Vanitas

Well, here I am at the letter V. A proud letter, a sign of victory, a sign of peace, the beginning of my name...... and since it is summer I have "Vacation" on my mind but that's not till next month. And I would have written sooner but I got a new toy, a handy new sewing machine, and I have been playing with it, discovering its little secrets, its bells and whistles, its unique sounds and rhythms, getting to know it like my new friend. But I digress.....the one word that kept coming into my head this past week was Vanity. (I've obviously been watching too many posturing politicians, preening celebrities, and big business tax dodgers on the news). We all have a bit of it, even if we haven't shaved our legs in three months and have just devoured a pint of Ben and Jerry's New York Chocolate Fudge Chunk ice cream. A little vanity is good. It keeps us looking presentable in the grocery store in case we run into someone we know from Facebook, who remembers what we looked like 15 years ago. It keeps us brushing our teeth and combing our hair and wanting to be thought well of by others, even if we say we don't care what other people think, because most of us do, or we'd be picking our noses in public and skipping baths on a regular basis. Most of us respond to praise, even awkwardly, in a positive way, and most of us are wounded when we hear someone say something unkind. So a bit of vanity keeps us confident, keeps us young at heart, keeps our egos healthy, and our fingernails clean. Too much vanity and we are on that slippery slope to narcissism and bad plastic surgery decisions.
The word vanity comes from the Latin, Vanitas, meaning "emptiness". In the 16th and 17th century there was a trend in Northern Europe to create Vanitas paintings. These were usually symbolic still lifes depicting the transitory nature of existence, and the cheerful reminder that all ends in death and decay. Since life was a great deal shorter back then, less comfortable, more dangerous, subject to wars and plagues and general, wide-spread poverty and frequent famines, the proximity of imminent death was a given. In our modern, comfortable First World societies we tend to shy away from these ominous reminders. Advertizing appeals to our vanity on a daily basis, offering to cheat wrinkles and death with creams and lotions, with diets and vitamins, with pharmaceuticals and surgery. Ka-ching $$$$$. Sorry, but most of it is futile. Age will happen, anyway.
 The best way to stay young? Have a purpose, have a passion, stay involved, keep your brain busy, keep MOVING, be kind and get over your anger and resentments. Oh and brush your teeth. Be vain about that smile.

Unsaid

Yes, it's been awhile since I have blogged. This is why I am not a commercial artist. I cannot produce art on command. I can't produce verbage on demand. Although functioning as a dance teacher and choreographer for 24 years, I was basically doing that on a daily basis, but I hated having fear as a motivation. But, come to think of it, most artists may only work under that fear deadline, otherwise they would be watching re-runs on cable TV in sweatpants and eating chocolate in self-loathing. I set myself a goal with this blog, to go through the alphabet on creativity from A-Z, and dammitt, I got stuck at the letter U. Well, part of it was because I thought the word "Utter" was spelled "Uttur", like some Norse medieval god, so I was arguing with the internet about that. You can't win in a competition with the internet. Sad but true. The other problem was......I had nothing to say. That happens. It's my main problem with creating art. Do I have something to say and is it interesting enough to say? Because here's the thing....there's a LOT of crap art out there. And because of the internet there are a lot of people blabbing on and on, in a totally self-indulgent and annoying way, about things that nobody, other than their BFFs, really need to know about. There is too much information and not enough knowledge or wisdom being shared. And the young, sadly, seem to have no sense of boundaries anymore. Let me clarify: the young, and male politicians, seem to have no sense of boundaries anymore. I, myself, in moments of depression and anxiety, have tried a couple of sessions of psychotherapy  and let me say this: some things are better left unsaid. (Disclaimer: this is only me and my personality. Others have benefited greatly from therapy and/or wine and chocolate) It's that whole confessional approach of sharing with strangers, even strangers with college degrees, who don't know the real you, that leaves me feeling fraudulent and evasive. Which is why I am an advocate of cultivating long-term friendships. I went to my monthly Girls' Night Out last night, and was asked when my next blog would be coming out. Wow, that was 50% of my fan base right there, actually reading my brain farts online.  I almost felt bad for being such a summer-lethargic, web-surfing slacker. And when my college roommates showed up for our second annual reunion this month, I  breathed a sigh of relief and knew I could sit in my pajamas, sans make-up, sans bullshit, and careful phrasing of opinions, and just relax and let loose with them. Friendship is the key to leading a sane life. But friendship takes time and effort, like marriage, like parenthood. Those people who post online to complete strangers, all their deepest feelings, all their romantic faux pas, all their nude photos, their nude emotions, their naked, desperate thoughts, are just whistling in the dark, begging to be noticed. And the only ones who notice are the predators and equally desperate prey. Sometimes it's best to shut up and keep it to yourself. It's OK to have secrets, things that no one else will ever know. Not everyone is a spill-the-beans personality. Some have that still point at the center of their heart, the point vierge, that is theirs' alone.

Tell Me A Story

One of the things I think all humans share is the desire to be told a story. Whether it was in caves around a campfire or now in a darkened movie theatre, we are all entranced by a good story, something that holds us in suspense for what happens next, or creates unforgettable characters that seem as real as we are. Sometimes, when history is forgotten, only the stories remain: the creation myths, the legends of gods and heroes, the tall tales from Hercules to Superman. (For the experts on this just read Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung or Victor Frankl or Bruno Bettelheim.) Whether we like a good mystery novel or a cheesy soap opera, there is a satisfaction in following a well-constructed plot, predictable or not. Maybe, because there is so much unknown in our own lives, so much seeming randomness, and so many long stretches of just....living... we often want to snip the boring bits out and actually tighten up the plots of our lives, maybe eliminate some characters, and spice up some others, make ourselves a bit more dashing and likeable, not so flawed and awkward and bumbling. But despite the fact that we are not all Nancy Drew or Harry Potter or Indiana Jones, we do all have a story to tell. I have had students and friends say to me "Oh you've led such an interesting life. Mine is so boring." What they really mean is that to them I've lived in interesting places. In other words, I've lived not-in-Lubbock. But location does not have much to do with what happens in your life (unless you're fighting in Afghanistan. Then location is everything). When I was a child in Central Africa guess what exciting things I did? I went to school, I played with friends, I lived in a brick three bedroom house, and I never saw a lion. (OK, I saw monkeys and lizards and really big ants....). If I had met someone then from Texas I would have thought how exotic and romantic that was, would have imagined them living on a ranch, riding horses, and lassoing cows. Just like they would imagine me living in a grass hut and watching giraffes and zebras wander past our window. When my cousins from England came to Lubbock to visit us in 1994, one of the highlights of their trip was having my husband drive them out in the country in his Ford Ranger pick-up so they could lie in the back and look at the stars. (Also their trip to Fort Sumner to see Billy the Kid's grave). That was now a story they could tell, a part of their bigger life story. And sometimes I don't know I've had a good story until I tell it to others. Although, it's hard to beat our friend, David, who always seems to have things happen to him. Just ask him to tell you about the guy who bit him in Barcelona.

Showbiz!

Inside my mother's timid, anxious, passive-aggressive heart, there is a fierce flamenco dancer yearning to get out. Her name is Juanita, and she can play the castanets and give you the evil eye like nobody's business. I know this because she has told us many times of her secret passion, and I think it's the reason that she made all her daughters take dance lessons as children. Wherever it came from, perhaps a medieval ancestor who joined a traveling theatre troupe, we have always had a streak of ham in our family which kept us from sinking into a permanent, self-absorbed, book-reading, day-dreaming torpor. As children it started innocently enough with singing Christmas carols to our parents on Christmas Eve. The adoration and forced attention inspired us to start writing short holiday themed skits, and as Mom kept having children, we were slowly building a ready-made cast. As we got older the traditional themes went out the window. Steph became the resident playwright and was turning out masterpieces like 'Christmas Aboard the Starship Enterprise', giving herself the plum roles, of course. (rehearsals were the usual chaos of sibling squabbling and attention-deficit-disorder).She created two very surreal projects, one was an opera of Don Giovanni, where we were forced to sing our lines, and the ultimate in minimalism, a finger puppet rendition of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' called 'Christmas at George and Martha's'.
Meanwhile we continued to perform in annual dance studio recitals. My once-lanky coltish body hit puberty and suddenly I appeared onstage looking as if someone had encased a sack of potatoes in gold sequins. In my illustrious dance career I had run the gamut from tap-dancing cowboy to bored-yet-stoic hip-heavy ballerina with big feet. I wasn't the next Pavlova but I gamely struggled on. It wouldn't be until college that I discovered an art form for high-functioning nerds like me: it was called Modern Dance. We got to wear black all the time and dance barefoot. Perfect.
All of which, yet I had not seen the pattern, was slowly preparing me for a career I accidentally stumbled into back in 1983, like a drunk wandering into a church service:

teaching high school. Because the last thing I ever wanted to do was stand in front of a roomful of bored, critical, dismissive teenagers and actually talk to them. I was still having flashbacks to my own time in the trenches as Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club. Still, I would be teaching dance (and putting on shows!) and as the old showbiz maxim goes: "never let them see you sweat". So every morning, like Roy Scheider as Bob Fosse in "All That Jazz", minus the cigarette dangling from his lips, I would look at myself in the mirror and think "It's showtime, folks!"

Right Brain Left Brain

There's this idea out there that artists are Right Brained people, and accountants (that classic stereotype of dullness) are Left Brain people. In an either/or world it's another way to simplify and categorize. The extensive study, research, and conceptualization of left and right brain thinking DID help us understand more about the way the brain works, but we still all have whole brains in there that hopefully function in both hemispheres. (Yes there is a revolving door between both halves. Keep using it.) Well, I'm still not sure about Sarah Palin but....oh, let's not go there.....I'll save sarcasm for another blog.
 When I was a public school teacher (a time that is becoming more and more remote), during one of our many in-service meetings, we were all, as a faculty, given a test to determine how right or left brain dominant we were. When we got our results we were asked to line up around the cafeteria from the most right brained (strangely on the left side of the room) all the way to the most left brained. Predictably enough the art and music teachers were on the right brain end, while all of the administrators, but one, were on the left brained end along with the science and math teachers. I had assumed, having been called arty all my life and having been accused of being 'flaky', 'dreamy' and not grounded in reality, that I would be waaaay over there with the flower power granola eaters, but no, I was almost smack dab in the center, along with a clump of English teachers and a few P.E. coaches. A part of me was disappointed, thinking I wasn't as creative as I thought I was but then I realized I had always had the best of both worlds. I could whip out a painting or a piece of choreography and also do math in my head and memorize vocabulary words without breaking a sweat. I was, dare I say it, a balanced human being. It also explains my centrist political views and my take-the-middle-way Buddhist bent. I've also realized that true right brain people can be a bit, as my friend Lora says, 'woo-woo', and don't always make the best successful artists, who really do need a foot in the practical world to manage their career. As for those people way over in left brain territory, I'm glad they keep the records and do the research and quantify and diagnose everything for us, but the best doctors and scientists also have that hefty dose of creativity from the right side that allows them to make those visionary leaps. Just ask Mr. Whole Brain Einstein, the poster child for both sides.

Question?????

I've been asking questions since I could talk. I thought everybody did. I thought that was why we were here. My sense of the curious has carried me on many a journey of the mind. One thing leads to another to another to another. 'Why this? What about that?' and my favorite...."Yes, but...". It's gotten me into trouble a few times: with school teachers, with Sunday School teachers, with authority figures in general. It's no accident that even as a teacher myself, I drove an old VW bug to school in the 80's that had a 'Question Authority' bumper sticker on the back. Maybe I am like the Elephant Child of the Rudyard Kipling story. But here is the sad part, the part that almost broke my heart. I thought everyone was like this. I thought everyone was born with a yearning to seek, to question, to understand the universe and why we are here. Boy, was I naive! There was a distinct moment in the early 90's when I shared an office with three other teachers at my high school. As is my nature, I was free-associating in a James Joyce kind of way, so I asked some typical question I usually do. Not anything deep but more in the nature of: "I wonder who the first person was who decided to pluck a mushroom and eat it. Did they die if it was poisonous or did they decide they should saute it and put it in an omelette?" Now you would think that a fellow teacher would love it that someone was curious in this way, but instead this person looked at me incredulously and said "You are so so weird. Who thinks of things like that?"  Then all my childhood memories came flooding back of other children ridiculing me for being different. I don't think the word 'nerd' had been invented then so basically it was my introduction to being criticized for thinking too much. As Steve Martin expressed so eloquently back in his early comedy years; "Well, excuse me!" I will continue to ask questions until the day I die. I will never accept anything based on hearsay or popular opinion. I will never mouth slogans and cheap shots from politicians. I will never state a 'fact' without researching it first. I will never accept any religious dogma or government edict without long soul searching. I will read and read and read and never let my brain grow lazy. Why??? Because.........
(TV reference: I remember a 'Simpson's episode where Lisa Simpson, the brains of the family, asked a very pointed question in class and the teacher surreptitiously reached behind her desk and pushed the "Independent Thought" Button to alert the administrators she had a problem. Funny in a sad-but-true-way in our teach-to-the-test-world.)

Pretty Cute

I don't mean to be controversial but I suspect that most women have a 'cute' gene. They tend like things that are cute, pretty, decorative, pleasing, comforting, and colour co-ordinated. I know nothing about genetics so it's all speculation and observation. When I go to Hobby Lobby there are not a lot of men in there, unless they are dragging along patiently behind their wives waiting to get over to Home Depot and check out some nail guns. Hobby Lobby is one of those overwhelming places, like Wal-Mart, that has so much 'stuff' everywhere the brain cannot absorb it for too long a period or a fugue state may occur. It caters to the craft-obsessed like MacDonalds caters to high schoolers on a 30 minute lunch break. If possible, I frequent Michael's, which is not quite so warehouse-full-of-craptacular-supplies in its ambience. I also keep my cute gene fairly manageable. I am only there for photo pages, art supplies, and yarn. Everything else is a graveyard for kitsch to me. I am not tempted by knick-knacks, pom pom pillows, seasonal glitz, and cute animal posters. And to really keep me in line I need my daughter there to be ironic and mock-horrified. She, too, is there to buy art supplies, and as her cute gene is pretty non-existent, she will merely give me a fierce conspiratorial glance to indicate that the woman in line in front of us has a cart full of blazing pink ribbon, hot pink feathers, polka dotted paper, and zebra striped fabric. We are not sure if she is making some sort of centerpiece or a pole dancing outfit. Because there is a disorder that occurs when someone is born with too many cute genes, and it can become frightening. It can manifest in a scrapbooking obsession that turns a simple photograph of a baby into a glue-gunned, eye-popping, sparkle-fested page that weighs five pounds and turns the child into a mere background feature. Or it can turn into a house full of doilies and ruffles and figurines and silk flowers.
I keep my own cuteness needs contained to the internet, for the most part. I can visit Cuteoverload.com to see my share of adorable animals. I can save pretty pictures in my Pinterest files, and pass on sweet images on e-mail or Facebook. I've become plainer and more practical as I've gotten older. I don't collect things anymore, no matter how much their cuteness lures me. No more figurines, or dolls from every land, or a little fuzzy Snoopy holding a box of chocolates. And when it comes to art well, that's when the battle begins. My tendency to like the pretty, the nice, and the pleasing, does battle with the inner artistic snob that is telling me I am not serious enough, that true beauty is often the enemy of the pretty. Beauty can be stunning and alarming and soul-stirring, and I may have to keep forging through the cuteness to get there.