art and fear

Several years have passed since I visited the Inman Park Arts Festival. It's one of Atlanta's big spring arts festivals, and it's one of our better ones. Sculptors, woodturners, painters, jewelry makers, metalworkers, knitters, and, yes, photographers had art on display today when I visited.

At festivals like this, I always examine the photographers' goods most carefully. It inevitably becomes a little contest. I size up their photos. I mercilessly compare the quality of their work to mine. I create an imaginary graph with x and y axes and see who scores the strongest. (It's really kind of ridiculous.)

Today I saw some mediocre work there, and some really beautiful work. I saw some stuff that I really enjoyed. I even splurged on a wonderful black-and-white print from a north Georgia artist who shoots beautiful nudes.

It was only when I got home from the festival that I started to reflect on the uselessness of my little comparison game. Setting up a contest like that is basically an exercise in envy. It yields mostly resentment.

It occurs to me that these anxious feelings are an almost constant companion for my photography right now, to one degree or another.

It's a good indication that I need to re-program some of my thinking.

Julia Cameron might as well have been there with me today as I mercilessly eyed the artists' wares:

"Jealousy is always a mask for fear: fear that we aren't able to get what we want; frustration that somebody else seems to be getting what is rightfully ours even if we are too frightened to reach for it. At its root, jealousy is a stingy emotion. It doesn't allow for the abundance and multiplicity of the universe. Jealousy tells us that there is room for only one — one poet, one painter, one whatever you dream of being..."

As you might guess, carrying around an attitude like this tends to drain a lot of the fun out of art. It flavors the artistic process with bitterness — rather than the natural sweetness of playing, enjoying, noticing, exploring.

I've felt for a while now that I'm at a threshold with my photography. I think today's experience at the Festival was just another reminder that I need to keep pushing to get into grad school. It's not even a particular degree I'm after — it's the structure of the curriculum, and the opportunity to learn new things while gaining a clearer sense of what my own work is about.

I want to pursue school mostly because I'm not doing myself any favors by staying in this small and petty place with my art. Sure, I want to take better photographs. I also want to get myself to a more open place, and stroll through the Festival with a desire to celebrate every piece of art I run across.

Ten really good things about this week

(10) Getting my taxes paid (see also: simply having enough money to pay my taxes).
(9) Fage yogurt with honey drizzled on top.
(8) No cavities at the dentist on Thursday.
(7) Working from home on Monday. (Folding fresh laundry and listening to Spoon while writing emails. Working from home is like being on vacation.)
(6) This funny Will Farrell video.
(5) Canceling my subscription to Harper's magazine. I know they're a highbrow current events/arts magazine, and I'm pretty sure I deliberately attempted to score some intellectual snob points in the past by leaving a couple of issues casually strewn on the coffee table when friends dropped by. But god, it's so damned bleak. Every time I finished reading an article I just felt sad and bruised. Attention Harper's: I know there's a lot of bad stuff happening in the universe. You do not need to remind me each month. If that makes me a Pollyanna, fine.
(4) Getting back into boot camp. The new session I signed up for is at 6 pm, and that's working out well. This week, it's been great working outside in the park, with beautiful breezes keeping everyone cool. Running around at the park when it's spectacular outside is really fun.
(3) Buying airfare to the beach in June for a long weekend with Kathy and a group of other powerful women. The emails flying around about the trip bear the subject line "Badass Beauties on the Beach." I must say, I don't mind being identified with that group.
(2) Making a conscious decision to approach my work with a more positive attitude. Sure, the concept is in vogue, and it's fairly Oprah-ish. But it's something I need in my work. Maybe positivity is something you learn rather than something you're born with. I could use the practice. I would rather be a positive person than a walking Harper's magazine.
(1) Running into Baton Bob on the street yesterday (see photo). A 6'3" black man wearing a tutu, sparkly majorette boots, twirling a baton. Seeing this guy out there on the street doing his thing just makes me smile. After I took that photo of him, I gave him a very big tip. Please keep doing what you're doing, Baton Bob.

Regarding the Future

I've been puttering away at this keyboard for quite some time now. 2000 or 2001 was when this site got off the ground.

But like many journalers out there, I find myself at a loss for words these days. (Is it possible that we bloggers are all talked out?) I'm wondering what I should do with this site. A handy poll appears below. Would you add your two cents to the conversation, and let me know what you think? I'd like your opinion. (And feel free to make up your own answer, if none of mine seem to work for you.) Thanks.

a good Friday

Today the office closed early for Good Friday. When the head parter at work sent out the email on Tuesday advising us of the early closing, I blinked in confusion for a moment before I realized, "Oh, yeah, Easter is this weekend, isn't it?..."

I've obviously strayed a long way from my roots, when Easter inevitably involved a wide assortment of church services leading up to the big day, and a big fabulous gut-busting meal to celebrate the big day.

I haven't done a Lenten fast (or any other type of fast) since I left the church in 2004. I can't say that I miss it much. Thoughtful Lenten fasting is probably therapeutic for many people, but I never feel like I "got" the fasts in the way that I wanted to. A fast inevitably yielded frustration and feelings of failure when I didn't keep it as completely or honorably as I had aspired to. Maybe I had fasting performance issues.

At any rate, I had a relaxing Friday afternoon at home. Today has been a good Friday. There was no hymn singing or Psalm reading. I did a little laundry, sorted the recycling, and burned a CD of eclectic waltz music to take to the contradance tonight for the halftime break. I look forward to seeing everyone dance to the assortment of music I picked out in 3/4 time: selections from Madeleine Peyroux, Over the Rhine, Norah Jones, Jon Brion, and Cowboy Junkies.

On Monday the new session of boot camp kicks off. This time, I wisely chose to join the 6 pm class instead of the 6 am class. Though I showed up diligently for each 6 am session last time, I felt like my sleep never settled into a groove, and I spent most of the six weeks stumbling around in a strange sleep-confused haze. It'll be a rush to get from the office in Midtown to Grant Park by 6 pm — but at least I'm usually awake at that hour already.

This time I want to focus on my eating, keeping it clean. My main personal goal for this year was to introduce some integrity into my eating habits, and keeping the boot camp required food diary this time will be a good way to try that out. Sometimes I'm amazed that I'm 32 years old but still manage to eat like an unsupervised 8-year-old for weeks at a time.

-- Oh, one more note: I just published a new poem to Ephemera. This one's a perfect springtime poem. And if you read it in just the right way, you will end up laughing out loud.