To Thine Own Self Be True Blued or Troubled

OK. In case you read yesterday's post, let me say at the outset that it turns out there are two fallacies in the oft-repeated "fact" that grand daddy longlegs have the most poisonous bite of any American house spider but lack the dental structure that allows them to bite humans. They can indeed bite and bite hard, and it hurts like crazy for a while and swells up disturbingly, but you don't die or get feverish or have to make the drive to the emergency room or call up Poison Control, which puts this common spider significantly behind both Black Widows and any species of tarantula in my index. My elbow is better. The bite looks as inocuous as a pimple now, even if it's a strange place for something to pass as a pimple.

I'm beginning work on a little documentary about an octogenarian couple I met recently. They are both visual artists, the man still working steadily on his beautiful and highly realistic oil landscapes and portraits, the woman absorbed most recently in making an incredible wardrobe of stunning, almost life-sized robes, completely two-dimensional, as if for enormous paperdolls, out of a careful collage of gift papers. The two of them have been living together and making art together for over sixty years, in two very different styles. I asked them how they handled what seems to me the very vulnerable moment of the initial revealing of a newly finished artwork, the moment the real or figurative drape is whisked off the finished product, the "Well? What do you think?" moment.

This moment, to an insecure neophyte like me, is rather like the moment the doctor hands you your firstborn baby or perhaps the plastic surgeon hands you a mirror. Your entire future seems to hang in the balance, on a gossamer thread so fine even a thoughtless exhalation might send it reeling. Given the intricate balance of egos a marriage represents, the possibility for grievous wounding at this moment seemed enormous. But this couple seemed amused I would regard it in this manner.

"Why would we ever be afraid of what the other one would say?" the woman, the more verbose of the two, marvelled as though the thought had never entered her mind. "We have done what we wanted. What others have to say about my work does not affect what work I do; I don't do it for them." I checked. Her husband was nodding in agreement. "I honestly don't know why a person would ever want to ask what someone else thinks of their work. Does it matter?"

They responded similarly when I left them with what I hoped would be a sort of bridge to our next meeting, when the camera will be rolling. "Until I am back here for the official interview," I suggested, in that rarely necessary way mothers have of intervening before there's a problem, "perhaps you could identify one of your works that you'd like to talk about in greater detail, one that seems to speak to your sense of artistic integrity or importance or simply your pride or one that sent you in a surprising new direction or one that embodies what you want to accomplish with your art." Both of them looked at me rather blankly.

"But we're done with all this work here," she explained, grandiosely waving her eloquent hand over the array of incredible art that hung, covered, leaned, stacked, filled and over-filled every square inch of their apartment. "Why would we want to talk about anything that's done? Once it's done, you move on." The husband again (I checked) was nodding. "What matters is what's wet on your easel. None of the rest matters."

I have a lot to learn from this couple, and I've been thinking about it since this preliminary interview. They have what to me is such incredible confidence in both their own work and their own selves. Me, I crave the approbation of others. The fact that I have been writing this blog without anyone's positive assessment is rather amazing to me, and probably good training for me. For I grew up in a home full of people who didn't think any of my individual projects, my poems or my paintings or my play productions, were anything worth mentioning and certainly never worth praising. Eventually, I put away my sketchpads and paintbrushes. It just seemed so unimportant to absolutely everyone except me. Only years and years later, when my life as a wife and a mother had pretty much completely fallen apart at the seams, did I find my way back to my paints and my poems and my prose.

But I am left me with an almost insatiable craving for praise still, all these years later, and a fear of criticism that is at times completely disabling. So here's to parents who not only give their children the time and space to do what they love, to follow their passions, but also, from time to time, nod and smile and point to some small detail and say with meaning, "I like that." For that, when a child loves something, is all that's needed.

One or two sweet crumbs. Never forget to tell people, big and small, when you like something. Even if they don't ask what you think of it.