Unpacking who I am has been a lifelong project. It can feel disorienting. I cycle through the stages of denial in seeming perpetuity. Things become crystal clear and then morph into a dystopian B-movie dream sequence. Depression? Anxiety? Fear? Self-doubt? Sure, maybe? Attachment to false permanence? I can’t tell if I secretly desire to become a vampire or not? To live forever terrifies me. To not do so unsettles me equally. Am I still just trying to feel loved or even just accepted, possibly just tolerated? Is it grandiosity or a bottomless vacuum devoid of self-esteem?
Why do I have such a lifelong fear of failure? Am I afraid of failing or am I afraid that I would be incapable of holding “success” alongside my shame of self-doubt? Am I afraid I would learn at 55 that there was something there all along, something wasted for decades.
The universe is bombastic this morning. It brought me to David Bowie’s apparent fifth and final persona as revealed in videos from his nearly posthumous final album Blackstar (released two days before his death). On the album Bowie reveals the blind prophet. I had previously viewed the video Lazarus from that album and was very moved by it. You should watch it, really. I love the clicking sound of my keyboard this morning. I just watched the video of the title track. It was also moving for me. I further know that Bowie for me activates the deep feelings I have for my daughter as we both love that great artist. The video was all about ritual as power. The ritual need not have meaning or be understandable as long as we lose ourselves in it. I was in church. I was at a football game. As long as we surrender. Ahhhh, there it is, collapse into presence. But for me it was all about Bowie. He risked to be. He invented and re-invented through 28 studio albums and by working through all his demons and challenges changed those who he touched. He risked. I want to risk but don’t know how. I don’t know how to follow through with being truly vulnerable. To make art is to stand naked and alone, not knowing if the rain and wind will howl or the breezes will be sweet and perfectly tempered. All indications are that I am prepared to sleep walk the next several decades towards the final curtain because I am too afraid to change; too afraid to risk. I am currently so afraid to go down into my art room and really try. Really make a bunch of art and try to get it into the hands of others.
Next I was presented with the story of Cynthia Erivo. What a talent. What a brave human. I so much want to be a poor copy of her. I also want to be the support that she likely needs at times when she faces self-doubt. I want to hold her and remind her that she will always be the best of humanity even if she seemingly stumbles at times either in reality or even just in her own head. I keep looking at a painting on the wall that I did more than half my life ago. I never did anything like that one before or since. I am really liking it right now. It is an entire new world sitting right there in plain sight. I want to see how I change if I make more worlds like that one. I have no idea if I will or not. I have no idea if I am strong enough to find out. I have no idea if I will even share this post. I have no idea if I can tolerate learning that there is something real there. Something real that has been suppressed and ignored and feared for decades. I don’t know if I am more afraid to find out that it is there or that it is not there. I just don’t know. There are no answers here. There are only questions. There is no destination; there is only the journey.
