No. 89 - The forbidden feeling
BOO HA HA
Hi peeps
There’s something that I’m supposed to feel thankful for but don’t at all times, and that is aging. Yes, it’s “better than the alternative”—ugh, please don’t say that to me. Of course I don’t want to be dead. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going through it at the moment with this aging beeswax.
I’m about to turn sixty-five, and it’s messing with my head. I will now be a senior. I might feel differently if I were accorded the respect other peoples in the world might give me for getting this far, but that is not the case. It feels more as though an invisibility cloak has been thrown over my head.
Conversely, far from being invisible, I sometimes feel like I’ve become a grisly reminder for my younger friends of what’s in store for them. All ye who enter here, beware! For ye too shall find thyself wizened, weakened in mind and body, and headed inexorably for the grave… BOO HA HA
Young people sometimes seem to assume I’ll be out of touch, or that I can’t possibly understand what they’re going through. Young fool, don’t you realize I’ve already been through everything that’s bending your mind? Twice; three times. I don’t care whether or not young people think I’m cool. They don’t have eyes that can see how cool I am.
My health is good for the most part, but I feel like my face has aged hyper-fast Star Trek-style and there’s no going back. When I look in the mirror these days, I see my mother and my grandmother. Double whammy. I let my hair go gray a couple of years ago after dying it for many years, and instantly noticed the difference in how people act toward me—even sometimes people who know me. It is such a mind fuck to be the same person inside, but to suddenly be treated—not always, but far too often—as invisible, inconsequential, possibly frail (I’m not). Certainly without anything intelligent or interesting to offer. It’s like being forced to wear a mask that I can never take off.
I don’t enjoy it at all.
There’s vanity involved in all this, of course. In my wee addled mind, I’m still forty-two, and when I catch my reflection things don’t add up. There’s even some shame involved, which… hmm. I’m going to have to take a closer look at that one. Mostly it’s horror about having to wear this mask. Plus the fact that when I look in the mirror and see my mother and grandmother… well… I see a couple of people who died from this condition. So there’s that.
I know that people older than me are thinking, amateur. They’re thinking that I don’t yet understand what aging is at all. The same way I look at people panicking because they’re turning forty or fifty, and think, you have no idea my friend. I get it! It’s all relative. I think part of what makes sixty-five loom so large is that it’s government sanctioned. It’s the year I’ve been hearing about my entire life. It means OLD AGE.
In a recent piece in The Paris Review about getting married at the age of 78, the writer Laurie Stone writes
This idea of marriage, as the one jar you can buy in the supermarket of life, put me off marriage for seventy-eight years, and then suddenly—I think it was sudden—I didn’t give a fuck about how people saw me with regard to being married. My bigger concern was being seen as female and old. Not a category with a lot of room in it to grow.
And not for the faint of heart.
My heart grows stronger by the day.
NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE
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The aging thing is but one of the adjustments I’ve been negotiating.
It’s not really that I have nothing left to give… I always seem to be able to dredge up some scraps, even when I feel I can’t. I was just amused by this TikTok video.
It’s more that I realized recently that it’s been almost three years since my last big project/art exhibit Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir. That means it’s been approximately two and a half years since I wrote the manuscript for a graphic memoir that mines the same material.
And that means it’s been two and a half years that I’ve been—quote unquote—struggling creatively: in and out of the saddle, trying this, trying that, doing sketches for the graphic memoir then not, talking about it but not doing it, finding some new thing that I think will be my next big thing and then abandoning it, and going long stretches where I haven’t stepped into my studio at all.
Does it matter? I’m not sure.
In my defense, I’m a human being. In past three years I’ve experienced work upheaval, financial upheaval, personal upheaval, and unprecedented upheaval in the world. Not to use any of that as an excuse: I weirdly did my best and most ambitious work during the pandemic. But this has been different.
I’ve written about these things many times, in one form or another. Many times! What else has there been to write about? Hey, look at me, I’m doing this now—oops, nope—oh look, here’s a flashback to easier times—oh wait, changing track again—oh look! I’m doing this now!—hey! Look at this thing I did years ago!—whoops, faltering again—ad infinitum.
AND YET
In the words of the late painter Agnes Martin:
I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step.
Thank you Agnes Martin. I have sticky-noted this wisdom to my studio wall. It all has to be done. You can’t be in a high flow state all the goddamned time. Maybe “creative struggle” is a misnomer—maybe it’s all just next steps.
I’m alive, I’m healthy, I’m safe, I have loved ones and a home and a bed and books and a backyard studio. I’m one of the lucky ones. Maybe my creative life will be on fire again one day. Surely it will.
(You really should click on the Instagram link above for the full-meal-deal)
GET UP—
C’MON—
BRAVA!
COOL THINGS
But wait! So many cool things have happened in amongst this so-called struggle.
A year ago I created a hardcore journaling workshop called Taking Note: Creating Ourselves Through Journaling that I held on Zoom. I then created a download with the same material in October, then expanded the material to present in person over two nights at Aunty Collective here in Victoria, BC in February.
And now, huzzah! I have the opportunity to hold workshops at my home, and the first was a collage workshop held Saturday, April 12th. Much paper was cut and torn. Mama loves paper.
If you’d like to see the collages everyone made that day, go here.
I’m pretty excited about this. I want to make it a THING… a going concern. Not just collage workshops but… other workshops? Definitely Taking Note: Creating Ourselves Through Journaling again, if I have enough new people interested. Plus I’m hatching an idea that combines collage and journaling.
TO BE REVEALED IN THE FULLNESS OF TIME.
Upcoming dates for collage workshops are on my website… if you’d like more info, go here.
Bye, and thanks for being here.
B.A. xo
Some stuff!
Doechii Tiny Desk concert!
In Defense of Annette Bening’s Face in The Cut
Alice McDermott: “Ah, Fuck Em”
From the archive!
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When I launched my substack I said about myself in my first post "I don't do vulnerability." It is hard. And dangerous - opening yourself up for others to view and judge. Who knows what will happen? You did it in this post, you do it often, it takes courage and honesty and a certain special ability to be able to conduct this examination of self in the first place. I think it helps us, not only do we see you, but we can harness your xray vision, turn it on ourselves and with some luck learn some truths.
Oh my…all of this. I mean, there IS the free ferry rides coming up….and, ummm… okay…free ferry rides is all I got. As always, you nailed it BA. Thanks for wrestling all the stuff into words that left me laughing, nodding, and pulling my hair back a little tighter to try and maintain my fight against the gravitational pull of my wrinkles.