Posted by Atticus on August 7, 2004, at 21:19:07
In reply to My art...., posted by Jai Narayan on August 7, 2004, at 18:49:21
Re: your paintings -- Do you see death as the final struggle in terms of something we struggle against (I know about that very viscerally from personal experience) or as something we struggle to come to terms with the inevitability of? Your work with the topo map sounds very interesting; I've never encountered anything quite like that. The closest thing thematically would have been an exhibit of Andre Serrano's color photographs of bodies in a morgue, where the lividity and decay have so discolored the skin that it has taken on the appearance of an aerial photograph of topography. Saw that at MOMA years ago.
As for the people I'm drawing on for for my stories, I can only really make an educated extrapolation as to Temple's feelings about Alyssa. The scene in "Bullet Riders" took place in early spring of Temple's and my senior year of high school, and on that particularly existential night, we both, being prone to moody reflection, had the distinct sense that the wild and woolly days of adolescence were somehow drawing to a close. We were both heading off to college in the fall, so we decided that it would make the most sense if we mutually agreed that it would be OK to see other people. And, of course, at the beginning of my sophomore year, I fell head over heels for Alyssa. Their interactions were pretty strained at first. Temple may have (and I'm guessing here, since she never wanted to talk about it) resented the fact that I had never loved her with the same consuming intensity that she could see everytime she encountered Alyssa and I as a couple. Alyssa and I were so lovey-dovey (Alyssa's open, hippie-ish nature just seemed to nurture that naturally) that Temple would say, in a voice that was meant to sound joking but didn't quite make it, that we were "the most disgusting couple." By that she meant all the open and unabashed display of affection. Of course, our goth/punk social morays in high school had discouraged that kind of thing. But there obviously was an unabashed romantic buried under Temple's exterior; otherwise why would she have always insisted on driving out to Jersey in the ancient Temple-mobile so we could see the stars? Maybe she wished she had dropped that goth exterior just once and seen how I reacted; I don't really know. The real connection between Temple and Alyssa was, naturally, Pez, who always seemed to be the center of all things. (By the way, Pez was born March 11 -- I think that makes her a Pisces, which is supposed to be a good match for a Libra like me. It was true in our case, anyway.) I think Pez always ends up the linchpin in any set of relationships because her of intense and genuine interest in other people and her deep empathy. Looking at this with 20/20 hindsight (and a healthy daily dose of Effexor XR and other psychotropic meds), I think these were simultaneously her greatest strengths and her greatest sources of vulnerability as a human being. She just felt too much, and once you got past the footloose-and-fancy-free eccentric artist image she cultivated so carefully (especially with all her zany homemade hats and dyed hair) and her tough-love language, you realized she was as fragile as glass in many ways. I think the psychic toll that NYC takes on you over the long haul was just too much for such a sensitive person. I do try to stay close to the people I become friends with, but in recent years, as we've all moved into our thirties, things like geographic separation and, in the cases of some friends not mentioned in these stories, the start of families has made that more and more challenging. The way I unwittingly isolated myself as my illness gained more steam, allowing some friendships to die of neglect or embarrassment (I didn't want them to see me this way) hasn't helped either. I never did hear from Alyssa directly after I got out of the hospital -- only via messages relayed by Pez. I think Alyssa is determined to put mental illness (both her mother's and mine) in her rear-view mirror permanently, and was probably glad she was well out of the line of fire when the suicide attempt went down. It's all such complex stuff, the electrical impulses bouncing around inside peoples' heads. But it makes interesting things to write about, when I feel up to it -- mostly because of all the messy emotions that seem to dominate the scene when you're immersed in an urban bohemian/punk milieu like I was for so long.
Atticus
poster:Atticus
thread:374887
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040729/msgs/375179.html