a blog, chalk-full of witty observations and aspiring side-notes, collected off the side of a cognitive highway of a twenty year old artist. good evening, ladies and gentlemen. my name is elise hanson.
Please. Please, please. Do not cut out Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph works out of my library book, unknown critic. That says a lot to me as a viewer and shows an uncomfortable, homophobic uncertainty some of the population is still under, unfortunately. They are people, they have bodies, they use them. Get over it, people.
I'm interested, however, if it works in almost in a successful manner. Almost in a Marcel Duchamp-esque manner, it shows an obvious reaction from the viewer, and in return teaches the viewer something about themselves (which in my opinion, really makes art great). A few months back, I read Patti Smith's Just Kids book (which for those who haven't read it, must) and Ms. Smith included the majority of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe in it, including the intriguing beginning of his career. Upon discussing his work, he said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "No one's ever done it before (in portraying homosexual S&M a documented art) and at some point somebody has to."
I guess it is just going to be one of social taboos people will take their good and long time to try to readjust to, unfortunately.
In an implausible amount of time, I have fallen into this deep gulf of emotion, thought, and in and out of this now-and-then inspiration and back out of it. I've been really busy working two jobs currently, at the restaurant and recently at an art gallery. it seems unfortunately as of late, my mind has fallen short of creative works and focusing too much on the ever-demanding status of the high-and-mighty dollar. and when you tear it apart, its a tragic exchange.
So, while I nurse my lethargic need to create, I started watching a new television series. I finished watching season 4 and 5 of Dexter a while ago and as of one of my guilty pleasures, I really enjoy having a television series to watch and, sometimes, learn from. I got really into Michael C. Hall while watching Dexter and thought Damn, why isn't there more of Michael C. Hall in Hollywood? after browsing his IMDb page. I came across a another show he was in previously, called Six Feet Under. Not only was it produced by my beloved HBO, but it was written and created by Alan Ball.
(American Beauty is my all-time favourite film and is written by the very talented Mr. Ball.)
Stunned by my good luck, I tuned in. After the first episode, I was super hooked. The characters are so accessible and it feels almost natural to relate to all of them in one way or another. Tragic, yet humbly
beautiful, it is a deeply haunting experience.
(so, why's this important?)
Like I've said previously, I've been thinking and feeling a lot, even though I visually haven't been producing it lately. I saw one of my good friends today and had coffee and conversation with him. We talked about a lot of different topics, ranging from Nietzsche's contribution with Thus Spoke Zarathustra to artistic plans. We also discussed separation from mind and body, loosely connected on the topic of religion and ethics. It's something I have been thinking about for a while now, as I have been questioning my own religious/spiritual ideals after my grandmother's blunt, "where do you think you are going to go after you die?" inquiry in the middle of our salads at the East Bremer Diner a few weeks back.
I was raised a straight-apple Christian when I was growing up, but have since left the church. I'm not sure if religion is the answer I am looking for.
"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. there is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers, that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."
-Stephen Hawking
In regards to that statement, I feel it has elements I find very realistic and true, but I feel Hawking is not giving credit to any possibility to the existence of the 'soul'. (I mean by that, an ambiguous meaning. It does not necessarily fall directly under >RELIGIOUS ATTRIBUTES<) I'm only in season two of Six Feet Under so far, but already it has moved me in ways I wasn't necessarily prepared for. For instance, one of the main characters in the series, Nate, develops a disease (would you call it that? I apologize if that is incorrect) called arteriovenous malformation (AVM). A while later, he says to his lover, Brenda, "all that lives, lives forever. only the shell, the perishable passes away. the spirit is without end. eternal. deathless.", which I feel is probably the closest paraphrasing of how I really feel about life after death. It really kind of borders on Buddhist equilivilants of rebirth and the spirit acting as a stream of conscious connecting life with other life.
Brenda, Nate's lover in the series, also said balanced this belief with, "people live through the people they love and the things they do with their lives...if they manage to do things with their lives..."
Like I said before, I have learned a lot from the series already. sometimes deep, challenging, yet mature thoughts to reconsider and put into a practice of some sort. As sappy as this may sound, it also has taught me a lot on mortality and brought a whole new focus of the subject to my conscious. I recently read in a research book by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, that perhaps by the way our modern society handles the topics of death and dying people, we are the way we are because of it. She continues with examples from past societies welcoming their dying friends and family into their home, often witnessing the act of them dying, and continuing by actually handling their body and taking the intuitive for burial themselves. Another researcher, Sherwin Nuland, says, "we have created a method of modern dying. modern dying takes place in the modern hospital, where it can be hidden, cleansed of its organic blight, and finally packaged for modern burial." in this case, to me, it feels like we're robbed ourselves of that opportunity to see death as it truly is, as a natural culmination of life. For that reason, it remains an unwanted mystery and often frightening fear.
Because of my recent interactions with the series, followed by new and curious thoughts, and paired with a new creative surge, I have really felt this new tranquility with life, particularly, with the unknown. I feel like that old tried-and-true saying is not as cliche as I thought it was; whatwith "opportunities come to you when you're not expecting them, but are ready." Just as Alan Ball has said himself, "Life tests us in a lot of ways, and when we look back at the painful parts of our lives, yeah, they were painful, but they forced us to grow. The good times don't necessarily force us to grow." <3
