Art is a Guaranty of Sanity
Last summer, the national museum here in Oslo had a Louise Bourgeois exhibition that I went to see. I was scared to go, because I have a phobic fear of spiders, and I honestly had no idea how I would react to seeing her famous sculptures of them. I didn’t know much about her other work apart from the spider sculptures and her suspended work, and only just discovered her a few years ago through the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe and the portrait of her, an elderly lovely postured woman holding a massive latex cock. I liked her immediately of course.
I was very much on edge from the moment I entered the exhibition halls, trying my best to not get surprised by any spiders, because I will just loose it if I do. The rooms were dimly lit, and felt almost intimate, making me feel relaxed and even more anxious at the same time. I have trouble looking at her sculptures in photos, and I hate googling her name, because my screen fills up with her spiders and I just have to close it. But when I finally saw it, the big spider sculpture, I was to my surprise, ok. Not great, but ok. Maybe because it’s the shape that triggers my fear, and the sculpture was just too big for my brain to sound the alarms. I wasn’t able to take a photo of it in complete form as you can see on the photo above, because on my screen, it’s small enough for me to get scared again. On the side of the structure I’m hiding behind, it said: Art is a Guaranty of Sanity. I have been thinking about that ever since.
These days I am so angry at my need to make art. I feel sick because of it, lovesick, which is the worst kind. I feel like I am hopelessly in love with this thing that is taking over my life more and more, and I’m suffering because of it, but I just can’t stop. I have worked so hard to become independent because I don’t want to need or want anything or anyone, and in spite of this, I find myself longing for this thing like a silly little girl, and I had decided that I wasn’t going to do that again. Ever. I don’t want to get hurt, so I won’t love. Easy. Done. Problem solved, right?
I feel like I’m loosing my mind. But I think maybe it’s a good thing. Because what is a mind, really. What is my mind that I feel like I’m loosing?
A mind,
noun
the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
a person's ability to think and reason; the intellect.
Someone I loved very much once told me that I had a very strong sense and narrative of who I was. It was not meant as a compliment. He was gently trying to warn me that this story I had about myself was getting in my way of discovering my self and who I could be. Who I already was, if I would just let myself free.
When I paint, it feels like how I used to feel when I was dancing. Everything in me is quiet, and everything is about movement and creating shapes. Nothing else exists and nothing else is important except that moment, that movement, that shape. And it feels fucking amazing when I get it right. And I want to feel that way, and that’s when I get in trouble, because it’s not a distraction or a tool that I use to work through something anymore, not just a means to an end. But a process and an experience that I love being a part of, even if I struggle and get mad about not getting it right, it just makes me want to make it right even more. And then when I do, I get even happier, because I didn’t give up, so I feel proud of myself, content. And that’s how the knot in my chest grows, and I feel sick. Lovesick. Expecting to have it all ruin and destroy me, because that’s what love does to people like me, or so I decided somewhere along the way.
I am self sabotaging a lot these days, and I’m tired. It’s like a diseased cell reacting to an immune system, it fights so hard to keep going. Bad habits don’t die easily, and one could argue that one’s self, one’s mind, is merely a collection of them. Habits.
To mind,
verb
be distressed, annoyed, or worried by.
regard as important; feel concern about.
Art is my healer but also my destroyer, because something needs to go, and I change, and I’m scared. It’s scary to get well. Who am I without my pain, my grief, my anger? Who am I when I let go?