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The Truth Comes Out

Check out the original post over at Saint Hoax - via Visual News

Couldn't Resist

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

PMS jokes aren't very funny. Period.

She said she was a vegetarian but I'd never met herbivore.

A paper thesaurus is a dinosaur. 

Bladder infection and urine trouble.

Yesterday's walk 'round Stanley Park was lovely. I left home at 9:00 am but because it was the first day of daylight savings time, for most people it was still 8:00 am and it was, perhaps, due to the early hour that something happened twice that had never happened before: people saying, out loud, "Good morning." No one has ever spoken to me like that in years of walking the seawall.

Spontaneous greetings on the mountain are not at all uncommon no matter what the time of day. It seems from my practice, the more remote you are, the more likely a salutation is likely, but on the seawall one doesn't expect it. It was lovely.

The weirdest part happened as I approached the park and the wall. I arrived at the southeast corner as I often do and I wondered about walking clockwise around the park. I really thought about it but didn't do it. I walk the seawall, on average, forty times a year but this year is likely to be considerably higher due to my winter walking, and I have never once walked counter-clockwise.

Walking counter-clockwise increases the shade or puts the sun on your back and it has you facing the relentless traffic of skaters, bikers and those otherwise propelled who must go clockwise around the park on the bike lane.

Todays tasks: Taking gift certificates to the art room workers, Carole and (their) Rita, at Brock Fahrni. They were exceptionally kind and close to (my) Rita. And then I have to go to get Rita's ashes. That is going to be hard.

HELLO Daylight Savings Time!!

Hello sunshine.

Hello warm temperatures.

Hello feet; hello shoes.

Hello morning, hello seawall.

Sensitive Me

I have some of my report cards from elementary school and because I taught at the high school I went to, I could read (and photocopy) the remarks of my teachers about my teenage self. There are two themes: intelligence and sensitivity.

Virtually every single reference to my (relative) intelligence is back-handed: "A boy of Chris's capability should do better…." "…Disappointed, given his capacity…." "Expect more of someone of his ability…." You get the idea. It repeats and repeats in that way; there is not a single positive commentary about my intelligence. And the comments about my sensitivity would have you believe that I were Joseph (John) Merrick or a pedophile.

I am sure the messages about my academic achievement were meant to encourage me, but in my high school at that time, there was a cultural distaste for sensitivity. To be constantly criticized for being sensitive certainly made me curious about sensitivity so I read lots of books and many articles. But after all my reading, I still could not understand what sensitivity was. I did learn, however, that sensitive people can be hard for people to understand.

I learned from Dr. Elaine Aron that sensitivity was the reason my self esteem was so low. She also made me smile by making me understand why, whenever I travel alone, my first day always involves visiting the churches, gardens and parks closest to my hotel. These places, along with my locked hotel room, become my essential retreat/re-charging places.

This week a student expressed profound distaste for me and my course on her course evaluation form. Her choice of language and her vocabulary made her commentary feel hateful and it hurt to be so hated and such a failure for someone, even though I never lost cognizance of the better path of "letting it go" and "not taking it personally."

That was the advice of every single friend in whom I confided and whereas it is sage, it is pointless. I know already. And I also know that for me—a person Dr. Aron calls "a highly sensitive people" or HSP—it is just not possible. Instead, I take comfort in knowing that when I go to bed, it will hurt less in the morning. And the next morning etcetera. But neither my own intelligence nor the well intentioned protestations of friends can affect the emotional track of an HSP.

Catching Up

I went to see an ophthalmologist a while back. I realized later that I went unconsciously—like when you are flying along on the highway and suddenly you snap into consciousness and realize that you have been "somewhere else," daydreaming about something and not seeing the landscape you were in. I say I went unconsciously because last week I went to another one.

My name is Mr. Loranger but my twin's name is Mr. Anxiety. From the moment I made the second appointment I started worrying: What kind of person goes to two ophthalmologists in a month? What will I say when he asks why I am there? What if nothing is wrong and I am a hypochondriac?

When the day came this week, it was fine. I told her simply that I was sure that something was the matter with my right eye. So we got down to it and I covered my left eye and started reading off her chart with my right one. I did the best I could.

Then it was time for my left eye and whoa, what the hell?! I could tell right away that my left eye was way worse than my right eye. Now I was really confused. Turns out my vision is worse in my left eye  but I have a cataract in my right eye.

So now I wonder who, exactly, was comatose during my first appointment—me or ophthalmologist number one because after going to number two I found out about the cataract (and now use drops) and that life will be much better with my two new pairs of glasses.

•

Whopppeeee. Now, if and when I travel again, I can add 2 pairs of glasses to my medical bag.  MY friends Bruce and Beth wonder why I have lost my desire to travel. Well, I wonder, how big are their medical bags?  Seriously! I have a large breath meter that tells me how much asthma medication to use, and the two inhalers, allergy medications, migraine medications, HIV medications and all the crap you get in case of gastrointestinal viruses and malaria etc. Honestly, one needs a medi-wallah when one travels. 

Endings

Endings: Because of Rita's death, I cancelled a gig leading a Focus Group for the City of Port Moody. And because of lack of enrolment, it seems likely that a 2-day workshop for the West Vancouver Sketch Club will be canceled.

My last column for Opus, after 28 years and 300 newsletter editorials, came out this week. And the changes in management practices of an artistic career continue to change. The copyright act has changed and social media have me questioning my relevance to the course I teach at Emily Carr. I hate the marking and the infrequent problem student, but I do like teaching. What to do; what to do….

Here is my last column for Opus (I really like the quotes at the end):

“And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Jane?” Mr. Rochester asks Jane in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre. Saying a permanent goodbye, like other major life changes, is a dynamic renewal to some and anathema to others.

Creative people are good at adapting to change and optimists are also good with transitions. And so, as a creative optimist, I am embracing the change that this last column in the Opus Visual Arts Newsletter brings.

This is column number three hundred in Issue #300. More than twenty-eight years of writing this column has been a highlight of my life, as has been receiving the one thousand-plus inspiring emails and letters you have sent me. (The two pieces of hate mail I could have done without, though.) Writing to you each month has been a remarkable experience that cumulated in the writing of two books and an offer of a teaching position at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

I have some very vivid memories as a result of past columns that I will never forget:

• Writing about a Shell Oil supply boat touring in the Arctic that had a free stateroom for an artist and later hearing from an artist who that took that life-changing trip.
• Getting almost two hundred letters and calls when I wrote about finding my birth mother at age forty-five and her turning out to be a revered and accomplished artist.
• Introducing the Gorilla Girls to Vancouver artists on two occasions by bringing them to speak and perform at the Stanley Theatre.
• Presenting the Opus Series, a series of presentations by feminist curators Whitney Chadwick and Marcia Tucker.
• Commissioning and presenting short plays about Emily Carr, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe. I had the courage to undertake this only because I knew you would buy tickets to attend.
• Making a success of Artropolis 2001, thanks largely to the ability to “spread the word” through this newsletter.

And then there is my most unique memory. I had gone to the cashier to pay for some clothes at The Bay whilst a sale was occurring that had a contest component. When I handed my credit card to the salesperson and she saw my name, she kept scratching and throwing away the contest discount scratch cards until she found one with the maximum percentage off for me because she enjoyed these newsletter columns so much.

I look forward to whatever lies ahead, but I will always look back at the writing of this column as the most remarkable professional experience of my life. And for that, I am forever grateful to David van Berckel, Scott Cronshaw and Opus for providing me with the privilege of this platform.

This is how I describe myself on my website: “I research, teach, write and publish about professional development for visual artists, seeking to maximize the pleasure, productivity and success of the creative practitioners I deeply respect and admire.”  I mention this because of that last part about you.

Making art was only a hobby for me. I have only modest skills; hence my reverence for the truly talented. My admiration and respect for creators of visual art led to a determination to serve artists. Founding and running Presentation House Gallery and the Alliance for Arts and Culture, founding this newsletter in 1986, teaching, writing books and leading workshops — all these activities have been ways to serve you.

During my tenure writing this column I got a devastating diagnosis of HIV. I faced a path of challenging treatments that could not cure and that would end in the ultimate ceremony of parting. But a medical miracle led to a very positive and unexpected outcome. On the day I was given back a future, I went for a walk along the Stanley Park seawall. I will never forget that walk in the sunshine.

I felt like the luckiest person in the world to have escaped death and to have lived the creative path I chose. I may not have found wealth or glory, but I reveled in the joys of colour, composition and texture. And my supreme moments of consciousness were those of majestic pleasure in the presence of great work by great artists. (Brian Jungen, you are my God.)

I am envious of all of you who are blessed with true talent. I hope you never take it for granted and that your talent and your process will forever truly fulfill you, because looking at your work is the most valued thing that I and many others do.

So to make celebratory this parting, here are some famous words for you:

• “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”  (Vincent van Gogh)
• “Every artist was first an amateur.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• “Painting is easy when you don’t know how and very difficult when you do.” (Edgar Degas)
• “Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes; work never begun.”
• (Christina Rosetti)
• “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes; art is knowing which ones to keep.” (Ansel Adams)
• “[Making] art is the only way to run away without leaving home.” (Twyla Tharp)
• “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.” (Stella Adler)
• “An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.” (Charles Horton Cooley)
• "I foresee it and yet I hardly ever carry it out as I foresee it. It transforms itself by the actual paint. I don't, in fact, know very often what the paint will do, and it does many things which are very much better than I could make it do." (Francis Bacon)
• “As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward." (Vincent van Gogh)
• “People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.” (Claude Monet)
• “No masterpiece was ever created by a lazy artist.” (Salvador Dali)
• “Damn! And just when I was starting to get it!” (Edgar Degas on his deathbed)

And so, goodbye and good luck.