Before I wanted to be an artist(visually) I wanted to dance. I grew up dancing. Not something everyone knows about me. I lived in my dance shoes and leotards. I don't remember a time I didn't dance. I even remember my dance recitals when I was 4. The yellow dress and corsage my Mom bought me to wear that night to make it special. The excitemement of the evening and the performance. I loved A Chorus Line because for me it represented the life I wanted. Watching that tonight in a documentary reminded me of why I came to NYC. I wanted to live in that excitement. I see the struggle the pain and energy in the audition. The pain and risk in following a dream. What it took for those dancers to live their dream in NYC during the 70's. New York has changed a lot since then. I didn't know NYC in the 70's because I moved here in the early 90's but I hear stories of the way it was. I think there was a lot of risk taking that was happening in the city in many professions but the arts seemed to be going through a huge change. I think when we reach a low or point in life where we can actually see the bottom coming it allows us some freedom. "What more can you lose". It is there that amazing things begin to happen. I felt that change in my life when I decided to become a single mom, and I think watching this documentary brings back the risk I took in moving to NYC, but also the risk so many people took who lived in NYC in the 70's as artists.
When I came to New York in the early 90's NYC had already gone through an enormous change but there was still an element of the art scene that was reachable and still about risk taking and pushing extremes not just about money and IV league schools. Sometimes I can still feel the energy that was once there like a ghost town still living in the streets- you can catch glimpses of it in architecture or less travelled streets.
When I turned 14 I was still dancing, but something else entered my life then. It was the year I fell in love with art...or rather the year art chose me. It wasn't so much a choice on my part. I think my heart was in dance. Dance made me escape and feel free and become someone else. Art possessed me and held me prisoner. Art was a different passion. It was darker and denser, and it took hold of me in a different way. When I was 14 my father gave me my first set of oils. To understand the importance of this completely you would have to understand my relationship with my father. It was not good. It was beyond not good. I'll leave it there for now. The importance of that gift goes deeper than a box of oils. I knew it then and I know it now, and it drew me in deeper to art. I knew then that I would learn to master it. I spent my days teaching myself how to draw and paint. I learned a lot in school but most of what I learned was through long hours locked away practicing. I painted paper, canvas, fabric, and when I ran out of that I painted my walls. I had a passion for art that was beyond my years and I think it scared me. I think I never allowed myself to be as good as I could be. I was always trying to tame it.
I finally made it to NYC at age 19. It was the early 90's and there was still an art scene although you could see it disappearing. SOHO was still where most of the galleries were. The East Village was still where most of the artists lived. I had an apartment on 14th and 1st that I shared with my amazing roommate Chris. I paid $400. I didn't have a phone and I sold tapes on St. Marks Place. I hung out in bars and with musicians and random people I met on the street or in the park. I walked all over Manhattan. I retraced the steps of several artists who lived there before me. I read that Martha Graham use to also walk from Downtown to Uptown because she couldn't afford the subway or bus fare nd I decided to do the same. It was an amazing time in my life.
So this movie is amazing because it reminds me of a time, but also it reminds me of this amazing quality that I am so lucky to share with other artists and people who follow their passion. I think I lost it for a bit, but am thankful to know it is still there...just buried a bit deeper. When you are lucky enough to be born with a talent and also have a passion for it so deep that you have no choice to follow it you experience something beyond the euphoria of drugs. Perhaps that is why so many artists turn to drugs. They lose the feeling and try to get it back. I think people can be obscenely talented but not passionate. When someone has that passion you sense it. You see it in their eyes. It doesnt matter that you can't pay your rent or find money for food. The act of creating or dancing or whatever it is fills you with so much energy you lose track of time. For me if I paint I lost time. The smell of turpentine and damp basements full of clay make me dizzy with hapiness. I can't get enough of it. I can work until my fingers cramp and bleed which they often use to when I was sculpting in those damp basements. New York has changed. It isn't what it use to be. The passion is still here but it is harder to find.
Stomach Massage on the Mat (because you have to look and work deeper then it appears)
- Balance on your tailbone with knees bent and shoulder-width apart, toes can rest lightly to the mat, reach forward with arms as you lift through the spine, tightening the connection from pubic bone to belly button
- Extend legs out in front as you twist upper body and follow one arm behind you. Keep arms atraight, inhale reverse twist, pull knees back in toward chest, tap mat with toes
- Repeat to other side
4 times each side
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