The Sadness & The Power
Long live truth, art, and the counter narrative.
I am sitting in a room with my deep primordial love and respect for art, a drive I was born with that propels me forward for eternity. A never ending fire that burns, without a doubt, forever.
Also in the room is my most sincere loneliness and alienation, who has also been here since the beginning. Often rendering me brittle, constricted, and weak. They are both driving my car and fighting for the wheel, pretty much at all times.
Illustration of an angel found in Aurora Consurgens
A few weeks ago the scorpio full moon was beating down upon me as I labored at my day job. I observed as my thoughts took a familiar and unfortunate turn towards liquid vitriol.
On this particular day I was in the midst of a multi-hour cleaning job for a couple who owned a comically large colonial house on a sprawling piece of land in the “historic” district of town. A barn, gardens, and in-ground pool abound.
Inside, the bedrooms outnumbered the occupants x3, never mind the library, multiple studies, and sitting rooms. You know, the kind of home whose walls ooze a dark history, without you even needing to know the specifics.
These clients have a way of dragging me through prolonged pleasantries despite my personal mission to get through my work with as little speaking to them as possible. The woman is a professor at an ivy league school. The man is a well to do “author” of some sort.
The kind of people who it appears the most difficult thing they have ever experienced is their parents gently passing away from old age while they themselves are in their 60s. Yet somehow they manage to write the most incredibly bland NYT best seller about it. Complaining about all the stuff they will inherit, and maybe even detailing the mad dash between siblings to claim the bountiful generational assets.
These “intellectuals” cannot take a hint. They entrap me in conversations about the travel they are planning, the successes of their acclaimed children, and the books they are writing to my absolute horror because I certainly did not ask.
This, of course, is when my thoughts start to take a turn for the worst. The more I get to know these people (practically, against my will) who hold positions of serious institutional power, the more I am like you? Really you? This is who steers the collective narrative? This is who adds, edits, includes, and excludes us?
In these situations I cannot help but think: who writes the story and who endures it?
Illustration of the Jacquerie from a medieval manuscript by Jean Froissart
When I arrived on this particular day I was informed by the woman that she would have me shine her finest silverware and otherwise prepare the space for a party, as she was hosting a celebration for her recent cohort of Ivy league MFA graduates.
This immediately went over poorly for me because learning happens to be deeply held desire of mine, something I have always protected and maintained for myself no matter what the circumstance. My access to learning has also, unfortunately, been fraught and scarce throughout my life. Something I have learned to fight for rather than openly receive easily.
So, this cruel task of preparing a space for the highly educated under the harsh light of the full moon only served to agitate my wounds of alienation and exclusion from institutional learning resources.
I suppose on this day I could not ignore the deep sadness in my experience of labor. The many years of working jobs where I serve people who are decidedly higher ranked in society than myself weighs heavy. For some of us, the alienation is all too real.
Recently I had actually been looking into MFA programs myself. Something I had only recently allowed myself to even consider entertaining.
Was It financially possible for me?
Am I willing to potentially put myself in exorbitant debt in order to have a formal place to land, work, and study? (no, unlikely.)
Would allowing myself this space and time be a deeply meaningful gift (yes, most likely.)
Sometimes, I must admit, I dream of going all the way back and being born into the kind of family that had a little extra. The family that encourages their kids towards higher education and maybe even provides financial support for that to occur.
At the same time, I hold my struggle and the struggle of others with deep reverence, and I would honestly not trade it, because I actually love and respect myself in all I have learned and become. Unfortunately in one sense, making it all the more harder to expose myself to the harsh fallacy of laboring for a meager living.
Perhaps one day I will learn to release myself from this painful reality with grace and integrity, but for now, I do my best to exercise my right to learn, grow, and make art within the circumstances I have.
Right now for me this looks like listening to the words of others through audio books and music while I clean rich liberals houses, nurturing my own sense of dignity and belonging (even when I must do labor that feels exploitative and against my wishes), prioritizing relationships where I can be my full self, and exploring the delicate art of accepting suffering without being too attached to suffering.
In the spirit of the alchemist: We learn the art of turning lead to gold when necessary. Suffering builds us and ultimately, gives us the capacity to hold the fire of life. Without the lessons of hardship I doubt one could bear the full breath of the world's soul, let alone translate it, breathe through it.
Therein lies the work of the artist and the mystic.
Ripley alchemical scroll, 1624
The more I live, the more I understand that the true mystics walking this earth are undoubtedly marked by the suffering of life's trials and still manage to stay with the truth of reality with open heartedness.
In this vein, maybe we have more influence on the story than we could know. Building the narrative in the image of truth & decidedly against the dominant normative over culture of capitalist alienation & subjugation is not for the faint of heart.
We are the ones who hold the juicy lore after all, and without us, the institutions would simply be empty and hollow.
Lastly, no matter how shut down and depressed I feel about my life and the world: I rest on the power of art to move me.
This past weekend I went to Dia Beacon to celebrate the beautiful godstooth birthday. As we wandered through the open spaces I found myself a bit untouched by Warhols shadow paintings and increasingly agitated with the memorial day crowds.
Symbolically enough, I found my reprieve first in the attic of the large institution, and then, the basement.
In the attic lies the work of Louise Bourgeois, work I have never seen in person and work I was not even particularly seeking out that day. Her exhibition caught me completely off guard. Beholding the gravity, texture, and immediacy of her sculptural figures pulled out the fear and pain hiding beneath my skin almost instantaneously. To my embarrassment and surprise, tears were streaming down my face as I spent only a short amount of time in the presence of her works.
Louise Bourgeois: Hanging Janus with jacket, 1968
Louise Bourgeois herself often compared her process of art making to a kind of exorcism.
This function of her work was evident to me, as I was thoroughly exorcised, mirrored, and raw just from a brief viewing.
From there we slinked down to the basement of the institution to find a bass sound bath by Steve Mcqueen with dim, slow moving, color changing lights. The general high strung social order that permeated the rest of the museum seemed to melt away in the depths of the basement. Something about the deep bass, dim color washes and vibrating cool concrete floors made me acutely aware of my starving root chakra, and how it was currently being nourished as we laid on the floor together and felt the vibrations.
Basement of Dia Beacon in the Steve Mcqueen exhibit
A gentle bath of integration after a demanding exorcism tbh.
Long live truth, art, and the counter narrative.
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