Surviving Raw Fiction at The Brooklyn Museum

I have barely been surviving Raw Fiction. I feel there is a wealth of creativity ready to burst forth. I've been a dry well filling up with thought, laughter, tears, anger, revelation and peace for the past few years. In many ways Raw Fiction was inspired in order to survive life and I created this blog with a humorous but pertinent title. For a fiction writer to coordinate an administrative intensive project such as Raw Fiction, on top of my job, my dog, my Spanish lessons, all of which are necessary to the maintenance of my jubilant spirit, she chooses to leave no space for elongated creative time.

This blog was my consolation prize: required written expression - which has gradually become less creative since the project start.

The youth I am working with are amazing but I could certainly challenge them more, make things more fun, go more in-depth. Potential is ever-expansive.

I've also been working more hours at work than expected. I'm pretty sensitive to boredom and I'm usually pretty good at side-stepping it but it's taken hold. I'm distracted and unfocused. I have two events coming up and I can't really wrap my head around them.

However, even though I feel this lethargic slump, I know it's just my body's way of telling me to slow down and go in search of inspiration.

I found a collection of short stories by Colette, who is not at all on my curriculum, and have been  relishing in a short novella about a heterosexual couple posing as lesbians who run a sex vacation resort for the aristocracy because they are apparently hiding from the law. I have been away from the demands of lesson planning. I have been reading for my own pleasure. And today was the first I have left work on time (a luxurious 2pm) this week, I came home feeling no more pressure of responsibility than that which drives me to walk my unsocialized dog since Raw Fiction has a field trip on Saturday and then it's Spring Break.

I showered well and long. I dressed up and I went to get cash at the museum ATM. I got called inside. There was a banner on the outside of the museum featuring a hand and the word "hi." It was presumably the only exhibit I hadn't yet seen. Entering the museum was splendid. An open to-go coffee cup sat on the guard's empty desk. The man at the membership desk didn't give me the third degree about the purpose of my visit like the overeager buzz-killer did on my last visit.

I entered unmolested like it was still the year 2000. I dashed up the relatively discrete Stairway D and exited on the 3rd Floor. Egyptian art. I walked past the paintings in the large gallery where First Saturday's dance parties were formerly held. And I walked up a flight in search of the exhibit whose advertisement had greeted me. On the wall in the elevator bank I saw I name I cherish and hadn't known was visiting: Kathe Kollwitz. I made a beeline toward the Stackler Center greeting my reassuring staples, Mikalene Thomas, Kara Walker, and Nick Cave, en route. I opened the door to the gallery of feminist art and was overwhelmed by a magnificent display of quilts. Women's history. Women's art. Women's expression. It was amazing but too overwhelming to thoroughly absorb knowing that there were Kollwitz works on display very near by.

     

I spent time with these live works. I originally found Kollwitz at the Strand Bookstore before it was renovated to feel so, so . . . clean? is that the word I'm looking for? Orderly? Before it was renovated and when the art books were on the ground floor. I absorbed her and filled myself with the beauty and healing she was able to produce from her evident pain. Her realist depictions of the German human experience in the 1920s are far more hopeful and, perhaps, thus radical than her expressionist contemporaries.

I walked away from the Kollwitz exhibit and rested for a bit near my nourishing staples and looked out over the vast gallery. A guard appeared at another terrace, I kept feeling like they were watching me, those women in unbecoming grey uniforms. I decided to visit El Anatsui again, since I was so close. I headed up to the fifth floor and breezed through American Art to special exhibits.

Even though I'd already seen this exhibit twice it was my first time without too many people. The experience was less urgent and I felt the freedom to revisit that which moved me most. His wood. His work, tapestries and sculpture fits into his concept of the Nonfixed Form, this means that each piece has an inconstant composition that can reinvented by the curator and the space in which the work is displayed. I'll let his work speak for itself.

I took a spin through the art of the Americas and was drawn to the small Native American section. The Dakota war club below caught my attention for a first time. There was even video footage that dated back to before the invention of the moving image. I stopped to watch but a tourist felt comfortable sharing my space. I moved on and responded with a smile to his dismay and informed him that I come every few weeks so I don't need a shared perspective.

 Next I was drawn to a portrait I know well. Luigi Lucioni's Portrait of Paul Cadmus. 1928. Gay artists. I'm sure I've read the description before but this was the first time it registered. These beautiful and brave young artists.





I left the museum before the Thursday night extravaganza took off. I was going to have a coffee or wine at the new cafe looking out into the courtyard but I wouldn't endure the sterile atmosphere and the women in cafeteria uniforms. A singer and a flutist warmed up on the stage of the grand lobby. The grey outside welcomed me and I left to buy suitable clothing for the burial of Harry Tarzian that will be held in Greenwood Cemetery tomorrow. He is the man who provided my mum with the job that enabled her to raise me and my sisters very nicely with above average vacation time and the radical flexibility to be a mother. May you rest in peace Harry, Hardware store owner and passionate photography hobbyist.

Audre Lorde is an Idealist and Zahra made us Meditate

Audre Lorde is too idealistic, one of my young writers sighed with dispassion this past Saturday. The assignment had been to read poetry and essay. They like neither form, generally. However, Ferlinghetti's anti-war excerpt from 'Americus I' went over better than the obscure poetics taken from Lorde's 'New York Headshop and Museum.' And agreement was universal that Lorde's 1979 essay, The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House, is still relevant today, 34 or 44 (depending on which youth is doing the math) years later, however, and perhaps because of this immortal relevance of needing to cherish our differences and women needing to support other women, the youth of today were less inspired than I was when the essay was merely 22 years old. And perhaps, the youth see me as too idealistic, too.

Our Saturday sessions are generally broken up into two segments. First we write and discuss the readings - the literary and critical thinking part of the day. Second there is a project meeting. In between the theory and practical there is always a brief break. Meditation and yoga is something I have wanted to incorporate into the project since its inception, however, real world situations don't necessarily permit our ideas to be perfect from the start. So this week I dove on in. I sent the team an email informing them of their meditative and silent break and when it came up they were down. No objections, no giggles. Just open minds.

Because I was unprepared and didn't know how to set the timer on my phone I had to open my eyes to glance at the clock a couple of times during the five minute meditation session. They were all sitting silent and upright and all sets of eyes were closed. Upon time I told them not to speak for another five minutes, to gather their thoughts and think about the meeting, or think about nothing, or go to the bathroom, just don't speak. When I suggested we start one of them objected and said, It hasn't been five minutes, yet. Gosh darn, I love it when they speak up and I love it when they're making choices toward the betterment of their souls. Hehe, yeah, I totally talk about the artist's soul as something that needs to be nurtured.

And after that I asked their permission to bounce. My best friend is in town for her boyfriend's birthday and I need to get home and change and feed and walk my dog before running off to play. And they were fine with it. And they emailed me their meeting notes and their website looks fabulous and the call for submissions is final and in their voice and image and oh I'm just so thrilled.

Plus I got to bounce on the meeting and have dinner in Bay Ridge at a Moroccan restaurant called Casablanca and then saw Isabelle Adjani in a Luc Besson film from 1985 that was about people living in the Paris Metro and it made me want to live underground off the grid dirty and free.

The End. For Now.

The Organic Growth of Youth

On Thursday, I bought a video camera. The idea was for the group to write a script about their project, video tape themselves and upload the new video onto their website, Facebook page and tumblr. That didn't happen. Of course it didn't happen. What did happen was the crew discussed a lot, wrote a little, then did spontaneous interviews on the topics on hand - what is Raw Fiction? why is Raw Fiction? and so on.

The publicist shot most of the footage, except for that which she is in, and took the SD card with her to do the video edits. Raw Theater.

Last week I was stressed out because I didn't think the group was necessarily going to be able to achieve their goals, and I let them know. They let me know that this project is theirs and they want to do it and they'd communicated amongst themselves and had direction and drive. I was so proud of them I started crying. Really. Literally, there were tears.

So today, I just released the reigns. And it feels good not to be accountable.

I could have gotten annoyed. Or made snide comments (I'm an expert at those). However, when I walked in, 8 minutes early, with the Web Programmer who I'd run into walking over, and saw three of the group already there, waiting for me, demanding where the fifth one was. So eager. So inspiring. And then I sit down and listen to their conversation. Pink Berry. They're anxious for my arrival, they have so much work to do, they know what is on the agenda for today and yet they sit discussing frozen yogurt. A corporate frozen yogurt chain.

What made the possibility of me being annoyed and obnoxious even greater was the fact that the Editor-in-Chief had just said to me, two days before, that they need more time for project discussion and less on the readings. (I seriously beg to differ, but it's theirs, I created the monster. Just call me Shelley.)

But I reasoned with myself. It's nice for them to chat and get to know each other and be comfortable on a social level. Yet, at the same time due to the immaturity in me, the child that needs to put you in front of a mirror to expose the food stuck between your teeth instead of simply nicely telling you, whispering discretely, I couldn't be bothered to take over and say, okay, so now it's 1:30 on the dot, let's get started.

I don't work with children because I hate to micromanage. I do work with teenagers because when you don't micromanage there's a lot to laugh about - but more importantly, that's exactly when they blow you away with their original insights and brilliance. When it all clicks and that child mind begins to take control of its own life.

The wheels got rolling when the Graphic Designer walked in 5 minutes late, expecting to join in, looked confused at the silliness around her and asked, what's going on. The others snapped to and got to work.

I feel free, it's theirs. There are things I would change. I would certainly go about doing just about everything differently, but it's theirs. And I'm free. Free to focus on their intellectual development as independent and critical thinkers.

This is a photograph of the Graphic Designer, Web Programmer and Publicist fine-tuning their social media site and website last week: