The Three Influences

An Artist Under the Influence

The time has come to take drugs.

To explain the three parts of the three-part audio series, "An Artist Under the Influence", I have to explain my life.

The first part, the influence is drugs and alcohol. What is the good and bad of the art experience mixed with mind-altering substances, and how does that influence the artists practice. How does art correlate with an artists life as they soar and plunge? But that is a story I tell in the past tense.

The second part is the influence of culture, which is where my personal life comes in. I am, at present, a housewife. And the strangest thing about the story of my life is the different places in our American culture in which I've been placed. Each placement deeply affected the perspective of my art, and my world view. Far and away, the weirdist and most scandalous life I lived was during the mixture of working as a stripper, with my second job being to work in an old people's home as I took care of my dying grandmother. That time in my life beat all it's juxtaposition of unlike things. But in it's own subtle way, after all I've been through, this housewife gig is really a contender.

The rub of being a housewife is that, from the outside, it looks like life's perfection. The pace, the relaxation, the lack of real problems and pressures, it feels idyllic. Yet I have been stunned to fine, one by one, that ever other housewife I know is on anti-depressants. Now it really may just be the circle I run with, but it's a serious 100% record among all my fellows in all-my-bills-are-payed-even-though-I-got-no-job status.

Which brings me to part three -- The influence of mental illness. And a journey that embarks on the road of anti-depressants. That ties it into part one again. The drugs. But for all practical purposes, part three examines how depression-- and pain-- tie into the creative experience. If I block the pain of life, do I block the passion. And if the passion get's blocked, then where would the art come from?

All this said, let's return to part 2, my life as a housewife and why I've come to the decision to do drugs. First of all, the real confession is that I'm turning to these perscribed pharmaceuticals for the same reasons I did illegal drugs. The day of firing up the bong has passed and it's time for Mother's little helpers. Again, I'm always a product of my place in our culture. A bong doesn't fit, neither does a line or a needle. These are drugs I can take on an airplane to visit the in-laws.
When I imagine myself on my newly aquired pharmaceuticals, I imagine myself Pink Floyd-style comfortably numb-- but still able to make a fine pan of macaroni and cheese for the family.
My theory is that just about everyone suffers from the chemical imbalance that depression, but everyone else is too busy to let it get to them. They work, they day flies by, there are ups and down and projects meet their deadlines. But not for the housewife. The day is an endless plain, tiny grey rocks bulldozed into flatness. A housewife is the highest level of time-killing Ninja. She is merciless and relentless in her killing of time, perfecting her craft with each child's birthday and line of wait in a grocery store. Steely blank looks cross her eyes and she stands in an endless line at the bank and never can a look of pain be detected on her face.

A housewife waits. She waits for her children to grown up and her husband to come home.

And therein lies my insanity. At Nikon, no one is allowed to work by themself, it must be a team of two or more and you must be with them at every moment of every day in constant collaboration. In my husband's case, his partner happens to be the scandanavian bombshell of the department. Other men ask my husband what it "feels like to work with Wren". Wren. Beautiful Wren. Dean describes her as very pretty, and tells me that she gets up at 5AM to run on the treadmill. I imagine her with the face of Katherine Heigel and the body of a Victoria Secret model. My husband says I would like her.

He is mistaken.

He doesn't describe her as perfect, but no flaw is ever ever mentioned. And this makes her better than perfect. Perfect people are annoying. This is a woman who seems effortlessly to be completely without flaws.

I on the other hand, am a shadow of myself. During the pregnancy I gained over 8 clothing sizes. I'm housewife fat, with flabby arms, a huge ass and statistically improbable small tits. I am depressed. I don't know what to talk about besides the children. And now, at this moment, I am hiding at the health club. It is Friday night, it's 9PM, and I'm still here. I feel like leaving a voice mail saying "Hi, this is Karen. I'm can't take your call right now becuase I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror while doing yoga and I'm so miserable I don't want to go home."
I wonder if my husband is scared of losing me. I'm scared of losing myself. Correction, I think hiding in a health club for 3 hours after only burning 161 calories qualifies as lost.
Anti depressants.

I can't remember what I was going to say.

I had some insight during yoga but now it's gone.

I'm trapped I'm bored I'm depressed and I miss getting high. The three influences are all intertwined, I became a drug addict because I was probably depressed and everything that made me well feels gone. Goals. Confidence.

But beyond all this I know I will find an answer. The two things I made my husband promise me when we got married was that he would never ask me to quit making art and never tell me that I'm thinking about something too much. My brain, my potential is still there, it's just soggy under the grey cloud in a ridiculous spot in society. When you have nothing to do, when there's no where to go, when you have nothing but time to kill, this is when one turns to drugs. In the age of "just say no", I say we "just say no don't mind if I do."

Oh, I remember now. The question of the artist is will making art about the depression be more effective than the anti-depressants themselves. As soon as I knew I was going to write about Wren, write about how I am using her as a metric for the effectiveness of the anti-depressants.. at that moment it all became abstract. Suddenly my pain had value, it was art fodder and amazing. It made me feel like my thoughts and creations have value. It's beyond what Wren can do. (Well, who knows, she probably doodles during meetings sketches that rival Matisse.)

Where will numb take me? When the pain is gone will a new light shine? If I stop thinking about

Wren will I discover some new truth? Will art save the say?

It's time to twist off the child-proof cap.