My audio wallpaper handed me a way into another deeply held ‘belief’ about the world and my place in it (and how that belief has created a huge road-block) this morning ~
The program was about Czarist Russian art (not that that really makes any difference). The picture under discussion was Barge Haulers on the Volga by Ilya Repin. (www.linesandcolors.com by Charley Parker)
All the heavy context, meanings and interpretations that the narrator ascribed to it struck me as one of the reasons that I’m so leery of both ‘doing my stuff’ and ‘putting it out there’ ~ an overdose of ‘Art Appreciation’ language at a young age = “there isn’t anywhere near that much awareness and meaning behind *my* art, therefore, it doesn’t count!”
Next: root ^that^ out of my sub-conscious, and learn to appreciate whatever I do as “good enough”.
Curves 'n Angles 
April 12, 2011 at 12:48 am
Delicate balance going on here: we create art for ourselves to keep it pure, but we have to allow others to find whatever they want in it, even if that’s “meaning” and stuff.
When a child draws a stick figure we call it art. How come when an adult draws a stick figure, it’s not art? Because they should “know better”? Art’s not knowing, it’s feeling and giving.
If you’re feeling and giving, that’s art. Keep it up. Don’t let the little voices push you around. (They can usually be smother with chocolate.)
April 12, 2011 at 8:13 am
True! True!
… and opens up the gigantic can of worms “Opinion or Fact?”
It takes years and years to realize that we don’t have to take in other people’s opinions as facts to run ‘our’ lives by!
April 12, 2011 at 8:18 am
oh, and “Yay! Chocolate!!”
April 12, 2011 at 10:25 am
Hi Mom!
As requested—a reminder that you shouldn’t let an art teacher’s comments from 20+ years ago rule your life!
It may be true that you didn’t “follow the assignment” but that doesn’t mean your work didn’t have value to you. Yes, you need to play/perform within the rules in situations that have rules (and school is chock-full of them) but that doesn’t mean that you need to extrapolate the rules into every other thing you do. Most rules are contextual, just like everything else.
Hugs!
Mythical daughter #2
April 12, 2011 at 11:24 am
Thanks, honey!
For those of you following along in cyberspace ~
The 2 biggest memories I have of art classes in HS were of an assignment that I had no idea that I didn’t have the internal tools for: “Make a picture of your feelings while listening to this piece of music” (what?? how do I do that??!!!)
I ‘faked it’ and felt like I failed miserably.
… and getting an A- on a beautifully done pencil drawing of 1 potato in a bowl – ‘cuz there were 2 potatoes in the bowl we were s’posed to draw! Horrors! and Epic Fail! again…
January 14, 2013 at 11:05 pm
As I lightly edit this, a year later, I realize that the Horrible.Epic.Fail over the potato picture, was all because I got an A minus!!! OhMyGods – what freakin’ impossible-to-meet standards I had/have for myself!
April 12, 2011 at 11:12 am
aHA! My middle daughter grew up convinced that she was bad at math, and had not musical ability. Both caused by stupid stupid teachers saying stupid stupid things. She is a natural mathematician, though a bit unorthodox.
But, music? She’s one of the finest songwriters in the world, and has a voice like sunshine and moonlight courting the mountains and the sky.
My friend Nathan Agin reminded me not to put so much value in my perception of other people’s perceptions.
April 13, 2011 at 7:57 pm
Joel ~
How did your daughter change her inner beliefs about herself? Sometimes, I can ‘delete’ those Monsters (as Havi Brooks calls ’em) by first, recognizing their existence in the first place, and then tracking down what gave birth to them (teachers, aunts, strangers in the grocery store…?). And then, asking ‘what are you trying to protect me from?’. Still scary, but even baby steps are progress!
(Is this the daughter that recently got married?)
April 15, 2011 at 1:47 pm
Well, I can’t really speak in the past tense about that stuff. We started by talking about it a lot to find the source, then finding proof that it wasn’t true, then working every day for years to demonstrate again and again that her uncaring teachers didn’t have some truth that her loving parents were missing; it was the other way ’round.
Not sure if it’ll ever be really gone, but before she married and moved away, it all seemed like it was on track.
December 16, 2015 at 6:04 pm
Thanks for that tidbit of “How To”, Joel! I’m dismayed that it took s-o-o-o-o-o long for me to really accept and comprehend what you were saying, there! Now it makes way-more sense: 1) Find the un-true messages buried in my (un/sub)conscious memories (“Monsters”) 2) Who/Where did they come from? 3) Show the Monsters that those messages are no longer accurate, if they *ever* were, but they’re neither evil nor stupid for coming to those conclusions, at the time. 4) Replace those old “I must protect you!” scripts with a New Job Description.
Arghh! I can tell, just by reading that^, there are a couple of steps being glossed over.