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I’ve had some neat personal epiphanies lately, as a result of a work design project for which I went back to my roots of traditional media, & art-making. As a designer, it’s always a challenge when someone wants to represent a concept visually. There’s no picture of this concept.
No stock photo or typographical layout in a visual medium is ever going to fully convey the meaning of a concept which is inherently not visual, & in fact, you can manage to be convincing about it by a million different approaches. But what you really need is a damn good reason.
If you’re going to say, “Here’s how I think [CONCEPT] should be represented,” there has to be a why that people can grab onto & believe in. So my why for my work project brought me back to action painters of the 1950s. My favorite. It’s here that the story forks, & the why of my
project becomes irrelevant to the resulting epiphany. As I was going back to the action painters - Pollock, Frankenthaler, de Kooning, Rothko - I became aware again of just how courageous they were. They created new worlds of work in the face of enormous suspicion & derision.
They wanted to be taken seriously by others & so they first took themselves seriously. Remember when Neo first realized he could bend The Matrix to his will, & Morpheus remarked that, “He is beginning to believe?” It’s that same self-belief that drove the New York School artists.
It’s that same belief that infused me with the self-determination to transition, in my 30s, at my job. I look at early transition pictures; the way I looked going to work & to parties & everywhere, & I find myself gasping in horrified admiration, “My God, she was brave!”
There is a threshold of determination past which no external or internal critical voice can do anything but power your determination further. Whether it is “you can’t do that,” or “anyone can do that,” the difference is intent. I can, & I will. With creative pursuits in general -
art, music, writing - I have SO often found myself impaired by fear of the very thing I love to create. I want to make art, but what if I’m not good? I want to make music, but what if no one listens? I want to write poems, but what if they are nonsense? And so I don’t do it.
I want to live into a different understanding of my gender or sexuality, but what if it’s [too late/not accepted/going to cost me?] We do this to each other all the time in this community. But that’s another conversation.
My epiphany is this: I absolutely have to stop building gates. The gatekeepers already built the gates, & I fashion locks for them & intimidating iron bars & horrifying effigies of those foolish enough to try to cross the threshold before me. I make so many of my own barriers.
I have to stop. I have to stop devaluing my own inclinations & desires. I have to quit making my own heart stop. I have to begin to believe. I know how to paint, how to play, how to write poems. All of the gates erected around quality, audience, recognition, monetization...
All are based on devaluing many for the commodification of a few. Everything that says “don’t live your story, & certainly don’t tell it,” is a lie that I buy into over & over again, out of fear. I managed to overcome it to transition. Why do I insist that *I* have such value,
but that what a valuable thing can produce has none? Let me say it again: if I am worthy, then why would I not make worthy things, or tell worthy stories? The action painters did it, the gay & the trans people are doing it. Musicians, poets, filmmakers, YouTubers, Tweeters do it.
Every day, people believe that they can, & they will. They do. My God they are brave! And I want to be brave, too.
