Sometimes I think men are about changing the outer world while women are about changing on the inside to find the magic in what is.
I feel art is a feminine activity…. it lets people transform by seeing beauty in new things. To step outside the judgments which cage their perceptions. Art that simply caters to current tastes dulls the senses like being hooked up to a masturbation machine. Artists have to follow their own muse oblivious to the taste of the people.
The point is not to please nor to shock. But to deliver a fresh stream of water that people can choose to align their psyche with should they need it. The fresh input allows inner things to reconfigure and helps flush out the gunk.
It’s the same with thoughts. Fresh perspectives have value, even if you don’t happen to need that perspective at the moment. At least it will be there offering you a mental alternative should you ever get stuck in the future.
Whether songs are good or bad and perspectives right or wrong seems besides the point. They are crayons you can add to your crayon box just in case. A color you dislike now may appeal in the future.
I’m saying all this because I want to write about hillbillies and am bracing myself for the backlash. I have yet to recover my nerve from when people attacked me for writing about poor people. It doesn’t matter that I was praising poor people & pointing out that they might be fairies in disguise. In fact people seemed angry that I wasn’t describing the poor as miserable beings leading a pointless existence.
I internalized these attacks to where I became afraid to see my own experience of poverty in a magical light. I wish I could return to that lens though. It made me feel safe and uplifted.
But when autumn came I went into panic mode…. I must figure out how to make a living now or I’m going to die! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! And the more I panic the more I can’t think at all.
So I may just have to accept the possibility that I will end up living under a bridge getting stabbed to death by a mugger because so far no better plan has come to mind.
Maybe if I had the confidence to stay on my own wavelength rather than trying to be Tarzan the Dentist I could think more clearly. Maybe a possibility for how to survive would come to mind, maybe something I could actually do.
Cause the more I try to be a lumberjack the more my brain seizes and my body freezes and I can’t function at all.
All my life I’ve felt this guilt about not being a lumberjack, a gladiator, a professional boxer. I’m never hearty, tough, dirty and hard scrabble enough to please the people around me.
James was the first person to accept me as I was and that caused a lot of my psychological problems to clear up. I stopped needing to match the color of my ice cream to the color of my shoes. I could tolerate a wider range of colors, sounds and smells which let me function more normally.
But none of this happened because he was trying to change me. Its because he accepted me as I was. If I needed white ice cream topped with white sauce and white sprinkles he would help me find it until eventually I didn’t need it anymore. He always told me to trust myself and no matter how far out my preferences were he never tried to force me into conventional ways of being. Paradoxically this made me feel more at peace with conventions until I could see them as sources of comfort. Because I’d become comfortable with myself.
But now that I’m facing annihilation the panic returns that I must become someone else to survive. A gladiator. A lesbian. A mailman. A criminal. I must shut the fuck up and find something heavy to lift at once. Then I’ll be safe.
