Focus

Doubly exposed, with a tensely unhappy look.

All my life, my mother has taken really bad photos. It's always been weird to me, because before I was born and for some short time afterwards, my mom loved painting. I still have the precious little watercolor that she made me for my baby room, of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet floating on a watery green background that was supposed to reference grass, but I don't mind the abstraction. My first oil paint kit was my mom's old discarded one that I pulled out of the back of a basement closet. I was reminded every time I opened it, with it's old brushes, linseed oil, and postcards that she used for reference. She wasn't very good, but she also didn't stick with it. There's one painting I found (now hanging above her bed at my putting) that she did of a landscape from a photo. It has some brilliant elements, but just like me with a fondness for science, her vocations led her elsewhere.

Which made her utter lack of ability with cameras even more troubling. Why? She hated posing for pictures, gladly showing me her sulky pouting baby pictures in black and white that my grandparents made her pose for. She cited all sorts of excuses: she hated getting her hair set with curls, she didn't feel like posing, or she was "too busy" to take a good shot. Baffling answers all, but they didn't tell me the real story, because unlike my mother, I could read pictures like they were books. Her photos were all over the place; bad angles, blurry shots, jarringly off composition, always out of focus, or she had a really tight, forced expression of her face when she did pose.

Cutting me out of the picture, and getting away with it.

I didn't really make the connection until many years later, years after I expertly learned the businesses of visual communication, and the various methods of those mediums, because it's that complex. My mom hates posing for photos because she looks crazy in them, and she knows it. It gelled for me with my oldest brother and his wife: with all their compulsive traveling, not one single travel shot produced by them (they also shun the creativity of most social media). Not one. Oh, years of oddly posed Christmas cards of them that they framed for us as "gifts", my savvy marketing family even hiring a professional photographer for their staged Greenwich, CT shoots, but not once did they pick up a camera. They'd admire it in others, market themselves through the medium and put it on their walls, but not once have I ever seen one of them take an actual photograph. They say they don't need them or like them either, which is doubly weird, because they work out to maintain their images all the time. But, I suppose if I had a suicide mom and kids on serious psychiatric medication (like my brother and his wife), I'd hate reminders, too.

Ditto with pictures of me. Not one of me on any of their walls. My mom has these strange plastic-wrapped bundles of pictures, sometimes correctly labeled for the individual in the photo, and sometimes not. They come to me as she finds them stored throughout her household, or when her cleaning lady moves old furniture around. Her handwriting on them ranges from the perfect schoolgirl of her youth to the much more recent scrawl of her senior years. I have no idea why she randomly selected some pictures to be packed away in baggies and some not, except for the obvious proof that these photos show me, like time capsules of her madness: because she still struggles to make sense of the world around her, and who the people are in the photos.

Posing behind me, like I'm a trophy fish on the wall or a decorative lamp.

 
Nowadays, I use them as a form of art therapy for her, just like her onsite caregiver Lynette does in much more vivid detail with her, one image at a time: who are these people? What do they mean to you? Do you remember taking them, or how you felt at the time? More and more, I feel like all of my very learned expertise comes down to the feeling Anne Sullivan must have had breaking through Helen Keller's massively intricate self-defense system: I have done all this for her, to break through the walls of her mind that are like prisons for the many facets of her fractured self. I use my art to break through, very often to her, violently and aggressively, as you can plainly see why here. 

Some days, I simply sign the same messages of hope and loss, love and anger, here on this site and through other media outlets, over and over again until you get it. And sometimes, like this perfectly framed summertime photo obviously taken by grandfather for its' astonishingly stand-out clarity, I get help exactly when I need it, through a man who openly supported my art and personality without prejudice at great contrast to our unhealthy and immediate family. I can feel the power of His Eternal Undying Love, spoken loud and clear across the ages, through one simple, humble, and very beautiful photograph of a little girl trapped and angered by the madness of others, because that's exactly what my healthier grandparents lived through with their children and grandchildren, too.

It was the summer of '75 for me and my awesome Grandpa.

For the Many Faithful of the World: today I give thanks for the loving, beautiful, and gifted grandparents who were essential to my good health growing up. I would not have survived this life without them. Their patient care was often just a phone call and five minute drive away. I also give thanks for all of you who have survived the cruelty of other people's madness to achieve great personal success, by breaking through the many walls around you to greatness. Long may you reign in peace with us. Amen to you.

 (for Bernard and Ann, two of His Most Faithfully Devoted Servants)

Here's a hint: I'm the one in the middle.

Times Square

After I graduated mid-session from art school, a few of my friends made their way to my aunts' apartment in Kensington for cheap rent, some sanity, and a crash pad while they began their own art and design careers. It served us well. I began my apprenticeship in publishing for an annual salary of just $11,500 in 1993, and rates have not gone up much. A recent stint in an lowbrow indie house had interns who began full-time work at a wage of just $20,000, doing just what we did back then: sharing small apartments in the city by tripling and quadrupling up, such is the way of our chosen vocation.

We split the monthly maintenance fee of just $400.00 because if we didn't, we wouldn't be able to eat food or pursue our various vocations. There was Lisa, an old housemate from RISD who worked at a sweater manufacturer, Ed, who worked for MTV studios, and then, after he left, an old friend from Oneonta who was in love with me stayed and wouldn't leave, working first as a waiter before beginning his carpentry apprenticeship under my support.

Lisa and Ed were both terrified and enthralled with New York City. At first, neither had understood my time at their tony white tower design school. Ed came from a wealthy family who catered to his every need, and Lisa learned to sew and make clothes under her mothers' wing. They both had it much, much easier than me, so my slow start fooled them into thinking they had a superiority that quickly evaporated in the Big Apple. Oh. Tough city kid from the craziest, hardest place on the planet. Yep, kids. Welcome to the Capital of the World! They started connecting with exactly where my true grit came from, and it greatly discomfited them. My seemingly junior status as a student began to cast itself into what it actually was: a working class kid who attended an upstate New York teacher's college for basic liberal arts studies at the age of 17, per my parent's orders.

Nowadays, students can co-jointly enroll at Brown and RISD for liberal arts and specialized design studies, which is basically what I did on my own back then, anyway. If I hadn't diverged paths to their white castle, I would have gone on to F.I.T. in the city for my senior year, after spending three at Oneonta. It was called a "3:1 Program", meaning I would have earned two degrees in just four quick years: a Bachelor's in studio arts and an Associate's degree in Advertising Design, but my dad's business sprouted and profited, thus allowing me to change tracks with his approval, which I did, because that was the deal we struck up, one dark, lonely, rainy upstate night in the rain, a young me talking to him on a payphone. Oh. It was really like that. I simply hadn't had money at the time.

In my hometown they began rapidly putting the pieces of my puzzle together, and they didn't like. Not one bit. There was no "spoiled rich girl" routine, no bullshit phony act, no pouty foot-stomping that needed appeasing, just the brutal reality of my daily work and commuting grind on a shoestring salary, though in true competitive envy, they did try to sabotage me still, even after school, which exactly what my mentor at RISD told me would happen with supposed "art school stars". I began disappearing with grace into my habitat, and they couldn't swim on their own in my environment, and I knew it. School begins now, kids!

They had toted along all of their false preconceived ideas about my town, too, mostly petty generic stuff like tourist traps and bad food. I gave them the real deal every day, served up warm, and they hated it, choosing time and again for the phony thing over authenticity. Kids love dream worlds and fake fantasies, and this was no different. Ed drew other people's ideas during the day, and Lisa ran errands for other designers. She never successfully drew a single sketch that was approved or made on the production floor. She learned to get out sooner rather than later, which she did. They both did, running to points out west in sunny Southern Cali, a fool's paradise if ever there was, which they pitched and promoted to the hilt, just like they had bragged about "making it" in New York City on me and my father's dime with money, rent, and resources that they have never paid me for in full, to this very day that I write to you on a humble public library computer.

It was a huge slice of humble pie for them. No one cared about their fancy degrees! And why would they? At my publishing house, Yalies and Harvard grads were everywhere, littering each floor of the Flatiron with trust funds in their back pockets, in case they failed. And then, the truth finally struck them, because I read it all over their faces: I played the game hard, with no safety net. It was just me, running on my juice. Oh. Another bad realization for them, again, like <ooooff> a soft punch to the gut. Yep, they are indeed catching onto to our fair Gotham. That's the level, yo. Cue song, begin scene: "This is how we do it!"

And so, like every other "idea" they had about my town, they brought New Year's Eve to the table for me to enlighten them about, and I tried, dear readers, I really did, but like most disillusioned kids, they insisted on seeing it for themselves. Sigh. Oh, good, just what every tired and broke single "parent" like me needs: Times Square on New Year's Eve! And, just like I spelled it out for them, like I type it out word for word for you to recount with me, each and every scary bad thing that could happen did. You know, because I can read minds and shit, like some fucking t.v. psychic. It's magic!

We climbed the subway stars to a smoky Hell right out of any Hollywood movie, complete with terrifying cops in full riot gear, with battle regalia like huge Uzi guns, weapons Ed drew in his boyish cartoons but had never seen in person, because people like me shield him from it. Tear gas completed the hellish effect, casting a greenish haze everywhere that made shapes appear suddenly out of nowhere, drunk people careening and screaming and puking and stumbling, packing themselves into the square like rats. They clung to me, shaky and almost in tears, as I guided them through the insanely packed streets, delivering them safely to a party with, yep, more out-of-touch RISD kids. Wow! "Guys, it was just like Marie said!" My words spoken to them in the warmth and safety of my family's Brooklyn apartment were now finally made real to them through the conjuring that every good parents already knows; that of experience.

They cut ties with me eventually by turning on me, in recognition of my greater gifts that they could no longer pretend did not exist like they had done back at school, and like any embarrassed kid always does, they did it by withholding "thank you" to my face, knowing that I deserved for it my many services and kindnesses, instead choosing to hurt me with their feigned indifference, but isn't that always the way it is with children? They were beautiful and very young to me, then; spoiled and ungrateful, yes, as they lashed out at me in fright and anger because my ferocious home town was ill-suited to them like I knew it would be, but if you could see my face as I write this right now, you parents in my audience already know what you'd see: a softness that comes from empathy, compassion, understanding, and a mother's undying devotion to the very people she gave shelter to, and I wouldn't change a thing.

Amen to you, during this holiday week. Beware the many bugaboos that may be lurking behind a darkened street corner.   

'Tis the season for such things, my dears.

Reel Life: A Sensei's Vampire Senses

In order to become a master of the arts, one must succumb to it wholly and completely. Where there is great love, there can be no half way. Once an art has chosen you, you must follow where it takes you, dedicated to the end. That's the price of great passion; utter devotion, and the sublimation of the self in search of the attainment of mastery. Many a sensei has often said that "in the pursuit of perfection, we attain excellence", and so it goes for the artist in their search. We hone our senses to their human heights, hoping to achieve greatness, and in doing so, we may attain immortality, or what passes for it in our human world, limited as that is by our perceptions.


 
I submit to you for your perusal two such examples of artistry and devotion in cinema, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" and "Frostbitten": one, the story of a lifelong chef in his noble quest for mastery with his chosen elements through the Art of Sushi, and the other a perfect show about the joys of a well-done horror movie; there's camp, humor, fun, gore, suspense, and irony. Sometimes, there isn't an obvious harmony between the movies I select, but the cognitive dissonance of what appears to be a random selection, that then stitches itself into a matched set before my very eyes, forming connections by what feels to be of its' own will, but is indeed of my making. Everyday magic is the ability of the best human minds to stretch out to reach the edge of it's vast limits through the daily discipline of practice. In doing so, the master vaults way past the average person in abilities, attaining powers of craft that allude the individual incapable of such acts of constancy.  Look, and see.