Serial Reading: Just Like Suicide pt. 23

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[cont.]
“If my social skills were even up to par, I’d be vastly more successful. Actually that’s not completely true. Social skills aren’t the complete problem. It seems every time I’m close to success, I sabotage it somehow and follow Endora’s creed, “Starve a success, feed a frustration.” I consistently let someone else take credit for my ideas or I don’t follow up quickly on recommendations. I don’t seize opportunities. This happens over and over and I’m forced to conclude that after spending all my formative years struggling to hide who and what I am, I’m still uncomfortable being honest in public. The pressure, the scrutiny which come from success frighten me. The art world is so insanely proud of being hard-nosed.”
“You’re stronger than that.”
“Stronger? I don’t know that I want to be stronger. It’s an overrated trait, don’t you think? What I want is to be more honest. Honesty, though, makes you more vulnerable and for self preservation, I’d need to assume a fake persona for protection. I know everyone thoughtful develops a public persona, taking one quality from the prism of self and turning it into a big billboard to hide behind. With me and Tommy, it was being a bit of a clown. It was fun being a clown. He was Bozo and I was Pierrot. We made a good team. The clown, though, isn’t the right mask for success in New York, unless there’s a political spin to it like being a court jester. Whatever persona you do select ends up shaping who you actually are and I like who I am right now. I just want to be more like me. Pretending to be someone I’m not feels dishonest and ultimately destructive.”
“You’re the only man I’ve ever met who’s afraid of success. Most men are afraid of failure.”
“Girl friend, who you calling a man?”
She laughed. “We’re both tightrope artists, aren’t we, tiptoeing between genders. I guess if I had to describe my persona, it would be acting as a mirror.”
“Mirror mirror on the wall. Who’s the fairest of them all?”
“Ha ha.”
“All artists reflect their times and tribulations. You just haven’t found your art form yet.”
“Not everyone is an artist. I may just be a facilitator. That wouldn’t be a bad role to have.”
“Sorry. I know a creative when I see one. Trust me, you weren’t born to be a gallerina or an academic. Have you tried following up on that counselor’s suggestion to write about your past?”
“Odessa was mentioning that this morning. Do I have a Post-It note on my forehead or something?”
“No, I think it’s just such a good idea for you. I don’t normally agree with counselors. Believe me, they suggest writing about yourself to everyone and their pony. But you actually should consider giving it a shot. Your essays always end up very cohesive and informative. It might be interesting to frame your life that way. We both have an overriding need for control. My dear dead friends circumvented control by using drugs, but that would take the two of us too far out of our comfort zone. I’m a great advocate of turning one’s weakness into strengths. Control can be a constructive quality. Writing about something is a creative way of controlling it, finding the order within your personal chaos.”
“Hmm.”
“You never talk about your childhood except for Miss Tillie. I’m guessing it wasn’t easy.”
“No, it wasn’t. Why would anyone want to voluntarily dredge all that pain back up?”
“Maybe you don’t. Like Grissom stating emphatically that ‘Truth brings closure’ and Catherine replying, ‘Not always.’ Writing may not help you. I can only tell you how it impacted me. Remembering all the times I got beat up in the locker room and belittled by my dad – it’s not like I’d forgotten them or needed to rediscover them. I am hyper aware of the realities in my life. What really really helped in this process was not the writing part. After getting it all down on paper, I burned my story slowly, one sheet at a time, watching it curl up in flames into ash and leave my current life. That was genuinely cathartic. I found it a redemptive experience.”
“Redemptive. Is that another word for therapeutic? Odessa would scalp you to hear you describe any art form as therapeutic.”
“I know. Art can be so damned conservative. It’s ok to select from expressionism, realism, formalism, abstraction and conceptualism. All of those are ‘valid,’ but try being diaristic and you get accused of self indulgence and dismissed. It seems a silly distinction because all art is about the artist making it.”
“Healing is not the point of art. Seeking understanding and analyzing cultural norms are. It’s not about self per se but about the position of the self in the bigger picture.”
“Maggie, doesn’t that just feel like parsing words? Isn’t therapy all about gaining perspective?”
“Spoken like a true child of LALA LAND.”
“Watch out. Don’t diss my home town. Words are powerful instruments.”
“In the right hands they can be. But I don’t think most use of language is particularly powerful. Yes, I know Baldessari said that he considered a word and an image as having equal weight, but I tend to agree more with Beckett: ‘Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.’ Art, though, it speaks across centuries and cultures. I agree with Milton Avery: “Why talk when you can paint?”
“Can you paint?”
“No,” she answered even though it was obviously a rhetorical question.
“Then think of words as your paint.”
“Oh, the overwhelming challenge of an empty canvas!”
“Oh, come on. I’m being serious. When you write your essays, how do you start them?”
“I’m supposed to do an outline. What I actually do is collect quotes and pertinent stories and facts on cards and then spread them around me like leaves on a tree, eliminating the ones which aren’t essential, moving the rest around until the whole becomes clear.”
“Use that strategy on your life story. You wouldn’t have to focus directly on your life, at least not unless you want to. If you want to be less diaristic, you could write in third person and do what you do for the essays: make a card or a chapter for each of the people close to you and tell their story and how you fit into it. Write it from their view point. Yeah, that’s actually not a bad idea. Write down all those vivid memories and shared stories, combine them with your favorite quotes on cards and scatter them across the floor until you find your own narrative thread.”

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