What if everything we make– Art– is because someone else, thousands of someones, placed their order??
What if nothing is made in a void,
what if nothing is birthed into the world without being called into the world by an audience,
by a tribe,
by its own family?
So literally every Thing we make exists in this world because it has a home in other people’s hearts already waiting for it?
Then artists are in the business of delivering answers to prayers.
“…it was really that they could not make their own images.” 🤯💛
“My so-called inventions already existed in the environment. I’ve created nothing. Nobody does.”
Like atoms, like matter not being able to be destroyed, only reused, ideas and images and inventions all exist around us. So being an artist, a poet, that is to say, a healthy and reverent human, is SEEING THE INVISIBLE THAT IS ALWAYS AND ALREADY PRESENT.
If you’re an artist or inventor, then you try to make the invisible visible. But everyone can see it, and they only stop seeing it through training or trauma.
What I want to do is make sure no one loses it entirely. I want every kid (and thus, person) to know where at least one secret doorway to Narnia is within themselves and always be able to find it again, even if they don’t go through daily or often at all. It’s like how Europe was for me in my podunk, I-don’t-quite-fit-here childhood: knowing it existed was a balm, a magic token. A bully could only hurt me superficially because I held within myself this whole other marvelous world, even when there were long years between trips.
I’ve always thought that it’d be nice to have Faith– Christian belief that I really believed. It’s interesting that this faith in Europe isn’t so different as believing that there is a Heaven, that someday we’ll all belong and live in beauty and peace.
Isn’t faith holding in one’s mind and heart the image (the living image) of something invisible yet tangible? And in both religion and art aren’t we charged with making “Heaven on Earth?”
You have to see it and keep believing in it.
I’ve been thinking about my 11-year-old self a lot lately.
As I planned my 37th birthday party, as she always does, 11-year-old Rose piped up, “No boys allowed! No way!” (Not even my husband or son get invited— they are expected to lavish me with attention earlier in the day, secure in the knowledge that I will save them each a slice of cake).
When a friend texted, “Hey, my birthday is just a few days after yours— some time we should have a joint party!,” 11-year-old Rose laughed out loud. Besides the fact that I insist on having the party on my actual birthday, I assured my well-intentioned friend that, practical though it may be, 11-year-old Rose would definitely not be willing to share. What day besides your birthday gets to be truly, guiltlessly, indulgently about You?
At the party itself, over peach pie, chocolate mousse, and whiskey, someone said “This is so fun! No one ever has birthday parties anymore.”
Why ever not?
I’m pretty sure I’ve thrown myself a party almost every year since I turned 21, when I reserved a couple lanes at the Bryant Lake Bowl and bought a taco bar— surely not a small expense compared to my rent-to-income ratio at the time— and totally worth it.
And just a month after we’d moved to India with a toddler, when I was still getting used to a new culture, checking my child’s shoes for scorpions, and living at 7,000 feet of elevation, I asked the most extroverted person I’d met to organize a ladies-only dinner party. I felt pretty shy, I had no idea who would come, and I had to borrow cash from a motherly near-stranger before going out for the night because my bank card hadn’t arrived yet. But I was turning 29 and that warranted a celebration.
I know I’ve missed a few here and there, but the standard is: It’s my birthday and I’m having a party. There will be delicious desserts (which I will bake) and probably some lake-lounging time, and all my favorite ladies. (And I can invite more than three people because we don’t all have to fit in my mom’s van!)
It’s sort of a surprising thing, more than 25 years later, to see how much of my attention and energy goes toward resolving and/or delighting preteen desires. But it also makes total sense: 11 is the age of the true self, a foot in both worlds.
11 is a big transition time. It was the year before 7th grade for me: the era of intense girlfriend drama, my first boyfriend, and, in our little town, the start of high school with 7-12 all in one building.
At 11 I was not yet a teenager or an adult, but I was no longer a little kid. (Though it took another year of pleading with my Mom, and finally an outright boycott at age 13, I was old enough to stay home by myself after school without a babysitter, and even be responsible for my younger sisters.)
I knew at 11 I wanted to be an actress and a writer; and that’s what I’ve done ever since, for fun and for money. I still stand by my fashion sense from 1993 (one distinctive sweater dress comes to mind, and for my birthday this year I wore an extravagantly beaded and sequined top; I also recently bought a 12 color eyeshadow palette, because, why not?).
11 was a quick window between little kid-hood and the angst of crushes and social hierarchies and adult expectations. It was the beginning of being fabulous, the start of choosing to become the person I am today; 11-year-old Rose is the goal, the true north, the notes all ringing clear and in harmony with each other.
I wonder what your 11-year-old self has to say to you. What she loves, fears, longs for. Because the upside of being an adult is that it’s all possible. And the fears aren’t as scary as they used to seem: I’m the kid and the mom— I have kept another human alive for 9 whole years, after all; a really nice, thoughtful, funny, clever human, no less, who can cook really good scrambled eggs! I have only rarely fed him cereal for supper. I have faked bravery and held his hand when he got stitches. I have helped him do what interests him even when it doesn’t interest me (Legos, Snap Circuits, Dungeons & Dragons). Without a doubt, I can do that for my younger self, too.
I don’t need anyone else’s permission or money— though I do wish for a windfall now and then, I have saved up and replaced a house’s worth of windows, I have gotten cars repaired, I have paid rent and mortgages, I have researched how to fix a leaky toilet: I can definitely buy a nyckelharpa / get braces/travel to beautiful places / learn to sew my own clothes / get a stray cat fixed / whatever.
I also don’t have to be a Grown-Up about it all. I don’t have to be a 1950’s clock-in-at-9-cocktail-at-5-wax-my-car-on-weekends sort of creature.
Now that my son is out of the I-have-no-skills-to-stay-alive-on-my-own stage, I get to return to my younger self, I get to be playful, I don’t have to focus on survival— my own, as a kid in a grown-ups’ world, or his.
When we move beyond survival, we can thrive, and it turns out I really like the ideas 11-year-old Rose had. She had no mobility, no money, no autonomy other than in her imagination; now I get to have all the resources of adulthood and her wise instincts and dreams.
I hope you do too— I hope all of us return to those younger, wiser, magical selves and bring all the grown-up skills and resources to not only be safe, but to live in delight.
Every year at my party I hand out index cards and instruct the guests to write my fortune for the coming year. No one ever writes “Your stocks will go up,” or “Your bathroom will be spotlessly clean.”
Every prediction, every magic wish is one of which 11-year-old Rose would heartily approve.
Yes! These hidden giants by Thomas Dambo (from Denmark) are delightful!
p.s. I suggested, half-jokingly, that we should put some of these up on Artist’s Point in Grand Marais. Sounds like I’m not the only person who thinks that would be cool, so, maybe I’ll go have a chat with the mayor…
p.p.s. if you write a story about meeting one of these in the woods and it coming to life, let me know.
My own art, other people’s art– it’s all part of being an advocate for Joy.
When we all experience life as being Magical and Good, then we don’t have anything to be afraid of.
Ennis made some gorgeous watercolor art in school. I must be biased– how magical to see a person I “made” go on and make something– but irrespective of his parentage, I love the way he draws, the asymmetry and the way the paint bleeds.
Don’t know if Per (pronounced “pear,” the Swedish way) is equally impressed, or what her personal philosophy on the Easter Bunny might be.
Friends (and soon-to-be Grand Maraisans) were up over the weekend. Thank goodness their kitchen was out of commission and they came to our house to dye eggs– otherwise I would have missed it.
More Ennis Art: “Monster and Tree Monster.” I’d like to screen print a t-shirt with the fellow on the left…
I came across a new book! I’m typically anti-series; it so often feels like the story was drawn out for marketing reasons rather than to best tell the Story– but this was fun and I’ll read the rest of the trilogy. I love doorways and portals to other worlds!
The fabulously talented Jeff Niesen came to my book performance at the library. I saw him sketching as I told stories from “The Marvelous Imagination of Katie Addams.” Lucky me– afterward he GAVE this to me! Here I am along with some of the characters from the stories.
Sharing art, doing what’s easy for you and passing it on– that’s the best magic of all. I love that I told stories (pretty easy for me after 14 years), and Jeff just doodled this.
Wishing you much mutual inspiration and generosity!
