Motives

I spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to get that picture to look like a VC Andrews book cover–first getting everyone to pose with serious faces, then trying to edit it to look stretched and over-contrasted in an oval frame.  Eventually I settled on this.

Did you ever read Flowers in the Attic or My Sweet Audrina? I refuse to reread them, because I’m sure they’ll be ruined by my having a little more sense/taste now.* They were all about weird family dynamics and crazy mysterious secrets and a little murder, brainwashing, and incest. Enduring classics. I think you can still buy them at the grocery store.

My relationship with the beauties in the image above (we’re missing a few stars) is unlike any relationship I’ve ever had with a group of people–even my family is not this quick to forgive. We might not have all immediately chosen one another as friends if we met at a party, but we’ve been working really closely together for a week at a time for several years now, and our dynamic is one of the things I find most holy in the world. We work really hard together, under an immense amount of emotional pressure, facilitating art-making and writing workshops. Last time they were in town, earlier this year, I was marveling at how quickly we rebound from disagreements, how we snap at one another and then find a way to laugh at ourselves and move on. We couldn’t do our work together without that leeway–no one can be completely 100% their best, most patient, gracious self all the time, and during this week we spend the bulk of our waking hours together.  This past week I was finally able to articulate it in a way that felt like a giant lightbulb going off (pardon the cliche). Even if I don’t like someone’s method–or they don’t like mine–we are willing to listen to other perspectives to better reach our goal. We check to make sure everyone has eaten, has slept well, has time to have their own griefs heard–not so that we can weigh in on their personal decisions, but because we care about one another’s wellbeing, and see each individual as imperative to the mission. What makes it work, what allows us to forgive one another and pick up the slack for one another without resentment, to care for one another is that we fully trust one another’s intentions.  We come from different backgrounds, are employed by different organizations, but we all trust that each person is working to make the week great and to help our participants feel listened to and loved and supported and safe to tell their stories. Coming to this place of faith in one another took some time. We were near strangers the first time we worked together, and the world is full of people doing this kind of work with their own agendas and posturing. To have found one another and to be able to come together around this project has been one of the greatest pleasures of my entire life.  Some people are just beautiful. Those are the people to build things with.

Who’s beautiful in your life? Whose motives do you trust, or do you want to work toward trusting? What is the loneliest thing of all?

These lines from the poem below:

“there are also the beautiful who, if we’re
lucky, save us from ourselves, and validate
the sun’s light, and maybe also the moon’s.”

MATTHEW SWEENEY

Dialogue with an Artist

the lonely

incorporating the words of L.S. Lowry

I used to paint the sea, but never a shore,
and nobody was sailing on it. It wasn’t even
the sea, it was just my own loneliness.

It’s all there, you know. It’s all in the sea.
The battle is there, the inevitability of it all,
the purpose. When I switched to people

they were all lonely. Crowds are the
loneliest thing of all, I say. Every individual
in them is a stranger to everyone else.

I would stand for hours in one spot
and scores of little kids who hadn’t had
a wash for weeks would group round me.

Had I not been lonely, none of my work
would have happened. I should not have
done what I’ve done, or seen what I’ve seen.

There’s something grotesque in me and I
can’t help it. I’m drawn to others who are
like that. They’re very real people. It’s just

I’m attracted to sadness and there are some
very sad things. These people are ghostly
figures. They’re my mood, they’re myself.

memo to lowry

You’re right, there are grotesques who shine
a dark light that lures us like how the sirens
tried to lure Odysseus, and yes, maybe we
ourselves are among the grotesques, but
there are also the beautiful who, if we’re
lucky, save us from ourselves, and validate
the sun’s light, and maybe also the moon’s.

*Okay, so I did a search of VC Andrews book excerpts and changed my mind.  Once my current reading stack goes down a little, I’m doing it.  Be prepared.  Some book quotes.