Misty-eyed

I'm up early, before my alarm, with tears still wet on my face.  My eyes are fogged with sleep and the tears left over from the most hideous cry I had last night.  I stayed up to watch Misty Copeland on Independent Lens.  I know her story and have devoured so much about her as she's made her historic rise to principle dancer with the American Ballet Theater (ABT).  Like so many women, black women, with daughters and a love of dance and the arts, I have gravitated toward this tiny, elegant force, found myself spinning around her like a mama moon.  I am up early, before my alarm, because I am moved in the most spiritual of ways by an artist and her work and a moment that was a long time coming.

To say that Misty Copeland is inspiring is to discover that the word has been overused and that there are hardly words to describe this woman, her talent, and her trajectory.  This is the story of a prodigy, of an artist come to life, of a consgilieri and a coven (written in the best way so don't go in) of "firsts" and strong, able, successful black women who brought a baby light into the fold.  I was as moved by this group as I am by Misty's absolute command of her craft, her body, and her art.  That these women were called to be her guides by the incredible Susan Fales-Hill, a writer/producer/patron of the arts and education, that they met the call to protect and nurture this artist who was sure to take her place in the pantheon they'd begun creating with their life achievements, filled me with a love and pride that is indescribable.

I have loved dance since I was a small girl dreaming of all the major roles in classical ballets and  watching Michael Jackson and Solid Gold.  Much of the latter part of my childhood was spent in the studio and I trained many days a week.  My dance teacher, a ball-breaking Russian dancer, hurt by her turn as dance teacher to the suburban kids of New Jersey in her basement studio, still found a way to push and pull me and try to make me into something. She told me there were very few black dancers out there and that those were not players in the mainstream dance companies.  She did not say this with callousness but matter of factly.  I did not know about the Dance Theatre of Harlem and though I had enjoyed Ailey, I wanted to wear pointe shoes and perform the classical pieces I'd been spoon fed.  I can't say that I even let myself dream of a chance at a career or a life in dance as I believed that there was no place for me in the arts and that though the arts were enriching, there were better things for one to do with one's future.  

I was no Misty Copeland, she's an incredible talent, a force, but I was good.  Good enough to dream about it and phantom dance through every song, sound, and watched performance.  Good enough to hear the muse calling to me, but not quite sure what to answer back or how.  This is the struggle of a young artist or performer.  Feeling full of the spirit but needing commitment and guidance from a master.  I gave up before even trying to find such a mentor, convinced that to dance was a pipe dream for me, that there were more "serious, important, pressing things" in my future.  I have regretted this for all my life.  Not because I thought I should or could be a dancer, but because I stopped speaking a mother tongue, a language I loved and understood to babble on in one I could only mimic.  

I am absolutely mesmerized by the delicate balance of power and grace in this young woman.  I have loved other ballerinas, followed their lines, studied their hands and their feet, seen the longing heaving in their tiny ribcages, watched their sternums expand and contract with each gesture.  I have moved with them, hypnotized as they moved across the stage in a seemingly effortless dance that masked the years of training and hours and hours of work to prepare.  But to share with my daughters a dancer that looks like them, that is shy and sensitive as they are, who, despite her fears and loneliness persevered is a precious gift.  To be the first, the one and only, forging a path of one's own are themes that I have sought to share with the girls in literature, movies, stories, music, and art.  Girl power and black girl magic has to come from me.  I cannot wait for them to find it on their own or worse, never discover it or not believe it.  

As a small girl, I had the great fortune to meet and even dance for Judith Jamison and the Alvin Ailey company backstage.  My mother had gone to college with "Jam" and we'd gone to see them perform.  I remember the sound and the fury of backstage life, seeing the dancers in street clothes but full stage make up, smoking cigarettes, laughing, flirting, smiling.  I remember their beautiful bodies, their taut, black and brown bodies, and the feeling of the stage behind me and the seats of the empty theatre in front of me.  For years after this wonderful moment, I carried that rarefied air in my lungs, all that hope and desire, that longing, until it slowly faded.  When I watch Misty Copeland, I feel like that girl again and I am soaring behind her, carried along in her wake and pushing her forward with my hope and love for her.  I have been taken in by this historic moment and feel such pride.

 I don't know if my daughters will keep dancing, don't know if this is what calls to their spirits, but I am grateful that they have seen a dancer achieve what seemed impossible and hope that whatever they might believe is impossible now seems a little less so.



(c) Copyright 2016.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Self portraiture/Selfie revelations

I have been away from the blog for nearly two months.  Keeping up with any regularity, any true perspective during the crazy, heady summer months proved to be impossible for me.  Both of my children are now enrolled in "big girl" school and save the early season calendar crunching, I have time to get back to me. I'd started this post months back when a friend on Facebook tagged me in a photo of a T-shirt that said, "Hold on, I'm taking a selfie."  I do take them.  Have for years before they were called "selfies" except then I was not using my iPhone or computer to take snaps, I was staring into my face in the mirror and drawing or painting.  I did and continue to use self-portraiture as my medium of exploration.  Whether in the visual arts, writing, acting/voice work, or dance, I have used myself in the work, sometimes as the work.  I am searching, seeking, looking, longing.  I don't mean it to be indulgent, snaps and right-back-atcha winks, or reverential.  As an artist, I am trying to understand, define, relate, connect with the world. 

I had two painting professors that I adored.  One I not so secretly crushed on and the other was truly one of the best people in my life, a true, dear friend and mentor.  They both guided me to portraits and self-portraiture in Western art, classical and academic as well as modern and post-modern.  In both art history and my studio classes, I devoured the canon and sought answers in life painting, focusing on real life, true light, a strong degree of academic emphasis, still life, portraiture, figure drawing and painting, landscape.  I admired work that was imaginative, imbued with fantasy, and whimsy but felt safer and more grounded (I am, indeed, a Capricorn) with the familiar.  I can still recall the afternoon when the focus shifted and I saw myself as subject, not only as author. 

These two wonderful teachers gave me permission, even demanded that I look for something in my own gaze, in the curves of my face, in the soft angles where light hit my skin, creating shadows and depth I'd never considered.  I was a little embarrassed really to be staring at myself so long, gazing, demanding, imploring, seeking answers to all the questions, moving paint or charcoal, graphite or pastel to tell a story, maybe about me and maybe about something else, something more.  But I did prove to be an always available subject, one whom I felt comfortable tearing to pieces, putting back together, pushing and pulling the paint in ways that were not always beautiful or safe or pleasant.  I was less fearful making mistakes when using myself as model or subject, more willing to look past the surface and scratch for something else, something that transcended just that moment in time.  When I failed to find what I was looking for, I could try again and again and again, the onion skin always peeling back to show me something else.  I am always peeling back and looking for something else.

Other than adolescent punishing sessions of miserable inner dialogue in the bathroom mirror, I didn't like to gaze upon myself.  As a teenager my skin was terrible, I wore braces for years, and frankly, any therapist of mine will tell you, it took me years (or until yesterday or the day has not yet come) to find myself appealing.  Maybe it was the 80's aesthetic where I was surely not listed in the beauties table of contents or my developing self-deference to make myself smaller and more invisible, but regarding myself left me deflated.  Only in dance, where I studied more the lines I was able to make with my body did I emotionally and spiritually connect with my body, my image, myself.

And now I am here.  I take pictures of myself and make pictures of myself and reveal, little by little, something of myself in the writing--stories, blog posts, Things My French Husband Says About Me.  To me, the portraits, the selfies, the posts, the stories, the scripts, interpretation of dance choreography helps me serve the muse.  I am not the first to use the medium to explore, to discover, to share.  Western art has a endless number of self-portraits and other portraits that reveal much more beyond the beautifully handled surfaces or even intentionally challenging ones.  The cool part is being drawn by the image or the page into something greater than was expected.  For both artist and audience there is a dialogue, language, challenge or confrontation, reassurance or connection.  When I am looking, when I ask, when I cry, scream, yell, whisper to be seen or heard, it is not because I believe I am the only one to search.  It is because I believe we all are.  I don't believe, wouldn't dare think that only I have found myself in front of the mirror staring into my eyes, searching for my soul, marveling or mourning some experience in life.  That's not my intention at all.  I am saying use me.  Use me to reassure yourself, to steady yourself, to believe yourself, to react, to assault, to doubt, to question, to challenge.  To find solidarity or solitude.  To be human in all its torment and glory.

It is humbling, sometimes crippling.  It is challenging and sometimes sobering.  It is lonely and sometimes isolating.  It is uplifting and sometimes otherworldly.  Looking at myself, in my study of just a life, mine, I hope I have found a way to connect to humanity and  to the divine muse.  If you cannot find a way in yourself, use me.


(c) 2014.  Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.

Winter birthday wishes

January 2nd usually marked the return to normalcy or a soft landing like the movie stuntmen made onto that huge pillow at the end of the holiday circus.  Rather the celebration of the Christ child and  the baby new year than me.  While I didn't want to be forgotten completely, I was happy to get back to life as we knew it with a tiny secret tucked behind my ear, kissed there by the aliens who, in the dead of night, have always given me promises of a good future, not just resolutions but truths to which I was completely committed.  I still believe in the probability of great achievement even in the face of total chaos and seemingly impossible obstacles.  Though I have never been good at the holidays, what with all the celebrating and wide opened hearts on display, the arrival of the girls brought a chance for me to live them with different eyes, a more gracious heart, and a sense of wonder and hope.

Every year since I can remember, the arrival of the "winter holidays" has brought a little bit of tension, a little bit of the blues, and an eerie calm like the dead quiet of the first inches of a massive Nor'easter falling heavily on whichever sleeping town or block I was living.  It feels somewhere between a whisper and the ringing in the air after a scream.  I can hear my breathing.  Sometimes I can see my breath.  Always I am aware that I am alive even if I can't move from the cold or the fear, and am fully aware of my surroundings even if I want to run.  Always I feel awkwardly alone even when surrounded by crowds of family and friends.  Alone but not quite lonely.  Here, but not quite here.  I can't be lonely with the two people standing on my neck, whispering in my ear, chatterbugging to my face.  Maybe that's why they came to me.  To connect me to place, pry open my wintered heart.

2013 was hardly different from previous years--family ups and downs, community involvement, extracurriculars, doctors' visits, health checks and scares and reassurances, travel, work, parenting, craziness.  I don't think I have counted my "best or worst" years since I was a child when the best or the worst was defined by gifts I received or didn't, skills I acquired or didn't, loves found or lost.  Now, every year starts off full of promise, more than 1/2 full with the days firmly on one side, ahead of me.  Every year I know that I will peel back the onion to find some other truth about myself, my soul's journey, my desire, and my fulfillment.  I make no promises other than to try to remain open to whatever comes, to avoid (or try not to bring it all the way to insane clown posse meltdown) the panicked shut down when the world delivers what I expected but for which I had somehow been poorly prepared.  At the beginning of every year I have promised myself, "This is the year for me.  This is the year I will find the path, stay on it, actualize."  I say this every year.  I believe it every time.  I don't write the directions, don't set the map in stone and quickly wander from the path...or perhaps discover the one worn in the ground, not paved.

I followed the breadcrumbs back to a language I'd almost forgotten I spoke.  Many speak it more eloquently, some with grace and agility, others flexibility, but when I speak to them too, they understand.  In 2013 I returned to dance. When I was a girl who hated her voice and was sure no one cared what I might have to say, there was dance.  When I needed to free myself from the torment of the bad years and celebrate the joys of the good, there was dance.  When I had a secret to keep, something that I needed to protect, I could dance around it, seal it in.  And then I stopped, quit moving altogether, froze, and then allowed myself to believe that another form of exercise, maybe the machines at the gym, maybe an abs class, could suffice.  They couldn't.  Not yoga, even with all the breath and meditating and connection to the divine, warmed my soul.  It was dance that first connected me to my own life force.  Reclaiming it was so helpful to everything in my life. 

When I was a little girl, my mother asked for the same things for her birthday, Christmas, and Mother's Day.  Peace and quiet and for everyone to get along.  We thought that was the craziest request on earth.  "That's all she wanted?" I'd wonder.  What a waste of a rub of the lamp.  You can have anything three little cherubs and a workaholic husband can offer!  I get it now.  As I reanimate the creative back into my life, each day becomes mine to do with it what I will.  I can ease myself out of the tepid pool of suburban monotony and feel passion burning me up again.  I want that more than I want anything else.

I have, and have admitted, struggling with the daily expectations of raising children and running a household.  I want to do them both well.  Hell, I want to do everything well, but I believe that I bring more to everything in my life with the creative spirit and energy weaving throughout.  At the start of every year, I remind myself of this.  Somewhere along the way the priorities shift and I find myself making excuses, putting off making art, writing, dancing, and allow the minutiae of parenting and being married to be more important.  I'm going to do better this year.  At least I am going to try.

My husband was gone for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and my birthday.  He has been for nearly every one of these holidays since we've been together.  I have stopped allowing myself to suffer this and surely cannot let his absence during these days define the entire year.  Or me.  Or my life.  I don't want to be defined by absence or by a "lack of."  But when he returns and asks what I want for all the holidays I missed, it's not a necklace, a scarf, socks, or new boots that I am after.  It is some of that quiet, some of that peace, some of the space where I can create or believe myself able again.  It is solitude and my own communion with the end of the year and the start of my new one.


My birthday starts up the music, begins the lightly playing song that guides me through the year.  It is wintry and quiet and moody and grey and cloudy followed by bursts of sun in a cerulean blue sky, cold as hell frozen over, that thaws into a promising spring.  I've bundled up into it and survived the shortest day of the year and the longest parade of holiday celebrations.  And on this day, I danced and wrote and drew a little sketch.  Running head first, out the window, to the stunt man's pillow down below.  To the new year.  Mine.



(c) Copyright 2014.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.

Artist Mamas

"The planet does not need more successful people.  The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds."  -- The Dalai Lama

After dinner last night, I sat in the kitchen, twinkling with sparkly lights, reflecting and refracting off the wine glasses, water goblets, and other shiny surfaces, talking to two friends, women, glorious women, intelligent women, creative, artistic, witchy women about being artists and mothers and how to juggle the two.  All three of us are completely committed to our children, not just raising them and providing them with their basic needs, but instilling values, a strong sense of self-worth, strength, showing them art and culture, and opening their little minds to everything we're able.  It is hard for us, we agreed, to commit entirely to art-making and creating, when the job of raising children, our children, requires such a deep commitment of time, energy, and attention.  Our husbands, all artists, were free to attend to, develop, hone their talents, explore and create, and frankly, for two out of three, make a living.  It's a pretty exciting endeavor, actually. Two artists trying to make art and raise a family with all its joys, trials, love, and crazy-making tedium.

Creative people are pretty darned sensitive.  And when I say sensitive, I don't mean touchy or particular.  I mean able to use all their senses to observe, experience, and participate in the world.  Maybe I cannot speak for all creative types, but I can speak for myself.  I feel it like tingling or sizzling nerve endings.  The slightest gesture or note or word can leave me turning it in my mind for days, making connections to thoughts and memories past, wanting, needing to make it into something.  I find it hard to reconcile this urge as immediately as I once could now that I have children, and the desire to care for them, tend to them, nurture them, and raise them seriously cramps my time, concentration, and ability to hold a thought for more than thirty seconds.  I keep voice memos for myself full of ideas, carry a composition notebook, and squeeze in moments of the day and night to write, draw, and think, but it's just not the same as getting into the mucky muck and creating at will.

The energy used in creating and art-making and in having children emanates from the same chakra.  Being a mother, making a home, a family, a unit, taking care of us feels like creative, spiritual work.  I find absolute joy in some of those moments.  The same as being in a studio or in front of the computer or wrestling with my thoughts though, I often struggle as well.  There is a drive, a need to do things a particular way, with particular energy, concentration and connection that frustrates me when I am unable to do so.  All that said, I still want to make art.

There is an image of the artist as selfish and preoccupied, often ridiculous and caricatured.  Focused, yes.  Burdened, sometimes.  But I think the artists, the intellectuals, and the thinkers are going to change the world. We lead a spiritual charge, want to effect change, see the world that exists between the tangible.  We are the whistle blowers on the status quo, the makers and doers at a much deeper level than our current culture suspects (or expects or accepts).  An artist suffers as a child, at least I did, which is probably why my commitment to my children is so strong.  I remember the loneliness, the drive, the feeling different and alien and I want to guide them should they find themselves with this gift (as I already suspect).  It doesn't much improve as he or she enters adulthood. The best he can hope for is to find a group of supportive individuals, perhaps artists themselves, alongside which to write, paint, dance, sing, compose, cook, play, sew, design, think, and see.  Allowing the girls to see creative mothers and fathers, working in whatever milieu, professionally or as a side gig or passion, gives them proof that they are able, should they choose, to follow this path and meet some incredible people, do incredible things, change the world.

Trying to describe the creative spirit, the drive to someone who does not feel its pull is like trying to explain the change of pressure in the atmosphere. It is like attempting to reveal magic, not the trick but the real thing. It is like hearing a ghost in the attic, running upstairs to see it, and then being the only one who did. It can be isolating and lonely and frustrating and lovely and wondrous. It is all those things.  I cannot say what drives me to write other than a desire as strong as my life force that begs me to sit at the desk, table, bed, floor and get something down, to share, to connect, to define for myself what I have observed, experienced, seen, felt, breathed.  I can only hope that I am connecting, that I touch a chord in the hearts, the minds, the souls of whomever stumbles upon it.  It was the same call that I heeded to dance, to act, to paint.  I had to.  I needed to.  I wanted to.  I still do.

While visiting with my family over Thanksgiving, I was toying with ideas about longing and need, feeling that longing and wanting to explore it, when someone entered the room to ask what I was doing.  When I said, "Writing.  Like I try to do every night," I was met with, "telling everyone about your life on Facebook?"  To which I replied, "No. WRITING."  The slight so quick, so easy that it gave a chuckle to the offender.  The tears, the emotions only sometimes show on the outside (and they didn't that night), though I put it in the work.  I take comfort in my community, my tribe of artists, creators, healers, and others who value my role as storyteller, as connector to the ether, to the soul and find no need to belittle it. 

Sitting at the table with these women last night, being considered, taken seriously, asked about art and mothering and living and loving, I was left speechless by how difficult it can be sometimes.  I really didn't know what to say.  I wish there was something that I could finish, that I could offer, that I could fully commit to.  The days when I try to write or draw and am constantly interrupted by the girls because they want to chat or read or tell me something incredible or eat or use the bathroom or go on a playdate, whatever, I am seriously beside myself.  Then I berate myself for being upset when their demands are not exceptional, their needs, even wants, not unreasonable, just bothersome and disruptive when I am searching for just the right phrase or just the right line.  They are just being children and I, their mother.  To whom should they direct their questions, desires, thoughts?

Recently I began a series of drawings (well, so far one) that relates to some imagery I have used in the past.  Sometimes I need to see work I've done in the past to continue the dialogue or theme, to remind me while looking at the strokes or colors or techniques used just what I was getting at.  I have been so excited by this piece, at what it has me thinking about, considering, that I want to work in this visual medium again after years away.  I am excited and nervous and thrilled and scared.  Having my ladies, my wise women close, because they understand my drive and my passion for creating and parenting, is a true blessing.  A tribe I have longed for since my years in Boston and during my tenure on staff at AIX Restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where nearly everyone's day job was creative and we all got together at night to "serve."  Finding the balance between the two, depriving no one, denying nothing is the exercise.  Being a good mother and making art is the goal.

I have so many friends who have found the way for themselves to do it both, to do it all really.  They have hands that reach out and help them, make sacrifices that I have not yet allowed myself to make.  They may miss being the Mystery Reader, be unable to attend the class party, but are doing insanely exciting work in visual arts, acting, music, voiceover.  Perhaps, in me, there is fear, distrust that I am truly capable, talented, good enough, whatever the scary message may be.  Perhaps I really do just need the little one to get to kindergarten where I will feel better about leaving her.  Those abandonment issues creeping up pretty much anywhere, anytime.  They inspire me, these mamas.

Whatever the medium, I am trying to tell stories using myself, my individual experience, my life, to connect us, to allow us to commiserate, consider, discover, wonder.  After all the years I have lived, I have finally decided to accept this as a gift and have begun the process of letting go energy that does not support this and reaching out for guidance, community, healing, and love.  Ultimately, I hope to be a mother that Lily and Virginie can trust, believe in, and love because I have offered them safe ground to experiment and grow physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychically, and openly.  I believe the only way for me to do this, for ME to do this, is to make art, create, express every day that I am able.



(c)  Copyright 2013.  Repatriated Mama:  Back to the Suburban Grind.