The goal of psychoanalysis is to talk unfettered. It’s one of the reasons people lie on the couch, to access their subconscious and, at least for a time, lose track of their analyst while they voice their depths. I live three states away from my analyst, so my couch is a phone. Some weeks I think I see my analyst, visualizing her face, her smile and attentive nods or perhaps admonition, grimaces. But some weeks, the words just tumble and I’ve lost track of her and even of me.
A few weeks ago, I visited a friend in New England. She’s living in a beautiful apartment alone, surrounded by thriving green plants in a city with one of the best art schools in the country. I had a lot to populate my imagination. And I invited myself to dream. What would it be like to walk these cobble stone streets from my art studio? I skipped across the ocean and unleashed my fantasy of set design, researching production designers in London (my favorite city). I sent emails to artists I admire and asked for advice. I formulated business plans to rent and exchange art, then found companies that do it and looked for jobs. I imagined so many lives centering art. I so very much want my own to do that.
I returned home crashing into realities that say “No.” Barriers that tell me I’m not qualified, that art is not sustainable without a partner who supports me, that art school is astronomically expensive and out of reach for someone who wasn’t trained in undergrad, and that the best solution for now (and maybe forever) is to find a job that supports a side habit.
I’m still feeling this crash—it’s chaos, the clash of so many dreams with so many no’s. When I talk about it, the words are chaos, too. My analyst described it sounding like mania. It feels like anxiety. It doesn’t let up. It’s fervent. It’s exacting.
Why isn’t art a celebration? When I’m making art, it mediates my chaos into line and color. It takes the words that drum and gong and it turns them into symbols that are just starting to float, or energy that’s outside of me. Energy that I can look at and see reflected back at me and finally have confirmation that there, that is what I’m talking about inside that no one hears or knows, including me sometimes.
I find myself a child again who doesn’t know how to reconcile “no.” I suppose the work is to find the way through it when everything in me right now is advocating for undivided pursuit. Have you ever met this force? This foot-stomping clash and chaos around your passion?