Dear Lyn, (who's Lyn? see last week, clicking here)
I was going home on the subway today, and a coworker told me she liked that I had “fully expressed” myself is a couple areas, like painting and writing. I have worked hard to project my voice out of my skin, to express myself. But with neurosis. When I was growing up, my brother was a popular kid who liked loads of liquor and impressing the school, which he could. I looked up to him--too much. I think that that awe developed my main neurosis: I wanted to be bigger than I was, and to be seen more than I was, and to be respected by hoards of drunk or wild admirers.
I also had another side to me, which was my harsh and restrictive discipline. In contrast to my brother, I was the “nerd,” the kid who needed approval from people who were not just our friends but had publicly established credentials: our parents, teachers, and some imagined popular vote who would rate me properly when I ran as the “first woman president.” I was a dutiful narcissist.
Those feelings can lead to creative inhibition. My coworker told me I had “fully expressed” myself, but I know that sometimes I try too hard, and when I try so hard, I feel like a morphed me emerges. In this week’s plate portrait, of June Jordan, I stopped myself after 2 hours of painting, so that I would not overdo it like I sometimes feel I overdo it when I try to get the likeness “just right.”
Lyn, you love June Jordan, who shoots from the gut because she doubts the head when the head is too insistent on its way of doing things. You sent me three emails asking me for her picture. I didn’t know her at all when you said she was a great poet and activist. Here’s what I’ve found out about her:
—Another bisexual. You do keep asking me to paint women who like women. I went to a play at your club this weekend, and I saw Lori E. Seid, a gender bender, producing young girls in a play in which they supported each others’ “full expressions.” The main idea of the play, I felt, came in the last piece, when the girls said “girls are emotional! F--k really, really rational education.”
—Jordan dedicated her memoir, Soldier: A Poet's Childhood, to her father. It dissects her awe for a man who had her memorize excerpts from classic texts and who beat her when he felt frustrated.
--She published about 27 books, mostly poetry, including a biography and many books of political essays. She went on to teach at Yale and Sarah Lawrence and to be a full professor in the Departments of English, Women Studies, and African American Studies at the University of California Berkeley. At Berkeley, she founded Poetry for the People, which goads students on to use poetry as a means of “full expression.” “I did not wake up one morning ablaze with a coherent vision of Poetry for the People,” Jordan has said. “The natural intermingling of my ideas and my observations as an educator, a poet, and the African-American daughter of poorly documented immigrants did not lead me to any limiting ideological perspectives or resolve. Poetry for the People is the arduous and happy outcome of practical, day-by-day, classroom failure and success.”
—She died from breast cancer at age 65.
—She wrote this, in her poem “I Must Become a Menace to my Enemies”:
“I will no longer lightly walk behind
a one of you who fear me:
Be afraid.
I plan to give you reasons for your jumpy fits
and facial tics.”
Ilana Simons is a therapist, literature professor, and author of A Life of One's Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf. Visit her website here.
Tigger, there's no need to feel you have to change my mind...my mind is open for anything.....I've seen it all.
My answers weren't meant for you, I'm sorry if it sounded as though I was giving a lecture. I honestly wasn't. I know you know as much about art as I do...it was for the listening group of non participants.
The positioning of the face wasn't my concern in this picture...it's none of my business, basically, however it's positioned. The image wasn't the issue, it's the colors. At least for me. I wasn't trying to restructure the head on the plate.
Yes, black and white, and the tones in-between has its place, I don't deny this, or challenge it, and it's beautiful in its own right, but we're talking portrait's here...this one....not specialty paintings. I didn't feel it too necessary to get off track too much, even though I tend to do that with my laments. Yes, I would love to go to a museum with you, and talk about art over a cup of tea. 
I feel blogs, as I've said many times, create no way to get feedback from some bloggers. The person writing the articles, or whatever they are. The feelings are definitely my own. It's my problem. Not all bloggers do that to me. But every once in a while, especially when something so blatant as self exposure is brought to the audience, and yells to be looked at and dared to be challenged.....
......when I challenge, or give an opinion, it just lays there like a dead issue, like an animal that has been run over in the road... road kill.....and the skin used as someone's hat. I know, I know...a little on the dramatic side....and as I said, it catches up with me, until I hate everything about responding to these blasted things. I hate to critique, period, but I get caught up in it, without realizing it, or even being asked.
We weren't asked to take this painting, or any painting apart. I don't know how this makes Ilana feel. This is where I need feedback. I hurt when I don't get it. I beat myself up, because the last think I want to do is hurt her feelings, and I feel with my discussing this, it might. I ask myself, why was it necessary for me to look at these paintings, and say the things I do? I can't voice it outloud!
The confusion is, when someone puts themselves out there.....why? I'm sorry I've made an issue of this. I can't learn to know when to shut up, when I get no feedback. Do you see the blood dripping off my forehead this week? Now you know why.
