I'VE GIVEN UP!

[baghead]

Hi Everybody,
I fuckin luv the Mental Illness Happy Hour. I'm almost 41, female (I can't even call myself a 'woman.' That just feels too weird since I'm developmentally delayed as far as womanhood goes, I think. Or the version of 'woman' normalized by this culture feels too weird. Anyway, something is off there.) and been tormented in one way or another pretty much my whole life. Anxiety & shyness and a child, booze and drugs and sluttiness as a teenager, depression, anxiety, eating disorder, cutting, mania and shit through my 20s and 30s. Here I am, half my life over, no longer able to hold onto the hope that I'll get at least a few good years out of my youth. Getting wrinkled and saggy, haven't had a real relationship probably EVER. I'm still waiting to get to a skinny enuf weight to start living my life. It won't happen and yet I cling to it for salvation, knowing that salvation lies in letting go. I found a bag of coke on the street the other day and spent a week chipping at that just to get me through. I live under a constant barrage of destructive forces and thoughts. And YET, I care less and less that I suffer so much. I ease the suffering of others and maybe that's my purpose here on earth if there's a such thing as purpose. I make lots of art and it seems like my audience consists of the people like me/us. Go look at my website and maybe you find some solace that there's someone just as fucked up as you layin it down and there are some funny little books, too, in the book section, that are all about the torture.

(I like this color option!)

[Glock therapy]

Hey Baghead,
Hi--I fuckin' love your art! And I really like that you do it, and enjoy other people's reaction to it, despite all the shitty stuff you're feeling. Unless I'm projecting it sounds like a lot of the time you'd like to disappear or something. And your art is , among other things, an assertion that you *are* here and you have a *perspective*. I don't know whether I'm stating the obvious (ie isn't that what art is all about? [duh]). It just strikes me that up against everything else you say you're feeling you do art, you post it, you pursue projects, etc. I think that's cool, courageous (I'm deathly afraid of trying to channel my creativity into nearly anything), and it's a middle-finger in the face of the shit that makes you want to give up. And I dig that and am inspired by it.

So welcome, keep fighting your fight, and keep articulating your experience, in words and art. I know I'm interested in what you have to say.

--"Glock Therapy"

[baghead]

Awww, thanks Glock Therapy. Nice name. Your observations about my art/self are very astute. What you said about wanting to disappear and wanting to assert my perspective is right on. I think that a lot of what I've struggled with is just the aspects of this culture that are so soul destroying. If this were a common perspective I don't think it would be so painful, but since so much crazy shit is normalized, I feel like I can't be part of the tribe and I end up feeling so alienated and alone. So yeah, making art for me is like making representations of a feeling that other people who feel the same way can recognize and feel part of another tribe, one that doesn't require you to disappear to belong. But part of my growing up and 'getting better' is to get past this me versus the world stance and I'm so special cuz I see the truth stance which feeds the ego to the point of not being able to make art. Anyway, thanks for getting me thinking and I fully support any creative endeavors even if it no one will ever see it and it's 'bad.' I don't enjoy making art but not making it is worse, so I suggest you just try. Send me something you made and I guarantee I would find something real in it.

[Glock therapy]

Hi,
Yep, there's no 'bad' art, in that sense. And yeah, so it's cool that you do it and assert. All the cliches are true--it's what you think about it yourself. And the approval of others is nice, but if you're strictly going for that then you're moving away from truth/yourself and also entering into a never-ending cycle of seeking pats on the head (a need I'm very immediately in touch with at the same time I decry it as BS) And we can tell who's doing which... and the latter embarrasses us all in a way.

I've always thought that anyone who looks like they're *truly* enjoying themself looks fine dancing no matter what they do. (I observe this at parties, weddings, etc.--from the sidelines, naturally)
And the same is true in the other arts. It's the doing, not the finished product. (And I now must add disclaimer that I fully believe all of what I just said, yet practice it... sporadically? infrequently? ... not enough, for sure. (I shrug shoulders and offer a New Jersey-ish "Whatareyagonnado?")

-GT