You Calling My Art a Hobby?

Last Saturday was the first day of a figure drawing class at that Palette and Chisel. I loved every second of it. Each two-minute and five-minute sketch felt like a second, the hour-long pose felt like a minute. If we weren't offered a break, I wouldn't take one. It didn't matter whether my depictions sucked. It was three hours of peace, of breathing in and out and feeling whole and flowing.

The teacher is in his 40s tall and serious, there's a guy in the class in his 30s and there's two people in art school likely still in their teens and me. One of youngest asked me if "this"... art was a hobby? I took immediate offense at the question.  If I was in a sit com, I would've jumped back, ala Chandler, and said, "whahaha?" I had a reaction but it wasn't to her. My response filtered through years of other experiences. I know, because I recently took a mandated course at work called, Crucial Conversations and they said so.

Future - she didn't picture a future for me. She didn't see that I could be like her, in or considering a career. Old came next. She just met me and I presented as an old person. Okay, I'll give her older... 40 years or so. I could be two generations ahead of her. In my self-aware state I recognize that I don't say, even to myself, grandmother. I am definitely filtering. Then again, her choice of a word felt like a paper cut.

When I heard the word hobby,  it reminded me of an argument with my former husband about my business, when early in its life it wasn't making money. He called it a hobby. I took umbrage then too. He wanted me to close it. He wanted to take vacations. He wanted me to get a real job and not invest any more of our money into it. We discussed and argued. I realized he meant the future value of my earning power. The business gained momentum, but still, as new businesses go, required financial reinvestment. I stood my ground. A battle won... at all cost. He left and I dug in. I would
prove it was worth it. I completely retooled. I let go staff and refocused the business model. What business I was in was decided and the business took off and went on for another fifteen years. I may have proved him wrong, but I didn't prove me right. Damn.

Still mulling about the meaning of hobby, I asked my wise friend Lynn for her definition. She said, it's what brings us peak moments... when time stands still, where your mind finds rest. It's not work. Peace.

In an NPR's Morning Edition story recently, they asked rock-star scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson to fact check the time (relativity) effects of gravity in the new movie Interstellar. The stronger the gravity, the more time slows. The time on our phones that go through the far out GPS satellites has to be calculated and slowed to account for the difference in the speed of time in space. My time is slowed when I'm drawn to drawing.

Now that I think about it, that young woman may have done me a big service. The word hobby for me obviously triggers a reaction. It's clearly time to rethink and retool, to find a response that speaks of my experience of flow, joy and peace.

Thanks for the provocative words, Kurt Vonnegut.

"If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." Kurt Vonnegut

The Secret History of Wonder Woman

During the past week, I've heard various interviews about the new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman. At first it reminded me of Allison and her homage to Wonder Woman on her desk and Shari with her fierceness in the Optimistic Divorcees and Sarah with her early employment and loyalty to Planned Parenthood. Though repetitive, the interviews of the author Jill LePore connected more dots.

Watching the traditions and hearing the conversations in our office surrounding two women getting married fascinate and disturb me. The role of wife and the meaning of marriage seem to be pre- suffragist or maybe not considered at all. Last week, I bluntly (and probably too directly) asked someone I’d just met who said she was getting married, why she would change her name. She said, "tradition." Not mine, I thought.  The guy in the room, also a Boomer, said his wife didn't, nor did many of my close friends. We were in our 20s and 30s in the '70s then.

In those days, I wore suits, ties, clunky wing-tip Bass shoes and custom men's shirts with darts to fit and show my female parts. I had my own little WW on my desk to motivate me. We were supposed to dress up like the 70s for our Halloween festivities this year. I chose not to wear what we really wore then… it no longer fit.

My ex husband Lee teased me and the women we hung with, by calling us "80s Ladies" after the song by KT Oslin. 80s Ladies tells the story perfectly of what made us who we were then. "More than our names got changed… Been educated, got liberated and complicated matters with men… We said I do and signed I don’t and swore we’d never do that again… We burned our bras and we burned our dinners and we burned our candles at both ends…. There ain’t much these ladies ain’t tried."

Jill LePore reminds me that there were many women who came before, both real and illustrated who led their own lives, not in the reflection of nor in service to men. The Secret History talks about the women who innovated “Birth Control” and founded and sustained Planned Parenthood to give women an opportunity to follow their dreams and build lives for themselves with or without a partner. Wonder Woman as originally drawn was the embodiment of a woman of self destiny and power. Later generations of her story-tellers relegated her to less than.

Some conversations around the office make me think that stories of fierce women aren’t known and the possibilities don't seem possible. The media, gaming and entertainment industries still show women in subservient, objectified positions. Recently a Hooters knock off opened near where I live - Twin Peaks. I’m floored, horrified even, that no one (including me) has cried foul.

All this is to say, I am very interested in a discussion about how woman are viewed today and more important how we view ourselves. Are we who we want to be? Are we dressing for our selves, in reflection of someone else or someone's ideals. With the prevalence of selfies, I am fascinated by the poses... I want to know who are they for and what's the outcome wanted? We need to talk.

The lyrics of the 80s Ladies song tells my story exactly. I was in my 30s in the 80s right along with KT Oslin’s song, (the video shows high school graduation as 67, we were 69.) I’d like to write the lyrics for the subsequent decades as 90s, oughts and ought-teens. I’d also love to hear how my women friends would write their lyrics.

Links:

An interview at the end of the Colbert Report with Jill LePore author of The Secret History of WonderWoman http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/full-episodes/ft09kr/october-29--2014---jill-lepore.The interview prior to her is about Gamergate - women looking to de objectify women in video games like Grand Theft Auto. 

About Jill LePore http://scholar.harvard.edu/jlepore/home

New Yorker Article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/last-amazon