Sexuality in the Arts

About her book “A Poem Traveled Down My Arm,” Alice Walker wrote that the book is a “story about exhaustion.  About deciding to quit.  About attempting to give up what it is not in one’s power to give up:  one’s connection to the Source.  Being taught this lesson.  Ultimately it is a story about Creativity, the force that surges and ebbs in all of us, and links us to the Divine.”

“Because you rubbed my shoulder last night, a poem traveled down my arm” - Alice Walker

“The movement you need is on your shoulder” - The Beatles. “Hey Jude”

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Some of my thoughts today:

No one asks me to create a post on a regular basis.

And the way I create this blog, I try to expend my last best idea each day, leaving it all on the page, emptying my tank.  So much so, that many nights I think:  I probably exhausted my last ‘good’ idea.  I wonder how long it will be, or if there will be another post.

But with fairly daily regularity something rises up in the mix of my conscious and sub-conscious that I think might be “post-worthy.”

Last night I was lying in bed with my love and I said honestly and concedingly, “What was I supposed to do?”

I paused.  

“I had all these ideas bouncing around in my head.  Granted they didn’t all exist at the beginning, but maybe most of them did, and the ones that have come later have been derivative or motivated from the same drives.  If you look at the amount of work and ideas represented in this blog, the amount of thought that exists in all the posts is . . . ” (I forget the exact word I used here, but it was some synonym for “a lot”).

“To remember is to plan.” - Alice Walker.

I said, “Was I supposed to just box them all up and put them in the back of a closet?”

She waited, knowing much of my expressiveness was rhetorical.  Then she thoughtfully responded, “I suppose that’s what most people do.”

I suppose she is right.  She usually is. 

“Those who remember have been touched by us.” - Alice Walker.

I don’t think the truth should be silenced.  I joked with my love last night that sometimes she must sarcastically say to God, “Thanks God for giving me someone with this ’talent.’ ”  I mean really, who wants a significant other whose most dominant “talent” is unabridged truth telling?  She joked, “Yeah, some people are talented at making loads of money, but noooo.”  There are many days I imagine she’d prefer I was talented at playing the guitar or something less controversial. 

But that was not my fate.  And that is not the personality and mindset she fell in love with. 

“Leonard was right to love Virginia.” - Alice Walker.  (For context, see Virginia Woolf in Wikipedia)

Events happened early in my maturation (insert laughter here when using the word “maturation” in reference to me), that undid so many possibilities for normalcy.

Seriously, by the time I was 17, I was completely undone. 

Almost everything that had been done, for over 2000 years by millions of “mature” adults working hard in concert to religiously and culturally organize, preach, and enforce, was undone by a teenage girl who dared to read and think for herself.  My own private Anne Frank.  My own private Alice Walker.  My onw private Virginia Woolf.  My own private Holly Hunter.  My Own Private Idaho.

“She comes from heaven unannounced.” - Alice Walker.

I had Jesus, the U.S. of A, and the majority of our peers on my side, and this 16-year-old girl - who worked a job while attending high school to pay her own way through college, who spent several hours of each weekday doing extra-curricular school activities, who was the daughter of a single parent, AND who had to find time to deal with all the problems I bring to a relationship - stood up and said, “No, you are still wrong.”  How dare she?  What audacity she had to think she was right and the majority of people around us (and throughout history) were wrong on some core issues. 

What was I supposed to do with the legacy of ideas and reasonings she started in me and transferred to me?

“What about the piano?  We can’t leave the piano?”

I didn’t know what to do.  And maybe I still don’t know what to do.  But I do the best I can think of to do, which is to try to spread her influence to others, because experiencing it was once in a lifetime.  It may be more accurately said that it was once in forever.

“Release the tyranny of gender:  Make love not programming.” - Alice Walker.

If she ever saw this blog, I hope she would see this:  her influence. 

“Man reborn as woman do not give in to fear.” - Alice Walker.

No higher compliment could be given to me than for someone who knew her to see her influence in what I create.  That’d be a good thing.

“She is not dead who left her giggle in your empty field.” - Alice Walker.

What was I supposed to do?

I’m sorry, but I didn’t think it was right to be silent about what I’d been so graciously given, what I’d had the rare opportunity to see, and what I’d perceived from those experiences.

“No one can end suffering except through dance.” - Alice Walker.

There was just too much good in it potentially for others for me to keep it all to myself.

And hopefully somewhere in the over 1.2 million times this blog has been visited, somebody out there has vicariously or indirectly caught a glimpse of the magic I saw in and through her perceptions.

And if not, at least I don’t have to try to hold them all in, juggling them endlessly alone inside my head. 

“Fifty years to see the flower at my birth.” - Alice Walker.

What was I supposed to do?

You really can’t answer the question unless you knew her.

This anonymous blog is not about narcissism.  It’s not focused on being the last word on any topic.  It’s intent is to show the magic that can be found from considerate perceptions of unbelievably beautiful and intelligent artworks - a skill she modeled and passed on to me.  I may be a poor facsimile of her ability, but I try my best regularly.

“Birth is so endless.  Who dies being born?” - Alice Walker.

What should you do if you’ve experienced someone similar in your past?

I can’t tell you with assurance what to do.  Talk to counselors.  Talk to all your friends and family.  Decide for yourself.  And I hope someday you can find some peace with your decisions. 

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” - Alice Walker.

Disarm fears
Promote pleasures
Reduce sufferings

Oh, and by the way, she introduced me not only to The Beatles, but to Alice Walker too.  Before her, I knew little or nothing about either, and may have never cared to investigate them much without her urgings.

“Love your friends.” - Alice Walker.

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On one additional note:  She hated and opposed war, violence, and the rationales that supported them.  As our country passes 4,000 dead from the Iraq War, here are 3 posts about the real people who have been harmed by those conflicts:

Mary McHugh and James Regan: 

Katherine Cathey and 2nd Lt. James J. Cathey: 

Ty and Renee Ziegel: 

(Click on the images, if you wish to read the posts.)

© All rights reserved by the respective artists.

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