pretty penny

This idea that we value art at the expense of the artist keeps rattling around my head. I can't make it go away.

I watched a documentary this past weekend called My Kid Could Paint That. The art four year old Marla created was beautiful. Just gorgeous. I, for one, think she did the work. I have seen some amazing things come from my own smallers and they are definitely not geniuses. They just love color and shape and big ideas. The father's need to share her art in such a big way was disturbing in its obvious self aggrandizement. It was fairly repulsive to watch the media build her into a genius and then tear her down to a sham. Luckily she seemed oblivious to all of it. It was also hard to watch the mother who had such solid instincts about protecting her child and was continually talked out of them.

The art, we can except. But the artist, that human person, is so tragically flawed. Even if it is a child, there is this need to reel them in. It is ok to create the greatness, to have that moment, but as soon as we try to exist as a companion to that greatness we run into trouble. There is only the small percentage of us that can make it to the level where the art that is created is as worthy as the artist that creates it.

How can we increase the value of the artist?

I am looking for answers.

thus spake the smallers

The best quotes of the smallers recently.


Small: Did you know that Rob is short for Robert?

Smaller: Does that mean Bob is short for Bobert?

*********************************************

Smallest: You are too heavy to pull!

Smaller: No I am not!

Smallest: You don't know how heavy you are, you never lifted yourself!

Smaller: Less talking, more pulling!


*********************************************


Smaller: Are you going to do your homework right when we get home?

Small: No I am going to listen to Led Zeppelin and pretend the drummer is alive.

*********************************************

Small: When you get big do you want to be like Mommy?

Smallest: Yes, I want to be smart and bossy and have boobs.

i also juggle

In my last post I spoke about the value if the artist, so now go and read Mike Daisy and the correlating article.

Is it such a strange thing to believe that artists be paid for their job? It speaks to the entire question of the necessity of art. Try as people might to debate that question, it is fairly irrelevant, being that art does exist and has since the beginning of man, hence confirming that there is some innate need for it. Why we need it, is what makes it so damn interesting.

Conversely, there is also an artist's need to do it. Doing great art is like doing crack. An addictive, supreme high. So you go searching for more.

I remember an audition I had a couple years ago. When I first got back to acting after my hiatus at home with smallers. To get to the audition I had to park on a dimly lit street and walk down a dark alleyway that was littered with trash and debris. When I got to the back door of the audition space there was no light to help me find the steps up to the door. I moved slowly in the dark and carefully felt for each step before committing to moving upward. Once I got to the door and opened it I found a dimly lit warehouse space. Dirty and stuffy. We were supposed to do a lot of movement, and I could actually see the dust in the air. When I looked around the room, I knew many of the actors. We had all made the trek to this place. The play and the company were something we all were interested in. But in that moment all I could think was. 'WHAT THE HELL!". I am better than this. Not more important, not self important. Just important. I have worth. I am worth good working conditions and good health, and safe working environments.

I thought about my smallers at home, and how I could be there with them. I thought of a staged reading I turned down for the night because of this audition -a fun read in a nice theatre space. I thought of my car and the fact that several had been broken into in this area recently. I thought of rehearsing this show in this space in the heat of summer with no air conditioning and what it would do to my lungs to inhale so much of this mottled air. Still I auditioned, because its so hard to turn away from a chance, even one such as that.

What does it say of our value when we do this to ourselves. Yes, I have passion for my art. Why the hell else would I follow that sad bunny trail above. We can talk about the value of paying the artist well, and that does matter. It is huge. But I also think that many artists come from a place of devaluing themselves. It makes sense. We work in a field of constant rejection. For every victory there are ten misses. We are used to not getting what we want. Is that why we accept those conditions? Let me also say that the company that ran that audition are great people. I like them, and I like their work. They are struggling to pay the bills too, and even in the face of that put up lovely productions.

Fast forward.

I was eating dinner with the Assistant Director of my current understudy gig in the midst of those rehearsals, and he complimented me on my work; to which I quickly demurred. I think I may have even rolled my eyes. I started to say 'Its not real acting, I am just a placeholder, etc' (I am not fond of understudying). He stopped me and said '95% of the world cannot do what you do, even less can handle classical text the way you do, don't diminish that'. He was right. It should not be reduced, and I do it all the time.

The last thing Daisy was doing in his article was being reductive. If anything he is fighting against all of us that accept this status quo. We should not be apologizing for our need to do art, we should not mitigate its effect, or its purpose.

I feel like he is asking us to grow a pair.

Well done.

the race

I have not been blogging a lot, or anything of any real value lately. This is not to say I am quitting. I don’t think I am ready to throw in the towel, but things here are busy and I keep wondering, with every new thing I take on, what is going to drop.

I realize how much artists in today’s world are beggars and choosers. Both. Not just jacks or all trades, but we alternate between feast and famine. This shows how rusty my writing skills are…look at those last two sentences – egads, that is a lot of old sayings to fall back on.

I have started something new. I can’t say what it is yet, so that is what I will call it – something new. And it is new - ‘like a naked new born babe’ as Macbeth intones – so fledgling, so raw that a harsh breath or a wrong step could dissolve it like sugar in water. But it will require much of my time, as all new creations do.

Meanwhile it is audition season so I am constantly pouring over sides, and running to and fro, and I have freelance graphic jobs on my plate, and kids, and contract hours to put in, oh right, and I am still understudying. So things like blogs, running, reading books and making cute earrings fall to the wayside. So today I have tried to do some of that. I took the smallers to the library and got way too many books, started reading Fortress of Solitude, made myself three pairs of earrings, and lookie here – a blog entry.

Still, I go back to that thought: something will drop, or fail, or be compromised. I have watched many an actor run from day job, to rehearsal, scarf down an unhealthy dinner, and then race home to try and sleep a little before doing it all over again. It brings to mind Mike Daisy’s recent article. We take side coaching gigs, and teaching jobs, we work events and trade shows, we randomly work patient simulation and wait tables, or work temp jobs. We do everything and anything, so how will we ever master one thing?

We are constantly talking about the value of of art, but what about the value of the artist? I think of that last moment in Being Julia when Annett Benning has that perfect flash across her face of victory, loss, regret, exhaustion...whatever that brilliant thought was. It was perfect. I think, will I ever have that moment when I am always going to be running in fifteen different directions? The ability to have complete attention to one thing eludes me, so how can I ever achieve a moment of purity.

But such is life, and so away I go... gaining speed, and I'm off.

oprah and pulitzer agreed

In preparation for book club this evening I revamped our list of maybes. Every couple months I have everyone send me a couple of picks that they are interested in reading and then put them on our 'maybe' list. Then at the end of each meeting we pick from that list. We try to give everyone an equal chance to have their picks read. I think only MB gets shafted here and that is because she is a political addict sometimes, and the rest of the time will read whatever, so us loudmouths take over. So - to MB - I am sorry you get shafted.

My picks come from an amalgam of sources. What I happen to see in the book store, what I read about in the book reviews, what has been nominated for a big prize, and sometimes stuff suggested from Good Reads or Amazon.

Now here's the kicker. I disagree with critics ALL the time. Not a little, a lot - a whole lot. I am not happy with the folks who said that The Savage Detectives (last month's book club read) is awesome. Because it was not. It was well written, yes. But it was also convoluted and it became work to read it. To me, great literature should be well written and feel effortless to read. If I have to make myself read a book, then it does not go up there as a great book in my book.

Try as I might to pretend that critics will not shape my choices I still look on the Pulitzer site for book ideas, even though they are the same people who gave Doubt a prize over The Clean House! A travesty I tell you! I try to tell myself that it is never a waste of time to read a book, but then I read Ghosts by Banville and I realized - I will never get that time back. I could have been reading Zadie Smith or Jeanette Winterson.

Yet I cannot stop myself. I fall victim to the mindset that if the powers that be say something is good then I must partake. Lemming. It is a lemming mentality. I try to fight it, but I always go back. I wish I had a perfect tailor made hpmelon oracle for recommendations.

'Oh oracle, I am in the mood for something witty and irreverent, with a soupcon of danger. What do you recommend?'

Nice.