It’s funny – I talked about this looming shadow of being ~percieved~ in my last post, and that same day I got followed by an instagram account of a chicago stand up comedian and podcaster. ……..How? Why? I knoooow I shouldn’t overthink. It’s ego, who cares, maybe it’s random, nothing. I just…what worries me the most is if danny or someone else was bringing me up like “look at this psycho fan, isn’t she nuts?”. If I never hear about it, it shouldn’t affect me, it’s not my problem. I’m choosing to put myself out there, that is the risk I take. But…I think it’s necessary self-compassion to forgive myself for the feeling of shame in the moment. Welcome to the freak show! We have a brand new crash out every 2 weeks. You’d never want to touch her with a 10 foot pole, but isn’t it fun to watch her spiral?
I think, if or when I find my soul family, I won’t feel the need to broadcast my pain out into the ether. I won’t be baited into sharing art that very few people, outside of those who know me well, are particularly excited about. This is a sort of stand in, a crutch, an imaginary, amorphous penpal. Maybe part of this blog will become a memoir someday, who knows. I’ve had that thought, but I discounted it because of the multimedia aspect. Then, just recently, I was exposed to the website 17776. It is speculative science fiction, but also a multimedia presentation. It is…everything! Very Hitchhikers Guide, Terry Pratchett, Portal (the video game), that sort of dry existential humor. I can’t recommend it enough, if you like that sort of thing.
It’s hard to intuitively understand what is easy to describe- an artist who is misunderstood in their lifetime. You read the life story as a poignant tragedy, but what is it like as a human experience? In hindsight, we are glad they didn’t succumb to the critics and nay-sayers, those that just couldn’t understand. How does living in that rejection really play out, though? What is the human price paid when the universe juices the lemon and tosses away the rind. Lemonade for a future generation. Creative inspiration is a force that possesses you, puppeteers you, grabs you by the throat and slams you into the wall. “DRAW. WRITE. THERE’S NO TIME.” If it was anything less than an irresistible compulsion, the trope of the tortured artist would not exist. As romanticized as it’s made out to be, it’s a hell that too rarely feels worth the reward.
That sounds like delusions of grandeur, but I don’t mean to imply I will necessarily leave a profound artistic legacy. I think it’s a narrative that plays out for artists big and small. We just tend to hear about the big ones. The “lucky” ones.
I went back to the japanese store – a dangerous financial gambit, and I lost. The books I got were exceptional, though. The first one is a yearly illustration showcase. You could not ask for better art inspo, holy CRAP. I also got this book of Lucy, in Japanese, for my dad. A blend of our interests.
This last one reminds me of my childhood, for a few reasons. In middle school, before they would let me take Japanese classes at ASU, I took lessons as part of a community college program for Japanese kids. It was mostly to keep them up on the Japanese curriculum, but the “school” did also have some language classes. Since it was a primarily native focused program, sometimes we would use the learning tools for little kids to study with. I looooooved this more than anything. What I bought here is a study book for 1st graders, just starting to learn the chinese characters. It’s an interesting intermediate stage, where only a few of the words are written in kanji, and the rest in hiragana. Some words, like on the cover here, are only partially in kanji – the “easy” kanji. It will for sure be fun and nostalgic to use.
I also picked this one because of the specific Pokémon. Yes, I am a gen 1 basic bitch, what can you do. But also, maybe because of the time period it evoked, it reminded me of playing Pokémon Snap at my friend Rachel’s house. She had a Nintendo, while I just had a Playstation, so we spent a ton of time playing that and Pokémon Stadium. That happy memory has become a sort of set piece in my imagination, a castle on a cloud pocket demention. My mind often takes me there, and I am with a different friend who is as soft as I am somehow. We’ve escaped to this place where we can admit, it’s actually more fun to be nice to the pokemon. We laugh at how cute the charmanders are as they pop over the hill and rush over to the sound of the pokeflute. How the flash mob of them dance in perfect, hypnotic unison. I don’t really know how to articulate it, but… this friend gets it. The armor can come off, the teasing never bruises. A memory of a me in a parallel dimention, perhaps.
I had a dream recently where I was being picked up in a black SUV/Jeep lookin’ thing, but as I got in I noticed there was some yellow peeking out. “Was this painted over? My friend Rachel had a car just like this when I was little, but it was bright yellow…”
As the dream went on, we went to a hoity-toity sort of restaurant. I kept messing things up, misunderstanding the etiquette, and the staff were getting very annoyed with me. I decided I had to run away, find my own car whereever it was, or maybe just hide. Then, the people I was with came and found me. They said the staff were being very rude, and I shouldn’t feel bad at all. I had to go to the bathroom, but because it was a fancy area there was no public place to go. The group I was with devised a scheme to sneak into the back of the restaraunt and pretend to be patrons, so I could go in.
I was quite sad to wake up and leave those very supportive people. I had fallen asleep in my cloths, and as I was changing into my pajamas something fell out of my black bra. It was my yellow carnelian heart.
The cynical part of me says all of this is cope, the consequence of too many disney movies in childhood. The hidden part of me hopes that if I can feel those experiences, even as a fantasy, they will start to feel more real. More possible. 8 billion people in the world – you will find ones that are safe to be soft with.
>>robyns_ramblings 