Keeping on, what I'm made of and what I can do, the turmooil underneath. Inspiration and motivation and embracing the fears. I've been thinking a lot about artist's stories. I know where my own inspiration lies. I wonder about other people. I'll start with me, because I can't ask anyone to do for me what I won't. So here's a bit of the painting I'm working on now:
I have long been in love with a place I've never been. When I was younger, I wanted a tribe. A recognizable group to which I belonged. I think this is commonplace for anyone who feels like an outsider or like the last and only. For me, this was mostly because i am mixed race and I grew up in a very pale town. Not rudely so, most of the time, but still. I gravitated toward any other mixed race person I saw, but found there was a kind of magnetic repellant that happened between many of us. The thing about being the last and only is that when you find another one, you either feel like you should be joined at the hip or you reject them. It's difficult to explain, but I understand it, so I won't explain it.
I wanted a country for my tribe, where we could just be without noticing the thing that made us different from everyone else. For mixed race people, the closest thing to a homeland is New Orleans, Louisiana. The place of the first independent black newspaper, and a thriving Creole community. Shit, I speak some French! I love jazz music! And the heat, the mystery, the ready association between life and death, the dancing, the faiths all intermingling, it didn't have to be much to be paradise. I read a book recently called, "A Twisted Ladder" by Rhodi Hawk (If you haven't read it, you should) and was so deeply pulled in, I couldn't see my feet. Like wandering through a cypress swamp right when the moon peeks over the treeline, like sitting in the backseat while something, someone else drives your body to dance, like the lonely howl of a blues man, like cornbread, sweet tea, kudzu, climbing through the spanish moss on an old growth oak tree barefoot. The magical south, I guess. Honeysuckle, magnolia blossoms, kissing on a sunporch on a night so humid your dress is a second skin. The power and mystery, the history of pain and overcoming of pain, the south is rich, bloody soil. And the water, graceful and giving and murderous and callous, takes everything she wants. The Cold War Kids' song "Saint John" about a young man who kills a man who was attacking his sister and now waits on death row, is pure southern gothic. And recently, Adele's song, "Rolling In The Deep" is to me almost exactly a love affair born and died in black bayou water. Of course, the book and later the film that made Savannah, Georgia a tourist droolfest, "Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil" cannot be overcelebrated. The wail of Bessie Smith, the velvet of Billie Holiday. Bourbon straight. Rich.
My imaginary south, and I have to call it that because the real thing is both more and less fantastic, is itself the experience of the mixed-race writ large. The tension between races is a war I fight inside myself. The black King and the white Queen both hold court inside me. I've been called beautiful and ugly, too much of this and not enough of that and vice versa. Close family members do not look like me, the possible variations have made us all different, much as NOLA looks nothing like anything on any side of her. Sexy and vivacious, a place to party and do things you'd never tell your parents about. Ugly and broken, a place to be saved from itself, a project. Me and she, she and me. There are ghosts that whisper in my trees, there are a hundred forms of religious reverence practiced in my cemeteries, churches, livingrooms and town squares.
My magical, mysterious, imaginary south is very much my own self portrait. There is, always, a seperateness, a loneness (not aloneness, not loneliness), the allure, the danger, the myth and magic, the story only hinted at, something coiled, something sharp and dark.
I can hope that over the course of my life, the entirety of my work forms and completes the puzzle of my experience. Soft and sharp, sweet and bitter. Yes, it sounds egocentric, even a little self-aggrandizing. But it's not. We all walk our own road, and in order to both expand and shrink the landscape, our duty is to express to anyone who will listen our own road-learned experience. I do want to know about you.
Laurelin
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Where We Go From Here Is Up To Twister
The spin of a little plastic dial on a brightly painted square of cardboard can leave you in traction. Remember that. I can't forget it. Fate. Destiny. Supposed to anything. Free will. It is my professional opinion that the way these things work is that everything begins with a grand flash to jump start the rolling forward, and then things roll forward. Forward rolling along, the thing rolls over this and that live wire, some of which spark and send the thing careening in some other direction. Some of which are duds and the thing goes about never noticing them at all. Life. Aside from these sparks, catapulting the thing this way and that, there are other things to bump into and they also change the thing's course. Pool balls on a trip-wired table lumpy with land mines. Life. Explosions of joy, explosions of rage, explosions of pain, explosions of compassion, running this way and that just trying to hold on, hold still. Luckily, we are sticky. Sometimes some other thing attaches and rolls along beside for a while. But where we go from here is up to...what? Who?
You don't have to believe I am any good at what I do, but I still get to do it. You cannot stop me, no matter how much you'd like to. Throw your wish against my back, I don't care. The subtle suggestions are the worst. Somebody comes out and says to me that they're not really into what I do, I can either explain or accept. Fine. Move on. Somebody ignores my contribution altogether, somebody laughs behind their hand, somebody rolls their eyes, these things are flaming fucking daggers ripping through the stitching, okay? I have no choice, I am only a ball on a green felt field, rolling. I listen to the rythms, the rumble, the keening inside, and in the interest of self-sustainability, I roll in the direction that affords me a healthy level of pain as opposed to the pain of slow eeking suffocating death. Can you smell the difference, even in the dark? I can. For me, I can. So I tell a story that very few really care to hear. I press a button and nothing happens. I dig a hole and watch it fill in with water. Nevermind, it doesn't have to make sense.
I am leaving tonight on a journey of self, since a friend of mine said she's been taught that all artists should write their experience. I can dig that. I've been reading a lot of artist magazines lately, and I think the worst part is the interview. Interviews are the worst! I feel like we, as the theatergoing public, would all be better served if we just read first-person accounts, autobiographies (not ghost written), diaries, travel journals, etc. There's so much to be said for the perspective of the individual.
As an artist, I am excited to read about other artists' experience, especially female, especially those embracing their hue (bleu cheese and chalk all the way to wet midnight soil), especially people with skin disorders, especially people who are radical of thought, especially those who have chosen the wilder path. I can't speak to everyone personally, so it would be nice to read what they were thinking when they traveled to a certain place or did some thing or met some thing. I don't need to know how they constructed a thing, or even what they were thinking when they constructed said thing, but the life one must wake up and face every day is a hard one, even swimming in all this joy.
I want to know how another person dealt with being laughed at. If you answer, please don't be dismissive. I wouldn't ask if I didn't really want to know.
You don't have to believe I am any good at what I do, but I still get to do it. You cannot stop me, no matter how much you'd like to. Throw your wish against my back, I don't care. The subtle suggestions are the worst. Somebody comes out and says to me that they're not really into what I do, I can either explain or accept. Fine. Move on. Somebody ignores my contribution altogether, somebody laughs behind their hand, somebody rolls their eyes, these things are flaming fucking daggers ripping through the stitching, okay? I have no choice, I am only a ball on a green felt field, rolling. I listen to the rythms, the rumble, the keening inside, and in the interest of self-sustainability, I roll in the direction that affords me a healthy level of pain as opposed to the pain of slow eeking suffocating death. Can you smell the difference, even in the dark? I can. For me, I can. So I tell a story that very few really care to hear. I press a button and nothing happens. I dig a hole and watch it fill in with water. Nevermind, it doesn't have to make sense.
I am leaving tonight on a journey of self, since a friend of mine said she's been taught that all artists should write their experience. I can dig that. I've been reading a lot of artist magazines lately, and I think the worst part is the interview. Interviews are the worst! I feel like we, as the theatergoing public, would all be better served if we just read first-person accounts, autobiographies (not ghost written), diaries, travel journals, etc. There's so much to be said for the perspective of the individual.
As an artist, I am excited to read about other artists' experience, especially female, especially those embracing their hue (bleu cheese and chalk all the way to wet midnight soil), especially people with skin disorders, especially people who are radical of thought, especially those who have chosen the wilder path. I can't speak to everyone personally, so it would be nice to read what they were thinking when they traveled to a certain place or did some thing or met some thing. I don't need to know how they constructed a thing, or even what they were thinking when they constructed said thing, but the life one must wake up and face every day is a hard one, even swimming in all this joy.
I want to know how another person dealt with being laughed at. If you answer, please don't be dismissive. I wouldn't ask if I didn't really want to know.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Chasing Rabbits, Rabbits Chasing Me
In a story recounted by the director Kevin Smith regarding the advice Wayne Gretzky's father bestowed on his talented progeny, he shared the anecdote, "Don't chase the puck. Be where the puck is going." Kevin Smith, talented bastard that he is, understood immediately upon hearing this that chasing the puck is exactly what he'd fallen into doing. The alternative is to use your creative thinking, your artist mind, and innovate for the future. If you allow it, you can help dictate where the puck goes. If you've thought of it but haven't seen it before, it might be worth innovating, oui? He used this advice to make the movie he'd been wanting to make. I think you know the painter's equivalent. The goal is to find a place where honesty pushes one past the place where things are on a grid, past the place where things are already cataloged, and try something new. It might not actually be new, but it will be one's own version of never-before-seen, and that is enough, I think. Following what's fun is one way to do it. Following what's uncomfortable is another. Which direction yields more/better/stronger results? Are they separate at all? Making people uncomfortable can be fun too, you know. What's important is that the lines of communication stay open, and that when it's one's turn to speak into the receiver, the language is truth. I keep dreaming paintings. Faster than I can create them, they keep coming.
Thank you for reading.
-L
Thank you for reading.
-L
Friday, March 25, 2011
sun rise...sun set, and in between I learned to keep learning.
Across a yoga mat from eachother, in "mountain pose", hands together over the heart, this instruction is given in stage whisper:
O: "Alright. You must listen the kung fu master."
Me: "Okay"
O: "You must listen the kung fu quiet"
Me: "Okay"
O: "You must listen who talk to me and hear who talk to me"
Me: "Okay:"
O: "This is the inconuium (sp?) of the kung fu. You must be quiet of the eyes and of the ears. This is where I will be and this is where you will be. So now we have to do stretches, kung fu master."
She leads me in various stretches.
I wonder what keeps people afraid of themselves. I wonder why the constant tug of war between the side that enjoys the bed and the side that thinks ice camping sounds fun. I guess that's just life, the struggle is the education. With regard to artwork, the options are infinite; at the very least, as many ways to do it as there are people to try to do it. I've always been into weird, but it doesn't mean I have to be one of those to produce it. Or maybe it does. What are the requirements? Be honest. Be as pure in your execution, in your conviction, as is humanly possible. At all times? At all times. All of that and none of that is true. I don't actually have to do anything. I think I was surprised to find that out. I don't have to show anybody anything, or impress anyone, or make anyone's eyes or mind expand. Not really. But in figuring that out, I also figured out that I really actually do want to. But I want to do it right. If there were fewer artists in the world, then those who produce would be able to produce less meaningful, less honest work and maybe convince people the opposite were true. With such a crowded field, what are the reuqirmeents to stand out and get noticed? Technique is good, tenacity is better, but there really is nothing like honesty. All my heroes were fans of it. It's what made them weird, and what made them black sheep, what made them ostracized, and what made them heroes. I don't feel any kind of need to blaze a trail, but damnit, I am tired of being so predicatible to myself. This, my friends, is what they call the box boundary. From here, I am lying to myself if I stay where I've been. From here, I must expand or be untrue. I want my art to matter, and for that to happen, it has to matter to me, I guess is what I'm getting at. The shift might not be recognizable at first, so I'm not really sure why I'm saying anything about it. I love and am very proud of what I've done. I happily add my stamp to any of it. What happens next will have to use that and travel deeper is all. I look forward to making some people uncomfortable. For the first time in a long time, the art feels like work again, the good kind. I feel my chest expanding against deep sea pressure to stay closed, dragging myself up. It feels good. I ask only to recognize the right kind of pain when it happpens, and sit inside it until I come out the other side. Stronger.
macho garcias.
laurelin
O: "Alright. You must listen the kung fu master."
Me: "Okay"
O: "You must listen the kung fu quiet"
Me: "Okay"
O: "You must listen who talk to me and hear who talk to me"
Me: "Okay:"
O: "This is the inconuium (sp?) of the kung fu. You must be quiet of the eyes and of the ears. This is where I will be and this is where you will be. So now we have to do stretches, kung fu master."
She leads me in various stretches.
I wonder what keeps people afraid of themselves. I wonder why the constant tug of war between the side that enjoys the bed and the side that thinks ice camping sounds fun. I guess that's just life, the struggle is the education. With regard to artwork, the options are infinite; at the very least, as many ways to do it as there are people to try to do it. I've always been into weird, but it doesn't mean I have to be one of those to produce it. Or maybe it does. What are the requirements? Be honest. Be as pure in your execution, in your conviction, as is humanly possible. At all times? At all times. All of that and none of that is true. I don't actually have to do anything. I think I was surprised to find that out. I don't have to show anybody anything, or impress anyone, or make anyone's eyes or mind expand. Not really. But in figuring that out, I also figured out that I really actually do want to. But I want to do it right. If there were fewer artists in the world, then those who produce would be able to produce less meaningful, less honest work and maybe convince people the opposite were true. With such a crowded field, what are the reuqirmeents to stand out and get noticed? Technique is good, tenacity is better, but there really is nothing like honesty. All my heroes were fans of it. It's what made them weird, and what made them black sheep, what made them ostracized, and what made them heroes. I don't feel any kind of need to blaze a trail, but damnit, I am tired of being so predicatible to myself. This, my friends, is what they call the box boundary. From here, I am lying to myself if I stay where I've been. From here, I must expand or be untrue. I want my art to matter, and for that to happen, it has to matter to me, I guess is what I'm getting at. The shift might not be recognizable at first, so I'm not really sure why I'm saying anything about it. I love and am very proud of what I've done. I happily add my stamp to any of it. What happens next will have to use that and travel deeper is all. I look forward to making some people uncomfortable. For the first time in a long time, the art feels like work again, the good kind. I feel my chest expanding against deep sea pressure to stay closed, dragging myself up. It feels good. I ask only to recognize the right kind of pain when it happpens, and sit inside it until I come out the other side. Stronger.
macho garcias.
laurelin
Monday, December 27, 2010
My Diagnosis
Last night was the last night in a very troubled weekend. I won't get into all that here, but I will say that it happens occasionally that life seems to flush me right down and out. Yes, I know that sounds more than a little self-pitying. Regardless, it's hard for a lot of people to remain positive when the negative is so loud. But it doesn't take much. For example, I have a tiny little 3 year old 40 pound miracle living in my house that, while many times is a challenge, does also sometimes reward me with pearls of glowing wisdom just when I need it. My kid has been known to lay a gentle hand on my cheek and say something profound just when I had forgotten profound happens. Last night she was sitting with me and her dad on the couch and pretending to be our doctor. She diagnosed David first, placing a light-up pen against his arm and proclaiming that she knew what he needed to feel better. "You need to live for mommy and for me." is what she said. And to me, after pressing the pen to my forehead, she looked in my eyes and held my face and said, "I know what you need to feel better. You need to live hard...and love people." I have been thinking about this all day. Live hard. Love people. She was not privy to the conversations her dad and I had been having earlier, or to the moment I spent on the front porch alone, talking to the memory of my father, but this felt very much like an answer to unasked questions. Live hard. Love people. It's simple, but it's everything. She's a good egg, that one. I got up this morning feeling energized, feeling awake and alive, feeling ready. I jump in with both feet, with my eyes open, with my arms outstretched. I declare 2011 the Year of Living Hard and Loving People. What about you?
xoxo
Laurelin
xoxo
Laurelin
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Positively Charged
Yes, it has been a while. I think I'm settling back in piece by piece and finding my way back to myself. So here we are again, and the year is nearly over. The natural inclination is of course to revisit, reminisce, rewind and remember. But I think it's also about assessing where your feet are planted now, and what direction they're pointing. Not only should we ask, "Where have I come from, what have I done?" but "Where am I and what do I want?". These questions may be of even greater importance.
It's easy for me to say that this has been an incredible year of successes, and just as easy to say I have disappointed every expectation. So how should I decide? In which direction should I point my toes? Well, I suppose that depends on whether or not I am motivated by a resentment for things not accomplished or encouraged by a solid string of minor successes, and the possibility for more. I don't exactly trust either of those options. I am not convinced my first five months of freedom were a waste since production is at an all time high. I am also not convinced that I've actually accomplished anything since I am broke and unknown. So what I have come up with is that I am right where I should be, and sitting here with my eyes open, and that is all. I can't worry about what comes next, only prepare to be there to meet it. My point is that all the time I spend thinking about this life path just bounces me from disillusionment to bolstering and back and forth again. It is exhausting. I don't blame anyone for getting tired on this road. So instead of the ricochet danse macabre tugging me slowly toward crazytown, instead of keeping my head on a swivel from backward to forward and back again, I am just going to look down. I'm going to look at my feet and know they're still planted beneath me. I can't say what's been, because memory shifts reality, and I can't say what's coming because I can make no map for a road lost in a fog bank. Who knows what happens up ahead?
What I can hope for is that I stay here, inside my self looking out through these eyes and translating experiences to thoughts with this mind. For example, music is the voice of life. I love music. I love to draw, and I love to paint and I love to write and I love to love. Love feeds on love too, you know. So I chose, at the end of 2010, to be a positive. I choose to let life be life and find a way to be happy I can record it. I might get it a little twisted, a little crooked on the paper or canvas, but I am here to record it. I think I'm going to do what I can and let the rest go. It's too heavy.
Jealousy is an ugly, diseased thing. It doesn't even work for kindling. It just smolders there and smokes up your vision. Better to feed my fire with trees lovingly sown and long cultivated in fertile soil. I feel a peace setting in with the waning year, like I have my hand on the right rope now. I feel like I can trust it to pull me down an often foggy road to where things are suddenly, perfectly, clear.
Happy endings, happy beginnings. Congratulations! You get to be a child of the universe.
Peace. Bliss.
Laurelin
It's easy for me to say that this has been an incredible year of successes, and just as easy to say I have disappointed every expectation. So how should I decide? In which direction should I point my toes? Well, I suppose that depends on whether or not I am motivated by a resentment for things not accomplished or encouraged by a solid string of minor successes, and the possibility for more. I don't exactly trust either of those options. I am not convinced my first five months of freedom were a waste since production is at an all time high. I am also not convinced that I've actually accomplished anything since I am broke and unknown. So what I have come up with is that I am right where I should be, and sitting here with my eyes open, and that is all. I can't worry about what comes next, only prepare to be there to meet it. My point is that all the time I spend thinking about this life path just bounces me from disillusionment to bolstering and back and forth again. It is exhausting. I don't blame anyone for getting tired on this road. So instead of the ricochet danse macabre tugging me slowly toward crazytown, instead of keeping my head on a swivel from backward to forward and back again, I am just going to look down. I'm going to look at my feet and know they're still planted beneath me. I can't say what's been, because memory shifts reality, and I can't say what's coming because I can make no map for a road lost in a fog bank. Who knows what happens up ahead?
What I can hope for is that I stay here, inside my self looking out through these eyes and translating experiences to thoughts with this mind. For example, music is the voice of life. I love music. I love to draw, and I love to paint and I love to write and I love to love. Love feeds on love too, you know. So I chose, at the end of 2010, to be a positive. I choose to let life be life and find a way to be happy I can record it. I might get it a little twisted, a little crooked on the paper or canvas, but I am here to record it. I think I'm going to do what I can and let the rest go. It's too heavy.
Jealousy is an ugly, diseased thing. It doesn't even work for kindling. It just smolders there and smokes up your vision. Better to feed my fire with trees lovingly sown and long cultivated in fertile soil. I feel a peace setting in with the waning year, like I have my hand on the right rope now. I feel like I can trust it to pull me down an often foggy road to where things are suddenly, perfectly, clear.
Happy endings, happy beginnings. Congratulations! You get to be a child of the universe.
Peace. Bliss.
Laurelin
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
In Triplicate Veritas
Having come around to the fact that this art business thing does snot necessarily come easily to me, I have spent a lot more time than usual venting to my friends. Venting is as healthy as it sounds. It's not complaining, commiserating or whining. It's letting off steam, right? Letting the cloud disperse. And outside all that noise, I can get a little bit of clarity, a little perspective. During one particularly unpleasant steam-letting session, I discovered I need to organize this thing into shifts if any of the me are going to get any rest, and therefore do a good job. I thought this information might be helpful to another person who may be struggling with competing professional desires in the same mind. I have labeled these three me as follows: The Artist, the CEO/Gold Digger and the Santa Mariposa. They are each signed in the headspace check-in sheet, and let no one step on the toes of another. That means one at a time. That means when I'm in a business meeting, my head is present, all of me is present. And when I'm in front of a canvas, I'm not thinking about being anywhere else. The Gold Digger doesn't come on til two, so I have a few hours to just be a painter, you know? Between the three of us, I may actually keep this little vessel bobbing above the deep.
The Artist: This one seems fairly self-explanatory, but maybe it gets forgotten a little. Beneath all the networking, marketing, research, bookkeeping and schmoozing, the art is all there is. This is the meat of the whole sandwich (giant grilled portabella for the rabbit-fooders). They say it's only 10% talent, but garlic bread is probably only 10% garlic. So, above all else, if I have energy for only one of me, it has to be the Artist. I never want to talk myself up a good game and have nothing to deliver when it comes due. But my Artist has no interest in spreadsheets and business plans, in even leaving the house. She has to clock the f- out at some point or this just stays a very passionate basement hobby.
The CEO/Gold Digger: If the Artist is the heart, this is the forever grinding gear collection of a machine where a brain should be. When the CEO/GD punches in, I can put down the brushes and take off the smock because this me is not concerned with creating art, only opportunites. I call her a gold digger, because she has income at the forefront, but she's also the one who does the scheduling, follows up on leads, researchges companies the other two me want to work with, etc. This me loves lists, notes, Post-its, emailing, composing correspondence, and formatting contracts. Don't ask this me about light source, but give her a pad of paper and we can map out my next five moves in five minutes.
The Santa Mariposa: This is the bridge that holds the other two together. This me is not interested in composition and line and texture and light and blah blah. This me could not care less about the merits of digital calendars. She is neither a barracuda nor a dandelion seed. This is where I am absolutely free to be out of either aspect of my business mind and just make friends. This is the butterfly. I actually do enjoy people, and meeting new ones is many times a pleasure. The "Santa" portion of the title might suggest some kind of higher enlightened state, which...no. I just mean that this me befriends, welcomes, engages with whoever passes in front of me. And the "Mariposa" speaks for itself. This me is social to say the least. That's not to say, a party girl. In this mindset, I can talk freely and openly with people about my art almost as an outsider, since this me had nothing to do with making it. I smile and shake hands, say a person's name three times to remember it, exchange numbers, business cards, make plans, make friends. I just can't be the kind of artist who watches a video of her opening while sequestered in her tower, you know? I don't want to be separated from my art. A person doesn't have to like me to like what I do, of course, and vice versa, but I would at least like them to know who I am a little.
And that's about it. They key to juggling these three is scheduling. I don't know how many more or less you might need to perform whatever it is you're about, but this is my basic three. That may change, since I'm really just figuring much of this out. But I was pleased to learn I had a way of slicing and serving the pie instead of everyone jumping in at once. Damn, I do use a ton of metaphors don't I? Analogies? I'm like a pole cat in a Scooby-Doo facotry! No? No. Ahem...anyway.
What used to happen is that I would have a little free time and everyone in my head would start speaking at once. I should use this time to research grants or sort through and catalog my photographic references. I should use this time to polish that painting I'm just about done with. I should use this time to call that couple back and thank them for their interest. All of those avcenues seem worthwhile, but I was going crazy trying to decide what took priority. So, here I am in triplicate. It's strange how splitting myself into distinct personality types/career skills has actually made me feel less insane. I hope that helps. For anyone in a similar position, any tips?
xoxo
L
The Artist: This one seems fairly self-explanatory, but maybe it gets forgotten a little. Beneath all the networking, marketing, research, bookkeeping and schmoozing, the art is all there is. This is the meat of the whole sandwich (giant grilled portabella for the rabbit-fooders). They say it's only 10% talent, but garlic bread is probably only 10% garlic. So, above all else, if I have energy for only one of me, it has to be the Artist. I never want to talk myself up a good game and have nothing to deliver when it comes due. But my Artist has no interest in spreadsheets and business plans, in even leaving the house. She has to clock the f- out at some point or this just stays a very passionate basement hobby.
The CEO/Gold Digger: If the Artist is the heart, this is the forever grinding gear collection of a machine where a brain should be. When the CEO/GD punches in, I can put down the brushes and take off the smock because this me is not concerned with creating art, only opportunites. I call her a gold digger, because she has income at the forefront, but she's also the one who does the scheduling, follows up on leads, researchges companies the other two me want to work with, etc. This me loves lists, notes, Post-its, emailing, composing correspondence, and formatting contracts. Don't ask this me about light source, but give her a pad of paper and we can map out my next five moves in five minutes.
The Santa Mariposa: This is the bridge that holds the other two together. This me is not interested in composition and line and texture and light and blah blah. This me could not care less about the merits of digital calendars. She is neither a barracuda nor a dandelion seed. This is where I am absolutely free to be out of either aspect of my business mind and just make friends. This is the butterfly. I actually do enjoy people, and meeting new ones is many times a pleasure. The "Santa" portion of the title might suggest some kind of higher enlightened state, which...no. I just mean that this me befriends, welcomes, engages with whoever passes in front of me. And the "Mariposa" speaks for itself. This me is social to say the least. That's not to say, a party girl. In this mindset, I can talk freely and openly with people about my art almost as an outsider, since this me had nothing to do with making it. I smile and shake hands, say a person's name three times to remember it, exchange numbers, business cards, make plans, make friends. I just can't be the kind of artist who watches a video of her opening while sequestered in her tower, you know? I don't want to be separated from my art. A person doesn't have to like me to like what I do, of course, and vice versa, but I would at least like them to know who I am a little.
And that's about it. They key to juggling these three is scheduling. I don't know how many more or less you might need to perform whatever it is you're about, but this is my basic three. That may change, since I'm really just figuring much of this out. But I was pleased to learn I had a way of slicing and serving the pie instead of everyone jumping in at once. Damn, I do use a ton of metaphors don't I? Analogies? I'm like a pole cat in a Scooby-Doo facotry! No? No. Ahem...anyway.
What used to happen is that I would have a little free time and everyone in my head would start speaking at once. I should use this time to research grants or sort through and catalog my photographic references. I should use this time to polish that painting I'm just about done with. I should use this time to call that couple back and thank them for their interest. All of those avcenues seem worthwhile, but I was going crazy trying to decide what took priority. So, here I am in triplicate. It's strange how splitting myself into distinct personality types/career skills has actually made me feel less insane. I hope that helps. For anyone in a similar position, any tips?
xoxo
L
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