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February 03, 2010
Making my mark
I am happy to be the intrepid blogger to break into February as it is my birthday month and so has always been much beloved by me when all around find it gloomy. In my pile of magazines by the loo this morning, a journalist asked the actress Tilda Swinton, “How come you are so free?”. If you know the fabulously outrageous Tilda Swinton even a little, it is the perfect question to ask her. She sensibly avoided the question by answering “By missing a large part of my brain” – although as a 6 on the Enneagram who can go round and round in circles in my brain and delay becoming free, maybe it’s not such a bad answer.
Though I had never quite thought of it in those terms, I probably ask myself whether I have managed to become freer over the past year when it is my birthday. The answer is normally the same. Some mini bridges burnt: no more need to tramp over the land of the past in order to move forward but mostly I’m still a work in progress in the familiar territory of the spiral of my ways: same place but a year deeper on. This year I have tried to tackle my so called art teachers from school who never taught me so much as a single thing except to say how useless I was and always mark me bottom of the class. My games teachers did too but I have no feelings about this and completely agree with their assessment of my talents. The art is different and I have carried the scar for over 30 years. I am a creative person but do not have natural talent with drawing so I am not sure where the desire to paint comes from but at Christmas I decided if I only had 5 years left it would be a real sadness to me that I had never tried so I found a life drawing class in the next street to me!
And OMG did I meet the art teachers! They disabled my every mark on the page until by the end of the 2 hours I was ragged from the fight. I decided that the very lovely life drawing teacher who taught me more in the first hour than in 4 years of secondary school better not have the disappointment of teaching me and that I would always be the problem pupil so I better not go back. Fortunately, over the next few days, I saw the light and realized that if I was him and he clearly enjoyed teaching, it would actually be dull if everyone could draw and watching me progress as a result of his teaching would be much more satisfying. But then, the art teachers got the better of me and said that that was only OK if I actually did progress which is hard for someone who is genetically and terminally bad at something. I needed Tilda's brave and brainless state.
Well I’d love to end this story by saying that dear reader, I was that crap artist and that was a year ago and now I’m so good that I’ve started a little cottage industry on the kitchen table and can’t keep up with the demand, but no, I am only 5 weeks in. The teacher seems keen to help me with my terror of putting the mark on the page whilst the bright young things around me rock up for the first time and put something on their paper that vaguely corresponds to what we’re all looking at. I am, a beginner and I am learning to trust that I can move forward very very slowly with a lot of help and a lot of patience. The art teachers are nearly slain and I can see that one day I’ll walk over their bodies but even before that, I am learning to be free, free to be a beginner and free to fail.
Posted by Tess at February 3, 2010 05:50 PM