More on art ...

... I was watching Margaret Cho, and she said something that made my brain go, "aroo?" It woke something that's been tickling my brain for the last few months/years, and here's my start. Am I on the right path?

This, along with my last post, is a very rough draft, almost stream of conscious. I think what I'm trying to say is that just by listening, hearing, even being a passive observer, we all contribute. And that if we all just become a teensy bit more aware of what each person has to offer (even if we don't agree with it), our daily lives will become that much more beautiful. Hmmm. Yeah. I think that's where I'm headed with this.
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What is art?

Is it the snap of a shutter? The brush of oil on a canvas? The turn of a phrase? The pitch in a voice? The note on a scale? The line of a leg?

Right now I'm watching Margaret Cho's "Revolution" and she said something to the effect of: "The function of art is to comment on culture." I emphatically agree, but would have to add to this: yes, one part of it is to comment on culture, and some other (not all encompassing parts) are to make you think and to make you feel.

Art begets Art.

How do YOU choose to comment on culture? Do you consider yourself an artist?
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We are all artists, deep down inside, down to the core of our being. Each and EVERY ONE of us is an artist.

We live.

We breathe.

We experience.

Art is "us": it's how we tap into our inner beings and it is how we show ourselves, how we show our views, how we show our souls, how we show our opinions. It is how we reflect "us" back to the world. When we do that, when we hold up that mirror or even a two-way glass, we are artists.

"But what about someone like Limbaugh? He can definitely turn a phrase, but does that make him an artist?"

Yes. Yes it does and yes he is.

Now, before you get your panties in a twist, hear me out.

When someone like Rush Limbaugh says something like "dunderheaded alarmists and prophets of doom", regarding environmentalists, he is spurring art. A statement like that will make you think, and it spurs you to learn. It spurs people to take photographs like this



Is that photograph NOT art? Is it not evocative? I cannot say what the photographers mindset was when she snapped this photo: if it was just something akin to, "wow, look at the structure, the colour, the composition; or if it was something more along the lines of, "oh, we're just dunderheads are we? Well look at THIS Mr. Limbaugh! Gore 4EVAR!"
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This image is art to me. It woke something inside of me, which I'm still trying to verbalize. What does it say to you? What was this artist thinking, or trying to convey? If you do not "see" what he was trying to "say", is it still art?
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Art IS a comment on culture. It is also a comment on our current world situations. There are certain songs, dances, paintings, and photographs, which will evoke different meanings in different people. But there are some forms of media that start out as journalism, and then turn into art - it's a cultural view.



I didn't know Eddie Adams history at the time of this initial writing. But... even if the intent of this photo was to show the atrocities of war, if it just started out as visually showing facts, it morphed into art. Heart wrenching, and yes, disgusting, but art nonetheless. Why?

Look at the photo again. LOOK at it. Strip away what you know of the history of the time. Just ... please, just ... look. Just think. Just feel.

Did it stir anything inside of you? Yes? Then it is art.

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Art is education. When you view, hear, or feel something, and it makes you think ... and then research .... it is art.
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Art can be selfish (acting, singing, performing) in that we *need* that immediate feedback, that instant applause, to continue to light our fire.

For others, art is therapy: we HAVE to get these images, these words, these movements, these notes ... we just have to get them OUT, out of our brain so that we can come back to some semblance of sanity and stop the images, stop the words, stop the movements, stop the music in our heads just so we can sleep. And function.
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Art is showing others the world as you see it, and inviting them into your space ... and hoping that we can all find a common thread so that we can meet in understanding on that common ground.
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Why is it that when someone is considered an artist, they are typically viewed through the filter of some sort of addiction? All of the "great" artists were fucked up in some way, and sought release through various behaviours, chemicals, intoxicants. Is it because "art" drove them, or that society at large just didn't hear them? Painters, writers, singers, dancers, comedians - most of the "famous" ones were dependent on something. Was/is it because of society? Or was/is it because they doubted themselves, and only through inebriation, by allowing them to "get outside" of themselves, were they able to tell their truth?
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Art, as viewed by most of society at large, is seen as something "frou-frou", as "classist". It's narrowly defined as something only the Imrpressionists did, or "weird stuff" that's seen in art galleries (Pollack anyone?) But actually ... art is SO broad, and SO all encompassing. Each of us lives and breathes art. I create art, you create art, they create art ... even by being an observer we pay the piper of art.
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Art is the vehicle of being heard, of being understood. And isn't that what drives most of us - to be heard?

Yes. We are ALL artists.

Drafting

So, I'm kinda thinking that this will be a multi-part post. Here is my VERY rough draft. Part one.

I do have a question to you: how would you like to see this random train of thought played out? I'm playing with the concept of a "choose your own adventure": yes, I AM asking for input, but that doesn't mean it will influence the outcome. But ... it may.

This is the beginning of a tangent, and depending on how you view it, it MAY tie into the second part I have saved in my "drafts" folder. If your thoughts (of where you think/would like to see this lead) don't tie into what I already have written, then, well ... so be it.

Yanno?
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Damnit. I want to be prolific. I want to write. I want to dance. I want to shoot (photographs, not guns, but sometimes shooting guns can be fun. BANG!)

I want my words, my movements, my images to make an impact. I want what I write, dance, and show to inspire another person to take my idea and make it better. And I want their work to inspire me to one-up them. A healthy, artistic competition. None of this, "I'm better than you" type of competition, but one of, "holy shit! That was fantastic! Here's what I've done with it. What do you have to say?"

Every single day I'm introduced to a new way of writing, a new way of moving, a new way of looking at life. Not all of them I agree with - some I vehemently disagree with. But you know what? I envy those people. The people whose words and images and dances move me to tears ....

...
to feeling

... to anger

... to something MORE.

Something more than "myself".

Well, maybe envy isn't completely the right word. I DO envy them. Yet ...

... They spur me. They influence me. They awe me. They light that fire under my ass that makes me want to hone all of my skills (and find new ones), so that I can be at times be clear and concise in my written word, and at times semi-amorphous in my movements and visuals. This compulsion is so that you (the audience, the viewer) are led to your own point, your own conclusion.

Many of the people that I envy are near and dear friends of mine:
* The younger ones that make me wish that I had taken a different path.
* The older ones that give me hope that I can still accomplish my dreams. And excel at them.
* All of them share one trait though - they do not deny their artistic bent.
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I have artistic constipation, and have for a few years now. Soon I will be prolific, I know this, but this current stasis is killing me, suffocating my soul. These words, these visions, these movements, they are all stuck in my head.

Does anyone have mental Metamucil or DrainO that I can use to flush them?

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When people ask me what I do, I feel they are asking who I am. What I do for money is NOT who I am - I refuse to be constrained into a box of who YOU think I should be, of how you think I should act and feel. Does it make them uncomfortable when I don't fit into their percieved statistic? When I'm forced into a box, I will do anything within my power to break out of that box (even if I do like and find the box to be cozy and agreeable). Sometimes this works in my favor, most times it is to my detriment.

Yes, I do well at my job, but that is not the only layer. The people who identify with their jobs, and allow those jobs to create who they feel they should be, seem to view me as ... less. When they realize that I do not live to work, but instead work to live, it seems anathema to them that I have more pressing desires outside of the 9-to-5. I feel as though I'm viewed as a pet monkey. And I hate that.

I WILL play by their rules, but adding a bit of "me" into the mix.

Does this make me a corporate heretic?

Make it stop

I.
Can't.
Stop.
Listening.


http://www.imeem.com/thmorrigan/music/_wuKN-5H/deb_talan_ashes_on_your_eyes/

Pandora? I love you. (That site is friggin' crack to me.)

Methinks I must get this album

Learning, learning

Why is it that when I SHOULD be going to bed and sleeping, the Muse decides to pop in for a cuppa? I'm not complaining - I would much prefer to see her at 3 A.M. rather than not at all. However, my brain feels like TV snow, so I'm going to indulge my OTHER muse right now - photography.

So.

My family has a pretty darn fantastic eye for photography: Popi, Dad, and at least two of my cousins. Apparently, so do I (eye, har har).

Anyway, this is something I want to learn a hell of a lot more about (settings, depth of field, yadda yadda). I even bought a new purse so that I could always have my camera on hand. So ... here's the first post showing some of my beginning tries at being a shutter bug.

(And if I see these photos anywhere else without credit to me, I will find you and give you an Irish Hardshoe lapdance.)

Emo barf

Okay, I wrote the below tripe on July 6 – Dad’s anniversary. I was watching “Across The Universe” and blabbering and bawling like a fucking baby. So – it’s a bit incoherent. And I’m tempted to edit it, but I’m not going to. I’m linking the songs that struck me, that tipped my brain into the weird space that I was in. Maybe you’ll get it, maybe you won’t.

Also, today my dear, dear friend’s mother died. She was also my friend, not just her mother. I will miss her sharp wit and humor.

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Growing up, I never “got” The Beatles. Dad, his friends, his contemporaries, even MY contemporaries, loved them. I just didn’t understand, didn’t get it. I mean, c’mon … “Hey Jude … ?” It never had any relevance for me. Not then.

The last decade or so, I’ve started to understand it more.
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I think I was about 9, maybe 10, and Dad was blasting “Strawberry Fields Forever”. It’s minor and dissonant, and that struck a chord in me that just didn’t harmonize. Not yet, anyway. For some reason, probably due to the internal jangling I just didn’t know how to parse, the song made me feel at odds with myself. It made my brain react on some visceral level in a way that I just could not … GET. I remember looking up at him from my homework and saying, “Really? This is what you like?” Dad just kind of chuckled and said, “Yep. It’s the Bee’ouls.” (When you read this, mentally read “Bee’ouls with a glottal stop, a bad American accent trying its damndest to try a Cockney accent on for size.) Then he went back to making dinner, not quite silently humming to himself a medley of Beatles tunes.

Click this, but don’t watch. Just listen. Listen with your pre-teen mind. The one that is still innocent, and can’t quite get the underlying meaning. Just open yourself up to the music and tonality. Take yourself back to the black and white of childhood. Take yourself back to the time when there were no shades of grey …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywg-PdeGVL0
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There’s something universal about The Beatles. About love. About loss. About pain. About joy. About frustration. About anger towards the “other”. And, because it DOES need to be said twice … about love.

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None of us are one thing or another. We’re a weird mix of disparate ideologies. Now … now, we understand the difference between supporting our troops and taking a stance against war. We can love our friends and families because of, or in spite of, their stances. No longer do we spit on the troops. Now … now we welcome them with open arms, even if at the same time we (internally) rail against a war we do not agree with.

I never got how Dad could have such a deep love for “hippy” music, for “Hair”. Especially since it was so anti-war, anti-Vietnam. But now? I get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChTBKjtfd2w
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It was the late 1990’s. Swing was in full revival. Life was good. I was happily typing away at my computer at work, and Tanya calls. “Hey Tanj” I say. Her first words, “The US is sending troops over to Iraq, again.” I never really understood what people meant when they said, “I was hit in the solar plexus”, but now? Now I got it. You see, I was dating someone who was active in the Navy. And Tanya, bless her heart, knew that. She also knew my past, and knew that I would automatically think of Dad. (Forewarned is forearmed, and all of that.) I really don’t think I can describe the feeling of my heart leaping into my throat at that moment. That moment where I thought, “Holy shit! This man that I adore COULD be sent to a foreign country and die .,.” There really is nothing more awakening than realizing this: we are all infallible, and mortal, and that some man in a suit and tie holds our own life, our own breath, in their hands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwB8QiKWodk&feature=related
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He signed up. He wasn’t drafted. He did what he felt was right, what was his patriotic duty. The generation before him, and before that, fought in WWI and WWII. Some even Korea. That’s the mentality that held many men of my (and your) father’s generation – the mentality of “duty” … just something that had to be done. Many then, and now, may ask, “Why? Why sign yourself up for death and emotional destruction?” Well … it just what you had to do. He could have dodged, but he didn’t. And by NOT going against his own grain, it changed him. For better or worse.

(Dad and Malcolm are at 0:32, Dad at 0:34) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Idr8Z_VTSA
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This … this is the song that allowed me to love The Beatles. Unabashedly.

With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

From the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdaa6M8DN7g

From The Bee-ouls: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHChc2I7FKk

With Abel, I KNOW there are were many, many things wrong with “us” … but, I do know … I KNOW … that I can totally and completely break down in front of him. And know that he won’t judge me for it. I guess … hmm, I guess that is what I’m looking for, what I am striving for. I DO want to lay my soul bare, and know that I won’t scare someone away. Yet … yet …. when I do open myself like that, I want to know that that they will still be there, fully and completely, when I butterfly myself open. When I lay myself raw. (I don’t want them to shy away from salmonella now do I? Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck.)

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Three years ago today is the day I found my bulwark, my FATHER, bloated. And … stinky. Smelling of death. And endings. And that? That is something I NEVER wanted. I always had these … “hopes” … that one of his friends would “find” him. And that they would call me. That they would call me with the news. I never, NEVER, wanted to be the one to find him. Find him so laid bare. Even though, deep down, I knew. I KNEW … I would be the one to find him. I never wanted to. Ever. Even though I knew that was the way it HAD to be played out. Finding him … gone … that killed a part of me I’ll never get back. It killed some of my innocence. Even though I knew my innocence was long gone before this that day.

I’ve been going through some major transitions, life transitions. And even though it’s a transition I NEVER thought I’d go through … it is what it is. And I always thought that Dad would be here through all of my changes. I feel like a failure – I wasn’t able to make my marriage work, I wasn’t able to bring into this world a child, a grandchild. I feel like a failure, of epic proportions. (I know I’m not.)

My friends, my true friends, who know me, know how hard it is for me to lay myself so bare. So … “butterflied” … it’s a painful experience for me. Yet … yet … I know this is something I need to do, something that has to happen. It has to happen for me. It has to happen so that I can move forward. And even though it makes me seem weak (at least, in my own mind) it’s something that I have to do.

Mom was an unabashed hippy. She wanted to hitchhike to Woodstock. How she wound up with a dyed-in-the-wool Republican is beyond me. However … they made it work. And it gives me hope.
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A quote from “Across The Universe”: Music is the only thing that makes sense anymore. And now? NOW … I get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQNpEET9WqQ&feature=related

(EDIT - A month later, I finally realize something. I really wish he was around, now, even if just to see this movie. Some of the views he would not agree with, but overall, he too, would "get" it. So, thanks Dad. Thank you for not just teaching me, but showing me how to see both sides of the coin. In your depression, you really, truly, and honestly, taught me how to keep hold of my sanity. I love you.)

It's my brain

I have these words in my head … so many words. These words in my head tell a story, but the story just doesn’t want to come out. I’m staring at these words, these black and white words on a page, and they are staring at me, as though THEY are the enemy, and I am the enemy, when, in fact, they are truth. These words, these same words on the page, belie both their hurt, and my acceptance thereof. My willingness to see the meaning behind the words. It’s an infinite loop – both sides tell the meaning, the truth. Each side is unwilling to see the meaning behind the words, behind the meaning.

This is the Gordian Knot – both sides have validation. However, this is my truth. My past. Something I haven’t wanted to face for a long time. Because those words tell a story, my story. And I hate the fact that my words (my story) opens the door to some ugly truths about the human psyche. About MY psyche. About YOUR psyche.
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It’s Memorial Day Weekend, a time which we should spend honoring those who have come before us, and have gone – some before their time, some after it. But each one deserving of a short moment taken out of our day, to give them a nod: A nod of thanks, a nod of remembrance, a nod of honor, a nod of love, whether or not we agree with the politics that took them. It’s a time to reflect upon the past, both general and personal, a time to invite the past to sit down and have “a cuppa”, and to speak.

This should be a weekend of reflection, of intro (and outro) spection. A time and place to honor those that came before us, who allowed “us” to be. A weekend where we should allow ourselves to look at our past, at the steps that we’ve taken that brought us to this place we call “the present”. Because – past, present, and future – they are all inextricably intertwined. Our past leads us to our present, our present leads us to our future … Sometimes holding onto our pasts will make for a very uncomfortable present, which will lead to a wonky future.

Maybe over “a cuppa”, when we meet face to face with our lives up till now, we can exorcize the demons of our pasts, and allow us an open road to the future, the present. Embrace that past, both bad and good, and enmesh it with our present selves, to clear the path for our future selves.

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Some people have told me I have a remarkable mind, and I don’t quite know how to react. To quote Tim Minchin, “This is my brain, and I live in it … it’s where I spend the vast majority of my time” – to me, my thoughts (logical and circular, true or false, healthy or self-perpetuating) are just those – MY thoughts. There’s nothing remarkable about them. They just … are. At least, that’s how it seems to me.

I spent most of my life (at least until a few years ago) trying to forge my own self, my own identity – something, and someone, separate from my mother, whom I never really knew.

I never felt remarkable – I was always trying to live up to some other persons’ ideal version of me, some mold they were trying to fit me into. A mold that didn’t quite fit right in the shoulders, and tugged a bit at the thighs. It was a close enough fit, but the lines didn’t fall right. And I admit it – I tried to shape myself into those odd fitting clothes for a while. Tried to tell myself that the fashion they were touting for me was the fashion I wanted.

Reverberations of, “What would your mother say?! What would your mother think?!” still haunt me. And you know what? From all I’ve learned, from all I’ve gleaned, my mother would say, “Good for her! She’s becoming her OWN PERSON!” And even though I really didn’t know her, I want to take a moment and give her a nod of thanks. Her nudist and anarchistic tendencies, they have been passed down to me. Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. “They” didn’t get it, but we (she and I) do.

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My friends only know me as “me”, as ____, and they love me for that. And for that fact? I am truly grateful. They weren’t there (excepting a rare few) when my Mom’s family was trying to fit me into the Katie-mold. Instead of letting me make my own ___-mold.

Because of that, I judge myself harshly. I try (tried) to be the person in the corner- the quiet one who doesn’t make waves or draw attention to herself. When I tried to enact my own way of being, I was shut down. When I showed a spark of creative thinking, of going outside of the status quo, I was met with the argument of, “That’s not how your Mom was”.

Well, the stories that I’ve heard, of Mom, have told me that THAT was who she was. Always the individual. Yet, when I tried to forge my own individualism, it was shot down. Put in the parentheses of, “That’s not how your Mom was”, when in actuality, it WAS how she was. As an adult, when I met with her friends, and they told me, “Wow, you are very much like your mom”, and I took that as a “good on ya”, instead of seeing them trying to fit me into her mold. I took it for what it was – a compliment.

I wish I had the strength of character, then, to say, “Stop! Stop trying to turn me into your dead daughter! I am her, I am my father … I am ME!”

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This staid person you see? She’s just a façade, a straw (wo)man. Straw burns easily, and I DO love me some fire. Now, finally, am I able to embrace “Anni”, and not “Anni, trying on Katie for size”.

Now … who has some marshmallows? They always go well over a fire.

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It’s all about baby steps. This red hair, these freckles? It’s not just my mothers. It’s also mine.

There was always some sort of benchmark to live up to, and now that those benchmarks (well, the people who held them for me) are gone, I’m feeling a bit … moor-less. It’s forcing me to find my own identity, separate from the confines that were ascribed to me. I’ve been given a blank slate, and I have a pen in my hand, but the paper is still blank. At least to my eyes. Others, looking at the “paper of me”, see varying things – a scribble here, a dash of color there, a whiff of Amber (if the wind is just right). And I guess I see those hints as well, but they haven’t formed a coherent picture yet, not in my mind.

In my mind I’m still a frightened little girl, hiding in the bedroom linen closet with a flashlight and the newest installment of the “Create Your Own Adventure” book. (True story – linen closet. Flashlight. Book.)

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I am me. Hear me roar. *squeak*

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What spurred this emotional vomit? Tim Minchin: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDGuPp1np4o)

Did you know ...

... that, IN CANADA, the plural of "fish" is ... "fish"?

Thus spake The Canadian.

I can't believe that his genetic material will continue after him.