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artistic families
I just auditioned for this play abotu Frank O'hHra thanks to the good graces of a friend who hooked me up with the opportunity. Lord knows if anything will come of it, but it has me all excited and frenetic, because oh my god, you _can_ write about this shit. I tend to have this (rather studied and ineffectual) aversion to making art about art and towards articulating why I want to, but this pleasant little audition in this unbelieveable apartment just sort of shook me out of it.
Which leads me to a quasi-related question:
Talk to me about the artistic families you know about/admire/find interesting/hate/are afraid of. And talk to me about what artistic family means to you -- genetic or constructed? love or friendship? Clear-cut or murky? What are the plausible geometric permutations? Enabling the product or part of it? Is it stuff like the emergence of Sofia Coppola? Bohemian cliques like the Frank O'Hara mess? Francis Bacon and his troubled relationships with his muses? Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh? Baz Luhrmann's Iona, etc.? Talk to me about how other people do it and why you care. And talk to me about how you do it if this pertains to you (and I can think of at least two instances on my friendslist that I think qualify).
My brain is al buzzy. Please feed me.
Which leads me to a quasi-related question:
Talk to me about the artistic families you know about/admire/find interesting/hate/are afraid of. And talk to me about what artistic family means to you -- genetic or constructed? love or friendship? Clear-cut or murky? What are the plausible geometric permutations? Enabling the product or part of it? Is it stuff like the emergence of Sofia Coppola? Bohemian cliques like the Frank O'Hara mess? Francis Bacon and his troubled relationships with his muses? Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh? Baz Luhrmann's Iona, etc.? Talk to me about how other people do it and why you care. And talk to me about how you do it if this pertains to you (and I can think of at least two instances on my friendslist that I think qualify).
My brain is al buzzy. Please feed me.
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I've always wanted to be part of one but it just doesn't seem to be how my life has worked out.
Not sure if that's the sort of comment you were after...
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My parents ended up with "creative" kids in spite of their best efforts to live regular workaday lives. We were encouraged in all our interests but the terror about surviving as an artist went deep also. My brother is an artist living with my mother and finally making money from music; you know my deal, I'm going into debt to get training and learn how to stabilize myself in the world with my gifts.
My dad is really the creative one in the traditional sense, although my mother insists her father had a creative streak because, as a manager for the First National grocery store, he used to paint the gourds to look like Schmoo.
Also, I think the notion of the suffering artist is vastly overrated, although the reality is alive and kicking. I want a functional artistic family, chosen, dynamic (not static), multigenre.
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So talk to me about your personal fantasy artistic family in a structural/logistical way.
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To freestyle here:
- I think there the artistic family archetype is more father-son related, or at least, that is my perception of it
- I should write a post about the Gazebo Theory, which a friend and I concocted at around 23 when we were all afraid of creatively stagnating in the fight for survival, and also, I was in love with a musician
- biological artistic family: a model of balance between creative and family and social life, bills more or less paid, understanding of odd artistic spasms, patience for the child who becomes an investment banker, no ongoing shrieking drama that forces a creative child to become an investment banker just for stability's sake, etc. I realize all these qualities could come from a camp or something but I've seen kids go under without consistent creative outlets and this is the blue sky dream anyway.
- chosen artistic family: the Gazebo Theory. Houses maybe half a mile from each other, each with resources for that artist: studio, loft, built in bookshelves, window with southeast exposure, cats, whatever. Lots of land. Near but not in city necessarily. Co-op house for those that want it. At center of village, from which the artist houses spread like starfish arms, a gazebo or cottage or lofted thing (realize this is like a cartoon sketch) where everyone can meet up, have a salon, come and go, display their work, etc.
Realize this also overlapped with my old idea of marriage: separate spaces with conjugal visits to listen to records, cook, hang out, conjugate, come and go as desired.
How's that for starters?
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I am so interested about your father-son remark. What makes this so in your mind? As none of the original examples I came up with involve that directly (although there's argument for indirect involvement in a couple of them). It makes me think of Michael, who was arguable an artist, and his father who was not an artist other than teh pumpkins he painted at Christmas, but how much of Michael's creative drive stemmed from that part of the family conflict. For me, and I think it's clear in my initial examples, my artistic family thingy comes from some odd sense of the sacred marriage. Of course, these things make sense in both our cases -- you watched your brother from afar as if he were a mystical being barred to you and I watched my parents and their painting, also mystical and barred to me both because it was not my art of choice and because their marriage always took clear precedence over me.
I am also interested in how much of your logistical framework seems to be more about how to live so you don't get subsummed by the needs of other artists than it is about facilitating your own art, or roping others into your direct artistic needs. I am also interested in the scale -- this sounds like a village as opposed to a household.
So to what degree are you willing to act on your fantasy about all this? To what degree are you acting on it?
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The father-son comment came purely from instinct. I think you're right, it's the conflict, and in many ways I've tried to be the son my father wanted as well as the daughter who pleases everyone. My dad shoved his artistic gifts under to be Mr. Businessman, and so I believe much of his pleasure in my literary aspirations stems from his unlived life. This is fine, and normal, but, there it is. I have had to sort out a lot of what I do to please him and what on earth might please me. I err on the former side more often than I'd like, even though he has little idea of what I "do" now.
Regarding structure that keeps me from getting subsumed in the lives of other artists: I think I have mentioned before a tendency to step back from a hobby as soon as someone else picks it up. Be it cooking a certain something, crafting a certain way, dressing a certain way, whatever, I will shy away bowing and scraping rather than beg, borrow or steal my own right to take up equal space. I get irrationally worried about someone thinking I'm imitating (perhaps because I have a history of being criticized for this). Therefore a little sanctum sanctorum delights me, where I have the space to fully form some ideas and actions before other people start dipping in. This is also why I am a good group facilitator and a lousy team member.
At 23 my model of a good relationship meant the man with the steel guitar came over, cooked with me, played some records, slept over, and left the next day. Or, I go to his place. Enough overlap to rejuice me but not so much I'd disappear. Obviously this is some time ago and my boundaries are better now. At school there was a lot of talk of creative partnership. Donald Hall read about his marriage to Jane Kenyon, and oh, it was so workable! She got up and wrote, and then she walked the dog while he got up and wrote, and then they had breakfast together, and then they did more writing in their opposite ends of the hall, then lunch together, then a nap, then...etc. I heard this the first night and it felt like news to me. Yet I heard similar stories from my colleagues, Also, I learned that living among writers was quite different from living among a pack of 20 year old drama majors near New York City. And I remember how fired up my friends and I were in the junior year English exchange program in our little flat in England, having big Talks about Literature in the kitchen over tea and then storming back to our rooms to do more reading. This felt very alive to me, and I've forgotten it.
As far as living it, or creating it, I feel a large quiet transition happening. I believe I can get what I want now. I believe it is okay to want it and almost to ask for it. My own work habits have been so disorganized in the past though that, in a way, the issue is whether I think I am an artist, whether I have a right to take up space, and whether I have a right to enlist anyone to do anything for me. The obvious answer is that I have a right to all of it, but the bones are slow to learn this and are getting a big transfusion this week even. Talk to me in two months; who knows where I will be, but I imagine in a very different place.
I am curious to hear what feeds your writing process. I find spasms of social activity followed by stretches of solitude work well. Too often though I forget about the social/fun aspect and then wonder why I feel mired. How can going to the movies count as research? Yet, it does, and it feels good, too.
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Actors seem to have a narrower trap -- it's this idea that you must be around peopel and social all the time -- I'm not sure what it comes from, but it's a pressure I feel. And it doesn't work for me. It harms my work and my ability to get work done.
I've yet to find a similar trap in directing, I think because I have to be on top of so much shit at once.
Going to the movies is everything for me, for every art that I do. I never walk out of a theater without being different than I came in, even if just for five minute.
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If I am in charge of something I get tons done. I am a lousy team member. If I am expected to morph into a group for very long I get contentious and sad.
This weekend I'm going to see March of the Penguins.
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I managed to avoid The Parrots of Telegraph Hill although that had a nerdy guy to distract you from the birds.
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