Two worlds, inside and out.
Bach plays background
for Shakespeare’s mid summers night and last nights movie.
He says “Ok, so you get to pick the movies more often”.
Chosen for a story of inspiration;
How one artist may have been inspired.
No guns or violence; fuel scented,
metal twisting, broken body bloody,
fiery crashes,
just a maybe story of what could have happened
in one woman’s journey within
to find her talent, her unedited self.
Those that take the journey
see it for what it is; a waking dream,
a wandering through dim rooms,
when something opens a door or window;
illumination, awakening, inspiration, a muse.
That piece is born real out of clouds.
Transformed from wisps of fleeting thoughts,
phantasmal dreams, so hard to hold.
Made solid by pen, paper, paint, canvas.
Music for eyes, ears, mind;
Fuel to fire life.
I feel so dizzy,
an ache at the temples and down the jaw.
Waiting for a call or visit to define my worth at work,
listening to Bach to relax and inspirer,
a conduit of learning,
Develop those synapses that reach
into the folds of my storehouse
to deposit more or extract some.
Thinking of Shakespeare,
dreaming of a mid summers night – Wanting to get lost in it.
Writing instead.
I’m not a writer. It’s insane to imagine myself as someone who has mastered written communication. Far from mastery, I stumble about in the dark dreaming of being understood. I have been fortunate in that, those few excursions into writing I’ve taken, I have been encouraged by trusted friends, but how close is that to truth? Self doubt is poison to the creation of any art and I’m sick with it. I want so much to be understood to a depth that only writing or art can communicate but I lack the skill or talent to be a writer or an artist.
Stacks of poems and short prose fill a file of Me in my computer, much of it read only by me. Unfulfilled by the act of creation without recognition, using a pseudonym, I started a blog to see if others would understand my writing and “feel” something from it. Those first few postings were like boulders lifted from my soul. I felt lighter and freer. I had no idea that so much anchored me to self pity or that I could see so much beauty. My thoughts put to paper without the internal self editing we do when we speak, expressed a part of me that feared expression and yet lived in me. For awhile I felt dual. PTA mom, wife of twenty years, and this other person that wrote horrid pieces of tormented doubt and longing for “something” but still unable to put it all solid and whole. I wrote more. Still searching for some understanding of what was happening to me. Through this writing process I was transforming. I’d like to say that I’ve discovered the secret to a joyous life and fulfillment; found what I’ve been looking for, but my journey is not over and maybe it never will be.
My mother went through something like this when I was very young. Interestingly, I always thought she lost her mind at about thirty. She seemed to be searching in her own way. Where my journey was facilitated by learning, starting back to school, hers was less focused. She searched men for fulfillment and drugs for inspiration. By the time she arrived at painting as a form of expression she didn’t trust herself anymore and her paintings were flat scenes of nature that she never connected to. She didn’t have any stake in them. There was nothing of her in her paintings they were merely reproductions of photos people gave her to paint. She never wandered through a forest, felt the rough deep crevasses of bark that blankets a tree, or watched the path of the sun silhouette their branches and discovered life at her feet, took in the fragrance of earth with her eyes closed, sat and listened to the ache of loneliness that lives in a hundred year old tree caressed by the wind. Never tried to connect to her subject to give her paintings life and breathe. Ultimately she gave it all up, went back to an abusive husband she’d divorced thirty years before, to live out her life, existing.
I had some vague remembrance of Diane Arbus even before I saw the movie “Fur” based loosely on her life and work. I had some idea who she was but… I didn’t really. She photographed freaks, but not. She searched people to see the hidden self. Even in her photos of the famous there is something revealing in them. A scrap of personality, something real revealed from under the mask of the famous persona. When she talked about the “freaks” (Diane – pg 3) she photographed she eludes to this phenomenon. In her description I get the impression that her “freaks” have no mask to hide behind, that their real selves are closer to the surface, more accessible to her camera where as the famous subject, in her eyes, are “terribly blank”, (Diane – pg 3) well hidden.
I somehow identified with both art and artist. The only brown child in my family, I have an understanding of what it feels like to be the “freak”. Questions of adoption seem ridiculous to me now, knowing the poverty of my childhood, however at the time, as a child, wondering about my difference – maybe. Doubt is a powerful virus that I’ve struggled with; doubt of who I am and what my place is. Sometimes I think I’ve beat it, finally found the cure, but doubt returns to knock me down again.
The interesting thing about life is how long it takes for some of us to recognize the roles we play. Diane’s role was imposed on her, as it is for most people, from her birth. Born to wealth, she had opportunities that helped to nurture her strengths, and at the same time her wealth and family life contributed to the role of the isolated princess, held above and out of reach, that she carried with her always. Beyond the analysis of the psychological aspects of her childhood; her creative, work-a-holic father, distant mother, the governesses that kept her, the private progressive school that trained her, all these things helped to create her role as a child and later her need to search for her meaning to the world when she started training herself to be an artist of photography. Taking her craft as the conduit of her search she set off to know more about the world she was sheltered from and to discover that her secret desires, fantasies, are not so unusual in the context of the world’s diversity.
The peak of her career spanned the sixties from 1960 to her death in 1971, a time fraught with change and individualism. Diane Arbus began her search of life at a time in photography when artist were experimenting not just with the elements of a photo graph; structure, line, contrast, light, and also the technical advancements, but also with the art itself. Her time followed artists that told stories with their work or created moods in still life or studies of nature. Now artists were looking within to create. Aaron Siskind is quoted as saying “I’m not interested in nature, I’m interested in my own nature” (Great - pg 222). Whether she knew him or even knew of him, I couldn’t tell you however, that was much the theme of the time and represented the nature of her search. Not so much a subject that expressed a political view or told a story on the depravity of humanity but a search into her nature and where she fit in, in the vastness of human beings.
She couldn’t define that place. Money had defined her place as a child and maturing woman, but once separated from it, she could no longer place herself in the world of the wealthy and yet she didn’t fit into the rest of the world. She was unprepared for the reality of life and working for a living, and her training and education had given her, what she thought was a false sense of her abilities. She felt inadequate or at least uncertain of her having any talent, not able to trust the teachers at her Ethical Culture School, having told her that everything she did was “genius” (Bosworth – 130). Earning a living meant adapting her interests and search to a somewhat mainstream audience of popular magazines which challenged her vision but increased her technical skills.
Artists are all looking for something. I can’t believe that art is created by artists just for the sake of the process. There is a studied search for something in the work we’ve studied in class. And to some extent the search is much the same, and yet individual. Guillermo Gomez-Pena is searching for a forum for his voice, loud and forceful is his vision and his work to give voice to those not heard. Kevin Bott used his creative and artistic thinking to adapt his work in American prisons, to work in a Ugandan prison. His search is to prove that his work has purpose in the rehabilitation of these men. Both these artists, and others we have studied, search for the sweet humanity within us in the hope of bringing it to the surface. As I study the photos of Diane Arbus, her search feels like a secret. The secret self of those she photographed and maybe some better understanding of her own mysteries; the opposite of the clean, perfect façade of her upbringing.
Over the course of her professional career she worked for approximately 18 different publications. Esquire, Harpers Bazaar, The Sunday Times Magazine London, topped the list with other famous publications like Time Life Books, The New York Times, and Glamour magazine making the list. She captured images that people could either relate to or just couldn’t take their eyes from. Many where published during her life but many more not until the years after her death. She clicked so many photos, and when I looked at them I saw in print what I have been going through for these last few years; the incessant search that all the recognition of publication could not satisfy for her.
She committed suicide July 26th, 1971; one year three months after I was born. Her work is in a world of art beyond the narrow boundaries of my life, and still, when I read the movie box I felt some draw to the character described. The secret life or hidden self portrayed, felt very familiar. Her tortured ending reminded me of my mothers own ending. Giving up life or hope; giving up the struggled search for that wisp of understanding. A mixture of joy, confusion and fear came in that small box, that slim disk of shimmering rainbows. The joy of finding a lost sister, a connection to what I could be, the discovery of the path I am on. Confusion at the comparison to a tortured dead woman and what that means for me. What does my future hold? Will I give up too? Am I really like my mother? Fear at seeing my own reflection in a fiction. Seeing my mothers own struggle as my own, never wanting to be like her, struggling my whole life to not be like her and yet there she is.
I had imagined that writing this paper would be an easy process of reading about Diane Arbus and then writing something about her life and art. What I struggled with from the beginning is the reasons I found her art and life so compelling. Perhaps I’m just projecting or being too presumptuous as to compare myself to any artist but I identified with her art and her as an artist. I saw parallels to her life but for different reasons. Her life was sheltered by wealth and mine by poverty and yet our search was very similar. Finding our place in a foreign world that is life; not being satisfied with the roles we were given at birth. Wanting more but not being able to define what that “more” is. And then there is the doubt; is this all really so unusual? Perhaps this “struggle”, is just common and ordinary. Perhaps I am making too much of it all and none of the parallels I see exist. Am I no different than any other woman nearing forty, questioning my life and direction?
I am not a writer any more than Diane Arbus was a photographer. I am not what I do. What I do does not define who I am. I want to learn about life and find pieces to add to who I am to build a me that is satisfied and whole. I will never stop learning. Life will always be a mystery to be discovered and that will not torment me. There does not have to be a resolution or an ending to reach satisfaction, just the continued growth of mind and spirit. I will not punish myself for my imaginations and my imaginations will not rule my life. I will always strive for balance between all the things I love; family, work, writing, and learning. I will never give up.
Bibliography
Arbus, Diane, “.diane arbus.”, An Aperture Monograph, Copyright 1972 The Estate of Diane Arbus, published by Aperture Foundation, Inc. New York, 1972.
Arbus, Doon & Israel, Marvin, “Diane Arbus Magazine Work”, Aperture, Silver Mountain Foundation, Inc., New York 1984.
Bosworth, Patricia, “Diane Arbus, a Biography”, Alfred A, Knoph, Inc., New York, 1984.
Donovan, Hedley, “Great Photographers (1840-1960)”, Time Life Books, New York, 1971
Oppenheimer, Daniel, Jewish Virtual Library, 10/11/2007 http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/arbus.html
Prokopoff, Stephen S., “The Presence of Walker Evans”, Copyright 1978 The institute of Contemporary Art, Isabelle Storey & Alan Trachtenberg, Boston.
Tucker, Anne, “The Woman’s Eye”, Collins Associates book, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1973.
