On Friday I bought the Art Church. It was a long time coming. Maybe all the time that I know. My entire life I’ve walked past empty spaces, fire houses (like the one Zack ended up with) abandoned buildings (like the one LaMaMa ended up with) and thought, "just get me one of those.”
Last week, Dominique at work was sitting in the office looking bummed out. Over the weekend she’d applied for a job to go teach in Japan. Her and six white men at a table. The recruiter asked her if she’d be willing to straighten her gorgeous hair which she wears on top of her head in this beautiful signature coronet. That night she dreamed that she was waiting for a train and realized that the train she wanted was on the other side of the tracks, going the other direction. She jumped onto the tracks to try to catch it, and tripped. “I should have known,” she said. “Stay on track. The message is to work on my music.”
Yes, yes and yes, Dominique, work on your music. Remember, Andrew, you’re an artist. Lucas, speak up. John, we’re all waiting for you to hang out, Rat fix your mirror.
That’s why I wanted to buy the Art Church. So that when that moment happens and Dominique says that she needs to be brave and and admit that her track is the music, I can say “I can help.” We are all so scared to do what we know we should and we need chances to do it. We need a place for becoming.
I came to Philly dreaming of making this place when, like Dominique, I got off track. How much easier to be a teacher, a happy helper, a volunteer and a wife than to be an artist. How much safer. And how cavernous it made the places under my skin.
How much easier to rent myself than be it.
How long it took to admit the truth. That I love art, and I love storymaking and life-figuring and human-being and my dream is to facilitate those things on my own terms. Maybe I had to come so far through so much because I had to get those terms worthy of the enterprise.
Sharpened on fear anxiety and pain, I really know what I hold sacred. And it’s worthy of being enshrined, lived and celebrated.
I’m ready to fuck it up, to make a place for fucking up and to embrace everyone who wants to take a risk and fuck up, too.
So blessings on you, Art Church, my pencils are sharp enough. Let’s start this shit up.
Oh, all the essays and stories never read, the paintings never attempted, the plays not performed, and the songs never heard.
ReplyDeleteArt held back by put upon expectations from self, an unreal expectation to write fully formed ideas in one contiuous Kerouac scroll, or the expectations of others that we act differently; demands to straighten hair.
But Kerouac was an ass and surely were the men who told Dominique to straighten her hair, which I imagine is beautiful without their unwarrented advice. Beautiful because it is of her and is her, just as her music.
So hurrah to fucking up and getting messy and for trying. Hurrah for the creativity in risk and those temporary failures that irritate but eventually produce pearls. Hurrah to providing an oyster bed, an Art Church!