Since my artistic project is a series of poems, I think it would be best to dissect each one individually along with speaking of the study as a whole. In it’s entirety I sought out to answer the questions of how much of one’s self should one reveal through art, and subsequently try to explore whether or not catharsis is healthy or not. I looked at the two through the lenses of the performance theory (are the roles we play effected when we show ourselves as a whole and are entirely open with everything) as well as the looking glass theory (how do other’s perceived visions of ourselves effect how much of ourselves we are willing to show).
My questions are important for me for many reasons, especially since the thought of going over the edge has always been stuck in my brain. So many artists push themselves to extremes and end up burning out/killing themselves in the process, yet the conscientious is that the art they make is spectacular! One example is Heath Ledger who used method acting to play the Joker, hence trying to become him in real life. In order to become a villainous character he had to explore parts of himself that weren’t as pretty, and in the movie, his work shows. Yet his work with the “bad” parts of himself caused him to die. He made good art of it, but the cost was his mortality. I talk to people, especially my friend Terese, lots about people like him and Kurt Cobain and Hunter S. Thompson. The latter two killed themselves. Terese knows how devoted I hope to be to the art I make, and since she’s a very down to earth person she doesn’t see that as a good thing. She worries I’ll end up hurting myself in the process, and, for better or for worse, I think I have to keep giving as much of myself as I can to art regardless of the consequences. That and the fact that there have been times when I felt myself toeing that edge that Hunter S. Thompson wrote about, but I’ve always backed away. In this study I wanted to explore whether I should continue to back off when I reach that point or should I try to keep going regardless of the danger.
In regards to what from class inspired my questions, I had quite a few influences. It began with the Marjane Satrapi interview we watched in class. She spoke of how she felt she needed to portray all the aspects of herself to her audience since, for one thing, simply morally good characters are boring, and secondly, it would be deceitful, in her mind, to cherry-pick her nice qualities to show the audience and leave out all her more unsavory attributes. That made me think lots about how cathartic it is for me to expel all my “bad” emotions in one fell swoop, in instances of playing bad-guys and writing hyper-emotional poems. It got me to thinking whether putting those bad emotions is actual catharsis and expels the bad from my self or if it only further fuels those unsavory bits of myself.
Then it evolved further, once we began talking about Gaston Bachelard’s idea of Art as the currency of the soul. That made such perfect sense to me since that is how I think, it made me think about how intensely I connected to the art I adore and how the thread, I think, is emotion and catharsis. The art I love the most has caused me to feel the emotions it portrays along with it- I am part of the journey of the art, and its impact is forever seared into my soul. It made me think of how it could be possible for the art pieces I love to reveal so much emotion from the artists who authored them.
Though not in First Year Seminar, in my Writing and Rhetoric II class we watched a standup routine by the comedian Louis CK wherein he speaks of how people resort to compulsively checking their phones since they are so reluctant to feel emotions and be alone with themselves and sadness. This influenced my study since he said that the emotion must be felt in order to keep one’s self from being a stifled, technology-reliant, zombie. I agreed, although in my study I realized just how that’s far easier said than done.
I listened to Guillame’s talkback after viewing his photography piece, ‘Love and War’. He spoke of tricking himself into revealing emotions he hadn’t quite come to terms with himself. That cemented my idea to trick myself into revealing what I didn’t have closure about. That led me to do both that as well as explore in a metafiction sort of sense why exposing these emotions were so hard for me.
It led me also, through one of Lisa’s questions, to the idea of how to get an audience to feel with you through your art, as apposed to just frolicking aimlessly through one’s own vast feelings.
What I learned was that, despite those moments when I felt myself on the brink, as a whole, I’m not as close to that edge as I had thought. This project has showed me that I am not quite at the point I imagined I was as an artist; I stifle myself and hide lots still. Regardless of now knowing that, this project pushes me to keep trying for being as open and sincere in my art as possible, since there are people who, when I reach out to them, will grab my hand so I can lead them step by step into my world.
This project also prompts me to be much more generous in my work; I need to be comfortable enough to give the audience/readers more power than I have done. It's like the photography exhibits in that the photos were all someone's sincere self, but they engaged the onlooker through a touch of mystery so the audience would want to be an active participant who wants to learn more and more about the art, and hence, the artist's self.
An overarching theme/allegory that I mention in a multitude of my poems for this project is opening one’s ribcage up to show all and give the audience one’s heart. I mean that as means of openness and vulnerability of being an artist and actually wanting someone to actually take your heart even if it might be painful.
Although I focused on a hybrid of the performance theory and the looking glass theory to inform my study, in order to properly explain how my artistic piece ties in with the questions I hoped to explore, I think I need to analyze each individual poem.
So, now I will speak in full explaining how each poem relates and further explores my questions:
1. Hidden Impact Prologue: As I go back after the fact and read this, this is actually a better introduction to what I got out of this study than I had expected it to be. The talk referencing ‘The Art of Asking’ and embracing the idea of getting off the pedestal to search around a crowd to find a soul to connect with and give your heart to, ends up being the perfect allegory to what I learned about having to reach one’s hand out to the audience and letting them take it before you try shoving your raw and bloody heart to the masses.
2. Bitter Ex-Catholic: This poem is simply me trying to expel badness from my self and system that I didn’t have the courage to tell anyone in real life. It’s a very touchy subject because I am so unsure of the situation, myself, but it seemed like something I needed to have catharsis about, even though I wasn’t quite comfortable with subject matter. Usually in order to have catharsis through my writing, in order to not make myself uneasy, I must have some level of comfort with my circumstance, but with this I had no stability. I really felt the need to write, though, since when I feel miserable I feel compelled to write about the upsetting thing, otherwise I’ll have no closure whatsoever. Even in a situation like this where my questions are left unanswered and I merely end up spewing hatred, I feel so much better about my issues.
For ‘Clouds’, ‘Baby Mine’, and ‘Feet Don’t Waltz When The Roof Caves In’, I listened to songs that I usually skip over on i-tunes since they always make me cry, or at least sad, and so I usually figure “I have to be productive, I don’t have time to feel that right now!” In a way it’s like I want to save the sadness for when I know I’ll have time to express it, but in my quest to be open to all emotion, I made myself stop what I was doing, feel the emotion, and write about it, hence writing those three poems.
3. Clouds: I wrote this one about facing up to the emotion that a song, written by my friend’s best friend who died of cancer. I never before listened to the song in its entirety since I was too worried about the feelings I would feel. In this I had to face my emotions! It made me remember how cruel it was of me not to reach out to try to comfort her, since I, myself, was too worried about saying something wrong to her. I realize now I should have said something but I haven’t lost my chance, so I will next time I see her, even if it is a day late and a dollar short.
4. Feet Don't Waltz When the Roof Caves In: For this poem, I listened to the song ‘I Don’t Care Much’ from ‘Cabaret’. It happens in the show right after all the worst things have happened to the characters and is sung when the protagonist Sally Bowles decides to cut herself off from her sadness and go back to her life of shallow escapism. It’s sung either by Sally or the Emcee (the narrator of sorts) depending upon the production. Due to this background it made me think whether I was cutting off from hard emotions for the sake of apathy and caused me to revoke that ideal, as good as I might be at subscribing to it accidentally. It goes into the thought that I get told sometimes, that, because I’m privileged (I have life’s necessities, I’m middle class, I’m attending college, I have loved-ones, etc…) I shouldn’t be allowed to feel sad since there are many who have it much worse than me. I concluded it with the thought of, yes, that’s true, but I’d rather feel my selfish sadness and show how pretentious I am for feeling sad when I oughtn’t than have the feelings I supposedly deserve to have, but stifle the truth of my emotions.
5. Redfur: In this poem I realized the origin of my gruesome heart analogy, simple as that.
6. Supreme Creep: I’ve found myself terribly afraid of scaring people away, more so with affection than vitriol since if I had vitriol for someone I would almost always want them to keep away from me. With poems and art based in affection it’s so much scarier to think that the person/people it’s aimed at would be offended or scared by it. I think most of my poetry is affectionate since my friends tend to be my muses. I write such flowery love poems to my loved ones and I always get scared that they would think I’m too clingy or sycophantic or something, so I usually preface my poems before showing them with, “Sorry if it’s creepy” or something to that effect, but since it is the truth, I shouldn’t be apologetic, I should simply be open and let my loved ones think what they want. With poetry I can tell people I love them, in most real life cases (with a few magnificent exceptions) I’m not brave enough, though I really should be.
7. I Am Not Comfortable With My Own Locked Door: I like this one, since I kind of tied it back to the seed that sparked this whole vast assemblage. What first inspired this project, although just being a brief example in class of the performance theory, was the thought of Anthony Hopkins bringing himself into the roles he plays, which (to my knowledge) are pretty predominantly horror or somewhat dark roles. I brought up how horror comes from the thought that everyone has badness in them and how scary it would be for that badness to somehow consume you or the ones you love. On the exact other end of the spectrum, I also spoke of a time I revealed my entire self emotionally to a loved one and how positive, comforting and miraculous the result was.
8. Artists are Masochists: This expands upon my thoughts about the trope, ‘True Art Is Angsty’ as well as the thought that artists make their best art when they’re miserable. I admit to how much harder it is for me to be open and how that reveals painful things, but how I have to feel the pain if I want to be open and subsequently make good art.
9. Room to Connect: This poem was an answer to a question that was posed in one of Lisa’s responses to one of my one-pagers. Her question was: “I ask you to think about something. Hard to put into words. I have seen art that is SO overtly emotional that it seems to me to be "doing all the work on it's own." When this happens, the art feels very self absorbed - and I don't feel that I have room to do my work, to connect to it. How can we create art that is both passionate and authentic, while still leaving the audience room to connect?” and so my poem was based on it. It alluded to and quoted a book called, ‘Tale of Despereaux’. That book is what caused me to want to be a writer since I felt so connected to the story. Subsequently I decided to I write this poem a tad inspired by the book. Also a quote by the
author, “I surely do understand. But I have found that it is impossible to hide in a story. And what I mean by this is that the story reveals my truest self (to me and to the reader) whether I intend for it to or not. Some people are going to like that true self and some people, alas, are not. Still, my real self is on every page; my real name is on the cover. It's terrifying, exhilarating. It's writing-“, seemed to align itself perfectly with what I’m trying to get across, explore and celebrate through this study.
10. Ruth, Doug and Jane: This poem speaks to performance theory since what was reflected back to me (and blatantly told to me) by my best friend is the most full reflection. She sees my attributes: physical, mental and emotional in all the characters I write and play. Seeing how she’s the only person who adamantly makes sure to read every poem I write, and since I reveal as much as I possibly can in my poetry, I suppose it’s only inevitable that she would have a more cohesive whole representation of me in her mind, which is also probably why she gets so annoyed at me. She sees the bad I reveal in poetry, and when it begins to happen in real life she either senses it and stops me or gives me a shoulder to cry on, depending upon the situation. She is the one who, back to my allegory, actually takes my heart when I try handing it out, and cradles it as if it were her own.
11. Melancholic Temperament: This one was inspired lots by conclusions I got from our ‘Speed-Dating’ rationale workshop, especially Greta saying, “(emotion) elevates art so much higher; the most influential people are those that put it all out there.” I actually alluded to her thoughts being such in the context of the poem itself. This was also inspired by lingering feelings and a review of the movie ‘Melancholia’ in which the reviewer speaks of issues of depression. The reviewer’s thoughts melded with what I was talking about to various partners how in order for me to get through tough times I need catharsis even if the point of catharsis is extremely hard to get to itself. I feel like if I didn’t seek out catharsis, either through making or giving myself over to experience art, I think that the difficult things I’ve faced and will face will eat away at me. I’ve never reached the depths of some other people’s sorrows, and I know it’s near impossible to compare emotions since it is so personal and subjective, but I know that when I don’t actively write about difficult things, I do begin to feel worse and worse and worse, so I think what keeps me from being a lot more miserable than I am in times of hardship is the active pursuit of art and catharsis. In conclusion, for me, catharsis is not only healthy; it is vital for my survival and way of life.
12. I Must Go On Standing: This one unfortunately was the writerly version of method acting. I suppose I was really tempting fate by calling the poem prior, “Melancholic Temperament” I truly was feeling miserable when I wrote this, so I suppose this serves as a perfect example of needing to work through my feelings by making something of them. Truly I feel terribly trapped when I can’t express my bad emotions when they take hold. Doing so, though, tends to be a now or never sort of thing, and I still, unfortunately have a multitude of feelings and experiences that fall into the latter category. Samantha said, during the rationale speed-dating session, that, “(the) art-piece is a middleman between you and (the) feeling”, I think that’s perfectly said, as opposed to some of my odd unfathomable allegories. If one just shouts over sadness or anger it would get them committed, but if they work it out through making something of it, it heals the hurt they feel, or at least that how it is in my case. It’s interesting, since in real life I hate talking about the fact that I used to take pills (and may have to again) or the fact that I may have had depression at certain points of my life. Though it’s getting better, there’s still a societal stigma attached which I’d rather not have pinned to my chest. With my poems (and penname) I can go on; no cares given if people think I’m “crazy”.
13. But You See It's More Productive Than If I Were To Be Happy: This one goes along with the thoughts of ‘Artists are Masochists’ just a post-fresh-sadness look at it.
14. Baby Mine: This one is tremendously simple when it comes to the scope of these poems. I usually don’t like listening to this song since it makes me sad, but I listened to it, let it make me sad and wrote about that sadness. It’s as simple as that.
15. Hidden Impact Epilogue: I wanted the epilogue to do as an epilogue should; wrap up and bring the piece to a close while still leaving the new and burning questions intact and able to be asked. As one can tell, I struggled through a bit of trial and error. I eventually got the words on paper that could explain what I learned through this project.
It’s a lot harder for me to be open than I thought it was. Kayla made the remarkable point that when putting something painful into art, artists tend to be very vague about it, and that seems to be part of where my trouble lies. It’s hard enough to put out a little bit of that unsettled emotion, let alone be extremely specific about it. Still, it’s vital for me to keep pushing for openness, regardless of how unreachable it might be, since that’s how I cope with difficult things in my life.
Lastly and most importantly, I believe, in order for my art to connect to an audience I can’t simply shove raw emotion at them and expect that to affect them; I need to connect with them and build a relationship through the art and the audience before I would expect them to be on the same wavelength of feeling.
This last poem will be what I read to the class. This will be the third poem I’ve ever read in public, so I hope I don’t get tongue-tied over my own wordiness, as I seem apt to do.
What I learned ended up being spelled out best of all in my fifteenth poem, but for the sake of this rationale, I’ll reiterate. The questions I set this project up around were: How much of one’s self can someone reveal in their art without it badly affecting them? Is it safe and/or healthy to explore darker emotions through art, hence allow one’s self to feel the “bad” emotions fully? Is catharsis ultimately healthy, or does it further provoke the feelings one tries to rid themselves of?
What I learned was that it might not be possible to reveal all through art, but it is vital for my own survival to keep trying to show all, since that is how I grasp catharsis and hence how I cope with the difficult things that pepper my life. What it brought up, which was entirely unexpected for me, and vastly fueled by Lisa’s responses to my one-pagers throughout the process was the prospect of needing to soothe people into an exchange of trust before one, as an artist can throw their feelings out to an audience. Before this study, I never really grasped that concept, and basically just threw out emotions without trying to appeal to a potential audience, hence the art that simply did that was self-absorbed.
It’s strange since one would think I would understand that concept, since the art I so adore is hinged around having the audience’s trust, some examples being: Amanda Palmer’s Music, the book ‘Tale of Despereaux’ and the musical ‘Cabaret’. I suppose it’s very human; one usually has to trust and have the trust of someone before they go gushing tears or feelings at them, and those who I feel like I could tell anything to definitely seem trust me as I trust them. It’s interesting how I wouldn’t simply bring that concept into art.
Those three examples of art I feel profusely for work perfectly since they each have their own way of connecting. Cabaret, the show that made me feel the most out of any piece of art I’ve experienced, has the Emcee, who breaks the fourth wall and allows you into the den of depravity portrayed on the stage so when the bad stuff happens you feel for the characters as if you are one of the characters yourself. With ‘Tale of Despereaux’, the book that made me want to become a writer, Kate DiCamillo, the author, writes in a way that addresses the reader as “Dear Reader,” and gives the audience the power to read the pages she writes. It becomes a symbiotic relationship giving life and power to both the art/artist and the person experiencing it. Amanda Palmer, whose music that always allows me catharsis, did a TED talk about “The Art of Asking”. She used to be a street performer who relied on silently grasping passers-by and giving them a daisy in return for a few coins. She speaks of how necessary the eye contact is before she can give the flower. That’s how I must be with my metaphorical heart.
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