Revealing the Concealed

If you stick with something long enough…eventually things start to happen. That’s how I feel this morning anyway. I managed to be at three different art events last night and had encounters with people I either recognized or have met before at each one. It’s looking like it’s possible to develop a sense of community in the art world, even in a city as vast as LA. This is quite heartening to me, as the first few years of making art here were relatively void of connections. Artists really do come together and support one another once they find each other.

In any occupation, no one else quite understands what you do as much as those who are doing the same thing. So, no matter how different your art may look from someone else’s expression, artists always share the commonality of birthing something and offering it up to the world in some capacity. This never fails to produce a feeling of camaraderie.

Words can be so nourishing. I had a recent conversation with a friend, a friend who regularly speaks into my life in such a manner. Her words so often feel like literal deposits of life to me. I feel a difference in my overall sense of well-being after we spend time together – her words impart warmth. I am so grateful for this.

Words are indeed powerful, but it is kind of funny that we forget this, given that we live with an abundance of words and information on a regular basis. Perhaps this is why we do forget. I think that living in the information age numbs us to the power of words. We hear them too frequently. And it is human nature to tune out anything that enters our life with too great a frequency. It is the things that happen less frequently that we notice (if we are still paying attention).

So we grow numb to words because we hear them too often, usually large masses grouped together in some sort of meaningless jumble. And then we forget how to use them as well. Or maybe we forget to use them. We forget the power of delivering even one or two well-timed, well-thought out words. And we often miss hearing them when they come our way, because we’re too busy defending ourselves from the rest of the onslaught.

I guess I’d like to become better at tuning out more of the words that literally are just that – information, mindless stuff, neither good nor bad. And spend more time and energy tuning into the less frequent, but life-giving ones. They are like drops of gold to watch for and cherish.

Someone’s romanticized comment the other day about life as an artist made me realize that there are a lot of misconceptions out there about what it means to actually be a working artist. It made me think, huh. If people really understood the reality of making art and promoting yourself, a lot fewer of them would list it as their “if I could do whatever I wanted to” kind of job.

Being an artist who is trying to promote yourself means endless hours of searching for and contacting new locations (whether those are galleries, stores, online competitions, art fairs, blog/article write-ups, juried shows, etc., etc.). It means 98% of the time hearing nothing back after contacting these places, 1.5% of the time being graced with a “no,” and .5% of the time maybe hearing a “yes.” It means believing in your work when there is no external feedback. It means believing in your work when there is negative feedback. It means working in isolation every day. It means having to fuel everything you do with your own drive. (No boss or coworkers to prod you along when you are unmotivated. No regular paycheck to incentivize you. No health benefits. No bonuses.) It means overcoming creative blocks. It means navigating your own path with few guidelines as to “how to do it.” It means learning how to nurture the creative fuel you were born with (which usually ends up being a self-learned skill, as 9 to 5 jobs cannot prepare you for that). It means having to self-learn most things. It means telling people repeatedly that you really are “working,” even though they think this means you are sitting around drinking coffee. It means believing that what you do has value and that the world is better off for it (despite most of the world not understanding this).

Of course, it also means experiencing tremendous fulfillment from using the gifts you were born with and satisfaction from building something from nothing. Yes, there are many enjoyable things about creating, too. But too often, the onlooking world observes artists from afar with a bit of a sigh and a “I wish I could just sit around and paint all day” mentality. Ha. Only other artists (add writers, musicians, actors, name-your-creative profession) can fully understand the all too often non-dreamy reality.

We purchased a new car this weekend and listed our 15-year-old Toyota Corolla for sale on craigslist. Our car is in good running condition, but it definitely has its share of scrapes and cosmetic wear and tear. However, we figured there would still be a buyer for it somewhere. I have found that selling things on craigslist in LA generally takes much longer than when I used to sell things on craigslist in the Bay Area. Up there, I’d get buyers for things within hours of posting, but down here, the response time has always been much slower. So, I figured it would take weeks or longer before we actually managed to sell it. Given this assumption, I was surprised to get at least 12 responses in less than two hours. As I scrolled through the list of emails, I realized that they were all from people with non-English names, many of whom appeared to be immigrants of one kind or another. It made me think of the film, A Better Life, that I just blogged about. One of the people we spoke to was not a recent immigrant, but an elderly Italian man from New York who had just moved to LA to be near his son. He was in the middle of a family crisis, had no car, and was in a very desperate situation. He was the first person who responded, but needed a few hours to find a way to get to our location and literally begged us to hold the car for him.

As I took all this in, I had flashbacks to my case worker days where I heard these kinds of stories all the time. My heart swelled with compassion as I realized that there is a very large pool of people in society who need a reliable car now, regardless of what it looks like or how old it is or what make or model it is or what dings there are in the paint job, etc., all the meaningless things that people with resources waste emotional energy on. It almost made me want to just give the car away for free. It made me remember that need is relative. Yes, we have a need to sell the car to recoup some of the cost of buying a new one. But people in the market for old, used cars at bottom of the barrel prices have needs of a different magnitude.

I used to feel guilt as a young adult at these kinds of discrepancies. I was one of those self-aware children who was exposed regularly to people of different socio-economic backgrounds, including the poor in inner city Chicago. And so part of how I responded to the needs of the poor in my youth was to feel guilt for my own upbringing. But I realized afresh the other night that this is the incorrect response. The reality is, need is need, no matter what form it takes or where it is expressed. Needs extend across class and race barriers, across neighborhoods, families, varying life situations, etc. To be human is to experience felt needs of many kinds. So, no matter the source of the need, compassion is a better and more useful response than guilt. Yes, some needs are more severe than others, but there is no need that is not deserving of compassion. Compassion is just part of what it means to love. And love is always a good response, regardless of the particular life situation that is presenting itself.

So, we ended up selling the car to the man who was in crisis. He found a way to get to us and seemed very happy to have solved at least one of the many problems he was currently facing. It felt like a good exchange all around – our need to sell was met, as was his need to get a reliable car quickly, and it made me wish that these kinds of resource exchanges happened more frequently. There is something about in-person interactions that is so much more real and compelling than just connecting loosely to some larger organization or entity. In-person exchanges allow us to know a bit of one another’s stories. They remind us that we actually do have the ability to meet one another’s needs if we’re aware of them.

Ah, the lure of pretense. I admit even I, a self-proclaimed pragmatic realist, can still be seduced by illusion. But generally, it is truly one of my pet peeves in life. I was reminded of this awhile back after attending a social gathering that was immediately uploaded to facebook (as seems to happen for everyone under, say, 32). I’ve already talked about my love/hate (well, let’s say predominantly hate) relationship with facebook. The main contributing factor to this feeling state is the overabundance of illusion in the flurries of postings. Photos are an obvious example. Yes, photos can and do say a thousand words, it’s just that we really don’t always know what words they are saying. We think we do, and we make assumptions all the time based on these thoughts. But the problem is, these assumptions are often inaccurate. We misinterpret, we construe reality to fit our own needs and wishes, we envy what appears to be someone else’s reality (and often times is not, if you bother to dig just slightly below the surface), etc.

It’s funny to me that I’ve ended up in what one could argue is the capital of pretense, LA, after being raised in such a real and down to earth part of the country. One thing I do in fact miss about the Midwest is how real people really are. What you see is generally what you get. You rarely encounter fakeness of any variety. People in California have often told me how genuine I seem (and they usually say this in an admiring way). But it always sounds a bit funny to me, because I still tend to think, well, isn’t everyone? I generally really mean what I say, and when people get to know me, they are really getting to know me. However, I’m learning this is not the case for everyone. I suppose I could learn to use a bit of pretense to my advantage, as some situations are better handled with a little less realism. I guess living in the land of actors could help me with this endeavor. However, until then, I am stuck with my grounded Midwestern self and sharp intuitive sense for anything less than real.

This is one of the best things I have read in a long time. For anyone who has ever felt time pressure, the need to get “more done,” guilt feelings at not getting “enough” done, difficulty being still or sitting in silence for more than 60 seconds, that self-worth is inextricably tied to productivity, or that being in the present moment is becoming harder and harder (and how can you not feel one or all of those things living in America in this day and age and being steeped in the “protestant work ethic” since birth), please read this article. It seems there is very little content of any depth or substance in most of what I come across online, but this article is full of it. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi f=/g/a/2011/10/19/notes101911.DTL&t=1319840233

I just watched this movie on dvd the other week, and I decided I’d try to write something about it, although I don’t think I have much to add to the story of the film. But I definitely recommend it. The story was of particular interest to me, as it is filmed in Los Angeles and documents very realistically the life of illegal immigrants in this city. However, there are illegal immigrants all across the country, so I think it could speak to almost anyone, not just LA residents (not to mention the fact that it’s a pertinent issue in general for our day and time).

The basic story is about an illegal immigrant father who is trying to provide a better life for his son (for a nice Wikipedia summary, look here). He has steady work in LA, but wants to move to a better neighborhood to escape the influence of gangs and improve his son’s chances at a good education. The film unflinchingly documents the struggle inherent in surviving as an illegal immigrant (let alone improving one’s situation), all while trying to remain as hidden as possible.

I know I will never be able to look at Mexican workers in the same way again. I mean, I’ve always had a compassionate heart for the disenfranchised, so a lack of empathy has never been my problem. But this film, for me, really shined a light on the issue in a fresh and compelling way that changed my perceptions. To put it in the words of one of the film’s producers, “it puts a human face on an invisible slice of the population.” For that alone, it’s worth seeing.