I have a job that is sucking away at my soul. (Stick with me, this post is good.) I feel it leaving my body every second that I’m on the clock, like a Dementor administering the Kiss of Death. I feel like I’m lying on the ground beside a frozen lake and monster after monster is feeding off the steady trickle of hazy white life-force that is flowing from my mouth. I feel this every time the phone rings and I jump with fright, and every evening around 8 o’clock when I experience a panic attack at the realization I have to be back in that same horrible cell in twelve hours.
It’s not a bad job. Someone will undoubtedly like this job, even enjoy it. Someone would want to get here early and work overtime.
But as someone who has to have a passion for what she’s doing, that someone is not me.
Sunday, I had lunch with my Grandpa and found out that he had wanted to be a doctor. He tried to squeeze in as much premed as possible to avoid being drafted so they would let him stay in school to be a doctor for the troops, but he ended up in the Merchant Marines because he is left handed. Someone advised him against going to medical school to become a surgeon unless he thought he could operate with his right hand. Because all operating rooms were set up for right-handers.
Sixty years ago, my Grandpa became a banker because he was left-handed. Now, I live a time of people who want you to succeed even if you believe that you can procreate with your same sex. While I don’t believe in a lot of the humanistic progressive thinking, I can appreciate that many younger companies are coming around to the realization that you don’t have to have a college degree to be good at something. You don’t have to have a college degree to be good at anything; in fact, having a college degree only means that you’re as good as the books you read. You’re not necessarily innovative or smart, you’re not necessarily valuable or have anything new to bring to the table.
(There is no new thing under the sun. And the people said, Amen.)
I know there’s a place for me with my quilts, and my paintings, and my (not) leafless trees and their exposed roots. I just haven’t found it yet.
But, I know that it’s coming very soon, because I am at my wits end and I’m a mere fraction of the girl at 6 who could draw a duck on the water and it’s reflection with pastels, and there has to be a window open somewhere.
People who make art bother me. Not everyone who makes art is an artist. Not everyone who makes what they’re calling art is actually making anything remotely artful. But, one of my problems with art class in college was the judgment being cast upon something that they were calling “self expression”. So I don’t know how I can sit here and decide what is art and what isn’t. That would make me a hypocrite, and we’ve already covered that.
But is it a loaf of marble pound cake sitting in the Starbucks display? No, I think we’ve decided it’s not. And there you have it: not everything created is art. Not even a pleasant looking swirl of chocolate on vanilla.
So what makes that white square with a green and black border art? Or that silly decoupage table top. You didn’t make anything on there! You just cut out pictures and pasted them to wood!
At any rate, it’s not so much the art of people who make it that bothers me, it’s the people themselves, the things they say, and the way they work. I guess maybe I don’t like the word art; it’s too broad and indifferent, not discerning, has no taste or feeling, and has lost its meaning. It’s the flippancy with which they regard what they’re doing. But, not everyone does the same things for the same reasons, and it’s improper of me to demean someone else’s because they’re different from mine.
Why I make things:
1) I have a busy mind.
2) I inherited the talent from my mother.
3) I have a compulsion.
Those may be all the same reason. All three complement each other well, and all three could apply to any other person who just “makes art” in their spare time, for the fun of it, for a career, as a sellout job, for commercial marketing. But my third belongs with a fourth, and the combination is not unique to me and belongs to many real artists who have the compulsion.
Yes, I just egotistically called myself a real artist. Now, please disregard this entire post as it is meaningless drivel. I guess, perhaps, a real artist doesn’t talk about it and that’s the heart of why he makes. (Oh my! That wasn’t politically correct, and what a sexist I am!)
The fourth is a loss and an inability to communicate, which I have since learned to develop to an extent, and many other artists have as well, but the best, I think, don’t. It’s a toss up: do you learn to overcome your faults and deficiencies, or forego in order to remain a destitute and starving artists, who may potentially become posthumously famous and inspire thousands of other wannabe destitutes? Probably, the best recognize and try, but fail; or don’t recognize; or are so overcome and ravaged by failure that their recognition of the fault provokes no desire for change.
Obviously, I’m not so far gone. Self deprecation: I may be real, but I’m certainly no van Gogh (or Michael Jackson). Even though recovery has been had, or is imminent, there is still a residual compulsion – feelings turned into images to be communicated, appearing and sticking in a mind. Maybe the feelings can now be explained, or explained away, and the pictures have lost their meaning, but they don’t go anywhere and are still far too beautiful to remain in a mind. Especially a curious one who likes pretty things and watching something appear where nothing was.
“Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.” Van Gogh
And with that, I lock comments! Just kidding.
Tonight, I attended the WA Ladies’ Bible study where the topic was encouragement. Oh, the irony! Also See: Please now disregard the post above due to its entire lack of encouragement. (Unless you’re insightful enough to find some kind of happiness in there. It makes me encouraged, and wasn’t meant to be negative. But, like many things I write, perhaps the sarcasm and cynicism didn’t come off quite so funny as it was in my head.)
I paid particular attention to the discussion that went on around me because I don’t have a lot of experience in the sympathy department. I don’t get sympathy or empathy, and I could point you to the painting that best illustrates why exactly I don’t, but that’s another post. My brand of sympathy usually consists of, “It’s time to get over it,” or, “Obviously it wasn’t meant to be – move on,” and I learned that was bad. I already knew it was bad, okay? I just wasn’t ready to accept that it’s really so bad that it shouldn’t be said unless someone is purposefully wallowing and wants to be dragged out of it and taken for some fresh sugar cane Dr Pepper in Waco.
Highlights that were particularly meaningful to me:
1) There was talk about depression and how a lot of Christian (therapist) idea is, “Pray about it.” This was only briefly mentioned, and with a word said about how there are actual real doctors that prescribe actual real medication for actual real problems with depression. This is important to me because I spent many hours of my childhood in a “Christian” therapist’s office (not necessarily for depression – sometimes it was a fictitious eating disorder or sexual abuse – read: no formal medical education; sometimes I felt like a science experiment) and these people are very close to that dark place in my being where realtors live.
2) When someone is dealing with some issue in which they need encouraging, don’t give up after they blow you off once. You never know when the switch will click and they’ll be ready to accept help. Try again and again. Can you imagine being so low and being bugged and pestered by people who are trying to help you, then finally waking up and deciding that you want help, but those people aren’t anywhere around? Maybe you’d want to sink back into your pit because – hey – who cares. And the fact that ladies in the class were bringing this up was really interesting to me.
3) Just to please my mother. Like my car and my job.