Art Therapy Didn't Work

 

Part 9 of 30

My Fragile Self-Esteem

It was probably ten years ago that I had the idea of doing art to help my mental outlook, which at the time was also a brief and challenging episode of fragile self-esteem (seven years) that dogged me like a hellhound on my trail. I was jittery, my hands shook, my body succumbed to the cold sweats, I was very irritable with family, friends, loved ones, and even strangers. Even the friendly guy who came around for the cancer drive, I about bit his head off: “Sir, take your book of receipts and talking points on the latest miraculous breakthroughs and leave my stoop. I told you once I can’t give, I told you twice I can’t give, and now I’m telling you nicely for the last time, I won’t give, I simply can’t, sir!” I physically seized him by the scruff of the neck and his pants and flung him to the other side of the road.

Later, trying to help myself recover, I went to an art store and bought a couple small canvases with the wooden slats built in and a box of oil paints. I really expected to dig in and enjoy myself in this new-for-me field, becoming an artist and painting the masterpieces that are typical with amateur painters. What happened next, though, wasn’t what I'd hoped for at all. Instead of painting, then running out and buying new canvases, always bigger and better canvases, I never painted a single stroke. The paints were left unopened. I couldn’t think of anything to paint, I’m not a good painter and drew a blank, and a couple years ago when I moved to The Big City I gave all the paints and canvases to Goodwill.

Recently, then, my fragile self-esteem again took that familiar journey -- it started like a nagging then persistent itch, then transformed into a blank pain which over a period of scant days became a gnawing pain. Once that happened, then, it was busy at the molecular level folding in on itself, reaching out and feeling for new boundaries to surmount, working on me 24-hours a day, taking all the time and opportunity it needed to go rogue. One day it hit me; I looked in the bathroom mirror and was wrapped in the self-esteem equivalent of tentacles, reaching out, curling back, and twisting at random. I swatted at them like swatting flies, but they only swatted back, cowing me.

So it was a south-of-the-border standoff. Making me think again of art and painting. With the brainchild idea that maybe this time the message of the tentacles -- the vision -- was, “Get out there and waste a few canvases. There’s companies just dying to make and sell canvases. With factories geared up for it in league with paint factories. You’re probably a good painter if you specialize in abstracts, no one can really criticize them.

This time, though, I didn't just stay home but went to a studio, thinking the peer pressure might really motivate me. But the time I got there my fragile self-esteem had entered a more viral stage of fragility. The good news is no canvases were harmed; they were all released back into the wild. The bad news is I don’t know what all the other stages of fragile self-esteem might reveal, negatively speaking.

The Billionaire Could've Been Anything

It's been a lazy Sunday afternoon. The billionaire's been hanging out at my place. He's usually a fireball of activity, but like everyone he has to cool his jets sometime.

This is what I like. It's what I liked when I was with the Pink Professor, doing nothing in particular, just hanging out like two old slippers. Small talk. Comfortable body language. I looked over at the billionaire, wondering what his dreams must be like. I hope they're not all of exploits and conquests, the next gold-laden rainbow, etc. As much as I like the billions, I'm still a romantic at heart, and like to slow down.

Anyway, there he sat -- the man himself -- a guy with the world on a chain. Even without the billions he'd be a great guy. I can picture him a total success no matter what. Having him asleep gave me time to think over the possibilities.

How about a dashing cowboy hero? Of course he wouldn't be from this generation. We have cowboys, but there's very little call for them to round up rustlers or head off bank robbers at the pass. In which case we would've never met. But he could've been in the Old West. He has his feet on the table at the saloon, dozing off. There's a guy there saying, "Even if he weren't a dashing cowboy hero, he would've been a success at something. Like if he lived in the far-off future, an important mogul in the world of high finance. I'm picturing him as an eccentric billionaire." Then the future goes fuzzy, our cowboy hero wakes up, tips a glass of whiskey, and takes off to protect water rights for the settlers.

Or he could've been a great talent in the arts. Since to be a truly great artist you have to let yourself go, and not be afraid to face the scorn. As for me, I've never let myself go in the arts, so I haven't painted any masterpieces. I've had a blank canvas for the last five year and I'm afraid to touch it with paint. The billionaire might've been born in France, like the guy in the illustration obviously was. He has that look of French insouciance. He's there in France, doing art, with many fans. One fan wonders, "If he weren't such a great artist, I wonder what he might've been. He's too eccentric to ever be wealthy. He'd waste his money in a second and be found drunk or dead in his garret. As it is, he needs a keeper! He'll get knifed in a bar yet!"

I can also see the billionaire as a brave soldier in battle. Brave in the extreme, because he has very little reserve; if he wants something he goes for it. His wealth proves that. It's no stretch to imagine him as instrumental to a major battlefield rescue. The commander says we need someone to run through that minefield and carry out our fallen battalion. He can't do it alone, so he goes to a farmhouse and barters for several stallions. Which he lashes together side by side, then he steps on the middle horse and drives them into the fray. The battalion sees him coming, and they're ecstatic, shouting their admiration like, "That crazy son of a bitch! I never seen such a beautiful bastard!" Even the enemy's beside themselves. Meanwhile, back at the farmhouse, the farmer's telling his wife the story: "That guy could've been anything, dammit, I'm tellin' ya! A cowboy! An artist! In the future, a billionaire!"

Finally, the billionaire could've been an average man of any little town. I have my doubts here, but there's no telling. My dad was an average man in a little town, and he was extraordinary in various ways. He met my mom, and believe me, other guys didn't! So who's smartest? Obviously, my dad. But the thing about the billionaire is, What would he have done as an average man of a town? Even he might not know. He would've paused, thinking, and really going over it: "Is there a place for me in the arts? Or perhaps the military? Anything would be better than this trash route! But it pays the bills, and people like me. They honor me each time as one of the nicest guys they know. And that's success as well.

I was about to go on ... forever ... when the billionaire woke up. Being a genius, he saw I had something on my mind, and goes, "What'd I miss?"

This Is My Art

Writing here, my occasional blog post, I now realize, is my art. I'm an artist, it turns out, as much as anyone. Only instead of dabbling with oils, watercolors, or other pigments, my art is the weaving, expression, and/or putting forth of words. Phonemes, sounds in the form of letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, with a good solid chunk of virtual type as the result.

The weird thing about it, if there is indeed anything weird about it, is that they never mentioned it quite like that in art class. They completely divided it up, as I recall, so art was painting, drawing, and molding (like the time I made my dad a clay ashtray about an inch thick), and writing was just an orphaned offshoot of English class. Looking back on it now, to me, that's weird. What's it got to do with English? You could just as easily write in some other language if you knew one.

Art class, though, obviously wasn't so strictly isolated. You don't even need to know how to talk to do art. You could grunt along, living in your old little world, and still make a halfway good ashtray. Or the Venus de Milo, were you so inclined. The foreign speaker would be at no disadvantage in doing art as my school narrowly defined it. He'd just babble out something incoherent, then dazzle the entire world with a painting of waterlilies.

I guess I must have had a good education in one sense: It laid the groundwork for me to come independently to this conclusion after around 50 years, that they were all wrong about art and writing. So that I can today declare, finally and definitively, writing is also art, and I'm writing, so I'm an artist. This is my art!

I was just in a bookstore today, true story. And if that's not enough, I was also at the library. And I saw a lot of books. Mostly crap, probably, certainly a lot of it I wouldn't be interested in reading. I more or less lump several genres in the crapper, like mysteries, true crime, popular religion titles, and certainly romance. For the most part, just to make a comparison to painting, these are the paint-by-number pictures of the writing world. It's a lot of hack work, churned out cynically and worth our scorn. Then there's the good stuff, actual literature, etc., etc.

Of course I classify my own blog posts in that last category. With the good stuff. Art as it was meant to be, nothing rushed out for an easy buck, but agonized over, and full of blood, sweat, and tears. Picasso couldn't do better. Monet, Manet, and Minet, all, would throw up their arms. And that makes me very proud. I'm to be envied. I use initiative to put ideas into motion, and nobody can say I don't. I love my art!

The Dawn Of Vigor Vivus

That's a really fantastic graphic, isn't it? I told the guy I wanted explosions, planets, beams of ethereal light, shafts of light, or shards, streaking across the newborn virgin sky. Which is a lot to expect for 20 bucks. You might get a small planet and a couple shards for that, but he really went all out. He blew my mind with this one!

So, instead of getting right into it today, I want to offer big praise, sincere plaudits, and enthusiastic kudos, and plenty of them, to my friend Jake across town, who tinkers with computer effects, etc. He said it'd be 20 bucks an hour, which seemed a little high, but then he said it'd only take an hour, so I got off easy. Especially when I think, something like that had to take more than an hour!

But, and this is understandable, he said he also wanted to get his name out there, and have something for his portfolio. I told him I represented one of the larger, more popular blogs on the internet, which I believe is true, so please, if you're visiting today, back me up on this. Jake's a good guy and needs to be encouraged any way we can. If you can throw a few bucks his way, whether on one of your own projects or as a tip for the pleasure of seeing this particular graphic, please feel free.

Jake, you did good, buddy. So, get ready, I'm coming over for more. I'd love it, just as an example, if you could work me up a killer "Devil" graphic -- think you got it in you? Something that really conveys the real evil of Satan, yet belittles him... I've got a project in mind having to do with Satan (the personification of what I'm talking about) communicating the anti-spirit of Rigor Mortis, the opposite of Vigor Vivus. If you need any guidance on the particulars, get with me. Basically it needs to be 425 pixels wide like this one, and you've got carte blanche, if you can keep it around 20 bucks again.

OK, without any further ado, and no further kissing up to sensitive artist types, let's get right to it ...

THE DAWN OF VIGOR VIVUS

(You can read my other great posts on "Vigor Vivus versus Rigor Mortis" at the link just given.)

Let me take you back to the olden days -- the really, really olden days -- back before there was anything except however you might conceptualize Pure Spirit/Mind and potentiality without limits. Are you game?

Like in the Tao Te Ching, there was really nothing, nothing differentiated, but all was one. Somewhere in that miniscule, yet infinite vastness, lay the spores of everything we now know and beyond. Picasso was in there, as well as Jesus Christ, Einstein, the Grandma Slump blog, Leonardo da Vinci, Buddha, Lao Te Tsu, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King, Jr., love, and the 7th Billion Baby, just born the other day. Tao was unruffled.

In there as well, on the negative side, was the Republican party, Satan, all the jinns, the Oakland Police Department, Pol Pot, Milli Vanilli, scurvy, rickets, fundamentalism, jaundice, the Black Plague, increases in the price of stamps, spam, Walmart, and chick flicks. And once again, Tao was unruffled.

Then, according to Jake's great vision above, fulfilling my own brief instructions for him, everything erupted. You might call it a cataclysm, but I like to think it looked more like a gentle scene from a really cool ballet, a pastoral ballet if there is such a thing. The planets seethed and tugged at each other, but it was all good, like it says in the Bible. Shafts of light zoomed around, bowing to one another. God was pleased, being that Spirit of life-fulfillment at the heart of it, the play (lila) of the Hindus. And whatever James Joyce meant by "the excelsissimost empyrean (bolt, in sum) earthspake," that occurred. It was a stunner. And there was a half hour's silence in heaven, for the Divine to catch its breath (Spirit).

Here, then, my friends, is what the spirit of life had, has, and offers today: VIGOR VIVUS, life vigorously present and lived, the true life, what each of us needs for our own perfect fulfillment. All the possibilities are present for you. Yes, Tao was unruffled, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a positive, purposeful side, and a negative, destructive side. The negative is RIGOR MORTIS, death present as well, taking the fullness away and leaving you destitute and empty.

So, you see, it goes back to the very beginning, the life you and I are meant to live, the life of VIGOR VIVUS, then and now. But RIGOR MORTIS is always here as well, not to be denied, but not to submit to either. What was true in the beginning is now and ever shall be. The good and the bad. Which will you choose? I hope you fulfill all your personal potential by embracing the life-affirming values inherent in eternal VIGOR VIVUS. Please, get up off your ass and do it! Don't let another day go by! Let the words of Frank N. Furter be your guide, "Don't dream it, be it!"

OK, Jake, yes, go for it! Get me the "Devil" graphic ASAP. I'll raise the 20 bucks somehow. The cornier the better, horns, weird tail, and pitchfork. I wanted the Vigor Vivus graphic classy, but I want the Rigor Mortis one ridiculous. Stereotypical and hackneyed is OK, thanks. 425 pixels.

You've Been Fantastic

We've all watched comedians on TV telling the audience that they've been fantastic. That's good, because a comedian wants a fantastic audience, folks who are going to appreciate them and laugh. We might say, What's the difference, if they're being paid? You could hire a comedian, send them out to a bunch of stiffs, he could go through his routine, and end it, and it'd be just as good.

Just thinking of it, it looks like it's just a decent way to end the routine. You're going to thank the audience, and since a lot of comedy is just talking anyway, you may as well compliment the audience. Plus, the audience's response is a key part of the whole thing for comedians. It can be different for a musical act, who are just there to run through their songs. Bob Dylan, as an example, might not say a word.

It's nice to hear it, that you're a fantastic audience, or you've been fantastic, even though it doesn't mean that much. Because it's being told to you in the aggregate, so it's not really a compliment you can claim and put on your resume. But it makes you feel better when you leave than it would if he said you were deplorable, like the school principals used to tell us.

I was at a restaurant that was getting a fresh reboot and the owner (or manager) was there in the first days, acting all funky anxious. (As it turned out, he had good reason to act anxious. I went back a few times, getting consistently bad service, so I haven't been back again.) So he's all stressed out, and his inclination was to come to the eaters and let them know they're fantastic for eating there. Of course they're just there to eat, not be told how fantastic they are. They're thinking, "Hey, dude, leave us alone!" But at least he wasn't singing Happy Birthday table to table!

It's good that a place has an owner who's cordial. But I prefer those who stay in the background somewhere, so you don't even know who the owner is. He's just a guy somewhere, counting money and parceling out the tips. With no feedback whatever table to table.

I'm thinking of the great artists, who simply labor alone, with no feedback from anyone. Like Van Gogh, who didn't get fame till he was dead. He didn't have to periodically step out and tell us we've been fantastic, a beautiful audience. "You've really been quite lovely!"

The Stick Figure Artist

He sits alone in his artistic citadel. (Hallelujah, that's a great sentence!)

You might call him an alone kind of guy. Something of a social clod. Perplexed by the madding crowds, the jostle and bustle of too many foreign bodies. (Wow, I'm really fleshing this bastard out!)

(Sorry for the parentheses, I know everyone hates them. I'll try to keep my own delight down to a minimum. On the other hand, who am I trying to spare? You, certainly, who are my lovely guest. Let's get back to the stick figure dude...)

There he is, and that's a self portrait you see, alone in his artistic citadel. He's sort of like me in several ways, thinking he is artistic without there necessarily being any evidence to prove it.

By citadel, I mean he's not sitting on the floor. He's up at the kitchen table or at his desk, sketching out his pathetic little sketches in a sketchbook, a regulation sketchbook that he got at the stationer's store. It's run by an English chap, well known for his accent. He, our artist, spends too much on sketchbooks, more than his sketches probably deserve, but the English chap's accent is seductive.

So there he is, once again, hunched over the sketchbook, using his imagination, digging deeply into his thoughts to come up with yet another stick figure sketch. There's a lot -- a hell of a lot -- of straight-on views like that, since profiles don't come easily. Mostly straight-on views, that in my opinion aren't going to appeal to anyone.

(Pardon me while I pause to think. I'm thinking, Who am I to judge such an one? Nobody, really, except maybe ... I could be the stick figure artist. His sketches and mine are straight-on. And too much for anyone to bear. He likes to think maybe the madding crowds will see his sketches. That's a natural inclination, perhaps, although it has a social component, too. End of my thoughts. He needs to think, Why do I even care?)

One of the stick figure artist's great projects, great to him, was to fill a tablet with little drawings at the edge, so he could flip them and see his work in motion. It took a week of meticulous drawing, and what he finally came up with was a stick figure picking his nose. The piece he entitled, "Everyone Does It."

Let's say someday, like when he's on his last stick, he might become famous. Suddenly his tablets and sketchbooks are in big demand. A museum somewhere heard the buzz and decided to jump on them. Now, as his life's breath is on the wane, suddenly his figures are going for big money. Like one figure for four figures or five.