Don’t Mistake the Artist

Don’t Mistake the Artist

Write what is real.  Write unabashedly.

This makes me a difficult person to whom to be a friend or related.

I am an artist first. At some point, artists’ experiences deeply shape our work whether we create from the observer’s perspective or personal life.  Our relationship with friends, lovers, and others often find their way into our work. It depends on the artist and where he or she is in the journey of his or her growth.

With the exception of my children, the subjects of my photographs are often landscapes or nature; places without people. I started photography later in life than writing.  I started taking pictures for the high school newspaper in tenth grade, but I didn’t focus on light and shadowing as much. I focused more on avoiding getting hit by a football player on a team that, at the time, won one to two games a season.  

Just as digital photos were becoming the norm, I went on my second or third trip to New York City in 2003. I took photos of Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11.  I printed the pictures because we weren’t yet uploading pictures online the way we do now. One black and white photo I took was of the letters on the wall from relatives and friends to remember those lost on September 11, 2001.  

Although I’d been writing since elementary school, I realized at that moment I was meant to show the beauty, tragedy, and anger in the world whether through photos or writing. I remember some of the best emotional pictures I ever took were of players after they loss a major game. It also took a place in my personal life when I dated a boy who played for a college team. His team lost most games, and he’d order a pizza after those losses to eat himself. Then I could not talk to him for one hour.  

The relationship left me with a lot of happy memories and sad ones, too. Heartbreak that has long since become nothing more than crushed seashells along the beach. The relationship was so temporary in life span of my life’s work

But, my pictures and the words I wrote remained.

I am not an easy person to love, understand, or to stay with, and I often show only components of myself around others without letting the entire picture show. I often get, even from my husband, “Why didn’t you tell me?”  I don’t trust people easily, and I am probably a shadow of the girl some felt they knew in high school and college.

It is easy for an observer to say, “Well, you write about all this stuff from life on this blog and Bridesmaid Reject,” but that is the art. It is the reflection.  It is the part of myself that has always survived and sustained life and hope. When I write about one person, the entire narrative of this person’s character is not negative. Like a realist portrait, I try to paint the beautiful with the bad.

An individual whom I’ve known for much of my life, and with whom I shared a special friendship shared concern over the use of her and  a very negative situation as a “scapegoat.” Scapegoat or escape? Scapegoat or art? Scapegoat or inspiration?

Yes, inspiration. This was the only person in my life who’d never experienced what some consider the more brutal side of my pen or keyboard because I had adored her. My own husband has experienced the sometimes viewed callousness of my writing.  I wrote about her with a shining light, but I realized when I wrote a character based on my grandfather that I could not write someone with perfection. No one wants that.

I had not thought much about the situation which inspired Bridesmaid Reject lately because life goes on, and I’ve had other experiences with which to deal.  As I’ve written before, Bridesmaid Reject means something, for me, beyond that one situation. Bridesmaid is the false promise by someone suffering with mental illness or another struggle of “One day I will be ______________.” That could be “One day I will be a better friend when I have more planning time.” But, to have more planning time means I also have to dedicate more time to my family first.

The reject symbolizes the part of ourselves which we’ve rejected or we feel others have rejected, but artists have to reject the care of the opinion of others close by in order to create.

The teacher portion of my life has thought more and more about what supports are there for first year teachers? Are we treating them fairly in each school, and considering the students they teach? If so, are we offering things to advise or help with self-care. My thoughts have often been with my co-workers because I see them day in and out, and I care deeply for them and their well-being.  So, naturally, I started writing a portion of it in one of my two novel scripts with a different take of Alice in Wonderland meets Gulliver’s Travels sprinkled with Carl Sandburg. In other words, I haven’t thought about wedding mishaps and, sadly, lifetime-style friends.

This third project in addition to my memoir and Bridesmaid Reject, I nicknamed “Alice,” came after I had a nightmare about my daughter. I went into an alternate world in which I could not find her. I had to go past different tests, nightmarish tests, including correcting or fixing the behaviors of several children who were not my own before I could reach my daughter. The reason this happened occurred because my beautiful, four year old daughter said, “Is my stomach too big?”

Four

Beautiful.

Love and adored.

The only two beings, according to my husband, this artist has ever loved more than writing are my children.

Understanding my former diagnoses of an eating disorder, my heart dropped from my chest. My daughter, to me, is my most beautiful piece of feminine art. She is greater than any female I’ve ever known in my eyes. To hear my young child made me feel emotions stronger than the heart bruising of a text-bridesmaid-friend break up.  

Don’t mistake the artist. If you do not consider yourself one, understand artists not only see the world differently. They will paint, write, sculpt, dance, or create a reflection of what they see from others’ lives or their own.  If you are a friend of one and you escaped that influence, maybe you’re insulted or maybe you’re good. If you feel insulted because I wrote about you, know even in anger, I wrote with love. But, going forward …

I would not mistake knowing the person with knowing the artist.  

 

By Rebecca T. Dickinson