I have been reading lately the memoirs of Columbian author and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez (and if you have never read any of his work, shame on you). I've always been a gigantic fan of his work, ever since I read the first sentence of '100 Years Of Solitude': "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Never mind the three different periods of time that are called out, how does one discover ice? Garcia Marquez packs more ideas, and imagery, into one sentence than most authors do in entire chapters.
In any case, 'Living To Tell The Tale' is Garcia Marquez's attempt to tell the story of his life while sorting out the truthful memories from the ones that may have been imagined. It is a theme that he touches on frequently in his writings, what is the truth, what is imagined, what is dreamed. Especially memories as he describes many of his characters as imprisoned by memories, endangered by memories.
"During this period my parents were responsible for an emotional mishap that left me with a scar difficult to erase. It happened one day when my mother suffered an attack of nostalgia and sat down to play 'After the Ball Is Over,' the historic waltz of her secret love, and Papa had the romantic idea of dusting off his violin to accompany her, even though it was missing a string. She adjusted without difficulty to his romantic middle-of-the-night style and played better than ever, until she looked at him with pleasure over her shoulder and realized that his eyes were wet with tears. 'Who are you remembering?' my mother asked with ferocious innocence. 'The first time we played this together,' he answered, inspired by the waltz. Then my mother slammed both fists down on the keyboard in a rage.
'It wasn't with me, you Jesuit!' she shouted at the top of her voice. 'You know very well who you played it with and you're crying for her.'"
What else strikes me about this book is the author's desperate hunger to be a writer. From the earliest age all he wanted to do was write. He dropped out of school, alienating his parents and starved for years, for his craft, for his art. I am terribly jealous of this, both of his ability to conjure up the most magical and wonderful landscapes for his characters, the depths of his emotional insights, and his discipline. I too, have always wanted to be an artist, but thru a combination of...all sorts of things....it didn't work out like that. For whatever reason(s) my parents never encouraged me in drawing and painting, which I always wanted to do, but I got lots of encouragement for music and acting. I guess I was always something of a middling talent, because even though I was granted years of music lessons, I don't recall ever being singled out as good at it, or described by anyone as that. With acting it was bit of a different story, as I loved it, took to it at a very early age, and started regularly performing in community, school, and church theatre. However, somewhere, somehow, along the way I also picked up the virus "lack of self-confidence", which must be the most corrosive of diseases, as it can cause both the physical and mental muscles to atrophy from lack of exercise. How I got infected with this disease I am not sure, and I don't want to use this space to cast stones; besides it doesn't really matter anymore as I am not a character in Russian novel, trapped and doomed by the past.
So in my mid-20s I put down the youthful exercises and "came of age". I stopped acting, dropped the music lessons, forgo any thought of art, as I believed at the time that it was my responsibility to focus on getting an education and a job. But in the back of my mind I grieved a bit, I always wanted to create art, of some kind, somehow. And now that I am older I have taken up this desire in earnest, and what I am discovering is rather interesting. I have taken it upon myself to paint a few canvasses, but since I have never been trained in perspective all my shapes come across as flat. However I do love to paint, as I love pushing colors across the canvasses with brushes, its both soothing and fulfilling. So I am now taking beginning drawing classes from a close friend, who is teaching me how to measure and draw perspective, how to shade, how to judge the light, and how to use the tools of the trade - the different pencils and charcoals, the erasers, what paper to use, etc. Its both fascinating and frustrating.
A big reason why I didn't draw from a young age is that I always thought my drawings were ugly. Flat, little tonal differences, little use of shading, is what I remember and what I remember hating. Yes, hating. I never liked my art; now I do. But, what I am also noticing, and what was always there, is a lack of simple patience with myself; if the drawing doesn't go right the first time my initial overriding desire is to rip it up and start over, or to just throw something and walk away from it altogether. So my art teacher points this out again and again, that I don't take well to criticism, that I want it to go right, right at the start, that it takes years to learn these techniques. All correct, absolutely. I have to give up those voices in my head telling me its ugly, it has to be right from the start, I have to let myself sink into the process, that the point is not the finish but the journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment