is a big issue for me at this point in my life. i need to free myself from a wealth of very large and strange expectations of myself that, when i really sit down and look at them, i have no clue where they came from and yet i nevertheless allow them to exact a very hurtful influence on my opinion of myself, my work, my life, my everything.
for the past several weeks, the last sentence i write in my journal each morning before i get rolling on my day is Believe in yourself. every morning for weeks and weeks and weeks, i have written this sentence. it's finally beginning to make sense in a particular way that lets me know i've misunderstood what believing in one's self really is. today, i realized that the big reason i struggle with believing in myself is because i get focused on whether or not other people believe in me too. when i've allowed this to happen i trade my instincts for their preferences and this has only ever been detrimental to my life in a very sweeping, all-encompassing way. and the nuttiest part about it is that it's basically seeking approval from people who traditionally aren't really even capable of giving it to me anyway. never have been. it's a fucked-up brass ring. an accomplishment spurred by masochism. it's stupid. and in addition to being stupid, it's super destructive.
as i read all these books and write all these winding blog posts and come to the end of another page in my slang-filled journal, i come in to confrontation with myself... how fear of being displeasing has sabotaged a great many things in my life and within myself. in short, i've been holding back... and holding back some very good things.
the latest collection of paintings and drawings have given me a taste of what it is to be fearless again and to practice integrity. it has given me a warmth and hope that i had been living without for a long time it seems like... and that it doesn't really matter if other people approve of what i'm doing and who i am, if i'm happy with what i've done. why this has been such a hard understanding to maintain, i don't know. but it's high time to pretty much say fuck it to other people's definitions of success and their expectations for me. i need to begin the self-assured mantra of i don't care.
i think artists wrestle with this issue a lot. not just professionally, but privately as well. feeling misunderstood and unsupported was the state of affairs for most artists i went to school with. i can't tell you how many people i know whose families scoff at their pursuits, find art and poetry to be laughable, think that it's merely some display of ego. sad. and very hard to overcome. it hurts.
The Storialist left this link in the comments stream of one of the posts below and i keep going back to it. it deals with being present and not worrying about whether or not anyone likes you. it helps me and it got me on track with really thinking about the role i play in feeling minimized in certain relationships, professional or otherwise. it comes down to something as big and bad and basic as the ills of approval-seeking behavior. no good, friends. no good. and it takes a lot of acceptance and guts to get beyond that shit, for sure.
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