Self Actualization

Today before this evening's performance of Swimming in the Shallows I visited the Peabody Essex Museum with my girlfriend, who's never been to Salem and erroneously thought that the witch trial hangings happened there (they actually occurred at modern day Davenport), for the first time since I was a kid. Among the exhibits, which included a retrospective on the modernist photographer Jerry Uelsmann, which if you are into photography you should check out and also an exhibit called Shapeshifting: Transformations in Native American Art. Of that exhibition, the piece I found most evocative was this one by an artist named Rick Barlow, "From Nothing Coyote Creates Himself":

It's hard to translate over the internet, but it's a very striking piece in person, the curvature of the wood and the disjointed shape of the hand give the piece an expressionistic, hallucinatory quality. Even the title I find evocative. Doing some research about the piece, I found a quote where the artist referred to using art as a means to work through his experiences in Vietnam. To quote Rick Barlow (who's primary mediums are two dimensional) "I drew myself sane".

That really hit me, and if you see this work of art in person maybe you'd understand why. I think art is a true and powerful path to finding or as the case may be rediscovering the self after a traumatic experience. It's not something I like to go into, but as a 17 year old one of my best friends passed away from an accidental heroin overdose, and poetry and music got me through that time. Surprisingly, theatre less so, but it wasn't a very fruitful time in that aspect of my creative life for a variety of reasons, so I don't know. Also though, a teacher I had in high school said to me "if you want to go into acting, it can't be your therapy" and I think he's right. Take the example of Sarah Kane. Beautiful works, did not end well.

Is this exclusive to theatre though? I guess Sylvia Plath is the other famous example. Other times it must have worked out though, right? That someone funneled their inner pain or whatever into a work of art and it was successful and then they were happy. I don't know though. I still don't believe it's a viable model for acting or theatre. It's too vulnerable, too easy to drive yourself crazy and the people you're working with as well.

And then again... hey, that sculpture. The exhibit in question was really striking. I felt a lot of despair in a lot of the pieces. Then again, I spoke to my Mom about it, who taught at D-Q University when I was real little and has spent time with native peoples identified with another piece, a ceremonial drum associated with the ghost dance movement of the early 19th century (which would culminate in the massacre at wounded knee). In it, she found a figure of light and hope:

Thinking back on my interactions with the native people I worked with during Crooked Arrows, they didn't seem despairing or burdened by history. But of course we were on a movie set. So I don't know. I think it's an under valued story of our history as a nation and a people how it came to be that caucasians dominated this continent. Without presuming to speak for native peoples, there is a lot most Americans don't understand or appreciate. Native cultures had an appreciation for natural beauty and the Earth, but they weren't peace loving hippies, they could be very warlike and violent just like in Europe. In contemporary Native American spirituality, there is a lot of integration with christianity. And living on a reservation can be pretty awful, many of them are economically destitute, drugs, alcoholism and domestic violence are prominent in many areas. In many other ways to numerous to list, it culminates in a great injustice, and I felt the weight of that in this exhibit. But less so in the people I met on set, so hopefully things are changing for the better. And maybe Crooked Arrows, this silly Bad News Bears-esque sports movie I found myself a part of, will contribute to that. Time will tell.