Art and Your Health

A couple days ago, I met up with a friend (socially distanced, of course). I was wearing one of my old Nutcracker cast sweatshirts (I was in the Atlanta Ballet's Nutcracker for four years when I was a kid). My friend commented on the shirt, and we talked about the year that she had also auditioned for the same production. She was 12. She was rejected because, as one kind judge put it, "you're too good-looking." The children's choreographer, who was more blunt, elaborated, "you're too mature-looking," and finally, when this 12 year old still didn't understand, "your breasts are too big."

Obviously, my friend was very upset by this at the time, and still remembers the sting of being turned away from a production she desperately wanted to be in, for a reason that she couldn't do anything about.

Later, as a 20-year-old college student, she was in a dance class and realized, watching in the mirror as her short, curvy self danced in a line with taller, willowy ballerinas, that, yes, the visual difference between herself and other dancers did disrupt the line and flow of the choreography. She said that realizing this for herself as a college student - realizing that she couldn’t "fit" in a professional dance company - was hard, but also drastically different than being told at 12 that your body is a problem.

As another curvy former ballerina, I completely understand this. “Curvy” is being kind - I was fat. (No, this isn't body shaming, fat shaming, etc. When you're 11 years old, not quite five feet tall, and weigh 111 pounds, you're fat no matter how you slice it.) My ballet teacher who, yes, was the same blunt children's choreographer from that audition, always gave me grief about my weight.

Most of the girls at my ballet school started pointe (dancing in toe shoes) at 11. My teacher had me wait a year; she said my ankles weren't strong enough to support all my weight on my toes. Not that I was any better at 12. For some strange reason, I gained approximately 10 pounds a year in middle school - weighing 111 at 11, 123 at 12, and 132 at 13.

Miss Joanne might have had a point, as hard as it was for me to hear. I destroyed my ankles; after a year on pointe, I had not progressed in my pointe work. Rather, I had gotten to where I could not rise up onto my toes without pulling myself up on the barre.

I also neglected to mention that the year I was 12 was the last year I danced in the Atlanta Ballet's Nutcracker, and the last year that my sister and I attended their ballet school. We didn't get into the Nutcracker the next year and, rather than continuing to drive almost an hour four days a week (between the two of us) to class, we found a new ballet school closer to home.

This was also around the time that girls my age were deciding whether to continue in the pre-professional classes - four, five, and eventually six days a week with the intention of one day auditioning for a professional dance company and making this a career. There would be no time for any other activities - I would have to drop drama club, which I had been in for a couple years.

Ankles aside, this was about the time I started to notice differences between me and some of the other girls in my class. They were thin. Some were too thin. Some of them were already talking about how all they ate between breakfast and going home to dinner - late, after all their dance classes - was low fat yogurt and an apple.

I didn't really understand yet what eating disorders were. But I also knew that 1. I couldn't commit to that kind of lifestyle, and 2. it wasn't healthy.

Around the time I turned 14, toward the end of 8th grade, unable to dance on pointe, and unwilling to drastically change my lifestyle in order to do so, I decided that I would drop ballet and instead continue with theatre.

Dance - ballet in particular - is one of those arts that's known for the extremes the artists push themselves to. To some extent, it's necessary. The human body wasn't designed to support 150 pounds on a single toe; some people can make it work with 90, though.

But dance isn't the only art that seems to produce health issues. There is, of course, the whole concept of the starving artist; the person who is so dedicated to their art that they live in poverty and squalor, making art rather than money, neglecting their health, burning their manuscript to stay warm, and dying tragically young. It's not just something you see in an opera. Jonathan Larson, creator of Rent, died younger than I am now. The night before his magnum opus was to open, he collapsed on his kitchen floor with an aortic aneurysm - something that could have been prevented had he seen a doctor in the past decade, which of course he couldn't afford to do, even working full time as a waiter.

Jim Henson died of abscesses in his lungs because he was “too busy” to go to the doctor for the flu.

And these are looked on and admired as the great tragic artists of our time. They gave all for their art.

On the other hand you have Stephen King. Prolific author, has "made it big," and is still alive and kicking. Is he less of an artist because he's still OK?

There came a time that I had to decide between theatre - and by theatre, I mean working 3 part-time jobs, driving a car held together by duct tape and mold, going to auditions but never getting called back, living with my parents, having no health insurance - and getting a full time job so that I could live something better than an abjectly miserable existence. Did that make me less of an artist than those I know who did continue with that starving artist lifestyle?

I've been writing for years. I still don't dedicate the time to it that I "should." I've been to conferences and workshops, taken classes, and read books on how to be a novelist. Many authors - so many authors - suggest staying up late, after everyone goes to bed, to write, or getting up before dawn to write... or both. And... I can't. I have insomnia. I have anxiety. I had post-partum depression not quite a year ago. (Oh, yeah, I also have a toddler.)

Sleep is non-negotiable. My own nutrition is non-negotiable. My picky, teething 16-month old's nutrition and physical therapy are non-negotiable.

Does my putting my well-being, and that of my daughter ahead of my writing make me less of an artist? Maybe. But if I never finish my novel, if I live to see my daughter grow up, if I live a decent life in comfort and good health and never publish another story... if those are the only choices, then I'll live with that.

12-year-old me and my 8-year-old sister in all our mid-90’s giant sweatshirt glory.

Na No No Go

Today's a big day - no, not just the day after Halloween (and don't you DARE start putting up that Christmas tree yet ; ) - today is the first day of NaNoWriMo*.

*If you're not familiar with the abbreviation, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel-Writing Month, which takes place annually in November. Writers challenge themselves to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's not as hard as it sounds - it breaks down to about 1700 words a day, which is just a couple pages. The hard part is not writing 50,000 words - the hard part is actually finishing the novel after November ends.

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will hopefully forgive me as I give a little background on my NaNo history here:

-In 2009, I did NaNo for the first time, and succeeded in writing 50,000 words. This novel, which I've referred to often in this blog by its working title, The Wolf and the Sheath, still sits unfinished 11 years later.

-In 2010, I did NaNo again, leading to BrightFire... which is also unfinished.

-In 2011, because I was very busy, I gave myself the goal of 30,000 words instead, and ended up with the partial novel I'm currently calling Brinyor which is, you guessed it, still unfinished.

A few months ago, I had been hoping to be back into some semblance of a writing routine by now. I have been trying to sit down and work on writing stuff a couple mornings a week. There have been a few times recently that I've worked on something else like laundry or food prep during the time I should be writing. I really need to cut that out. I really need to start treating my writing time as non-negotiable.

So, I'm sure that you might have guessed from all of that that I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I just have too much going on (which, yes, all of you with multiple children that get shuttled back and forth to various activities, just pat me on the head and call me a sweet summer child) .

We're heading into "the holidays" and I have crafts I want to put together. There are areas of the house that haven't been cleaned since before Elianna was born. And we're going to have to start taking her to physical therapy because she's behind on walking. In addition, I'm dealing with anxiety and insomnia (though, it is 2020 - who isn't?). I'm trying to be more active so I can kick my weight loss into gear... I hope it doesn't sound like I'm making excuses; this just isn't the time to be putting a major task on my plate.

But with all that said, I think that I am going to try and reread all three of my partial novels this month, as well as do some other creative things (art rather than writing, but I feel that any creative juices are going to get others flowing).

And those of you who are going to take up the challenge this year - go for it! Take those emotions, those anxieties, and pour them into your novel. Write about the dystopia you fear, or write about hope and recovery. Just write. And, hopefully, your novel will make more sense than this year has.

To those about to write, I salute you.

#NaNoWriMo2020

The Importance of Humanities

On Wednesday, my boss and I had a meeting with the head of the Spanish, French, and World Language and Culture department.  She was late.  When she arrived, she apologized, as her Spanish students had been doing their "cooking show" presentations, and in cleaning up after college students making rice pudding and churros, she had completely forgotten our meeting.  I immediately forgave her, as I had fond memories of a very similar cooking unit in my sophomore Spanish class in high school, and we launched into a joyous discussion of why the history of food is important and why Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous for years. 

(The acid in the tomatoes ate away at the pewter utensils.  Pewter, being an alloy of silver and lead, leached lead into the food and made people sick.  The new world natives - and Europeans who were too poor to afford pewter - were not affected because they were eating with different utensils or with their hands.)

Obviously, a discussion of the history of food was not why the Registrar and the head of the Honors and Language departments were meeting that day.  But it did get me thinking about both my aforementioned Spanish class, and the humanities in general.  

The teacher I had for sophomore Spanish was awesome.  (All my high school Spanish teachers were, honestly.)  In this class, we did a lot of culture units.  We had the previously-mentioned cooking unit.  We did a dance unit.  We watched actual Latin American movies (as opposed to watching American movies in Spanish, which was the default for substitute teachers) and discussed the historical events important to the films.  And we had our art unit, which was spectacular.

We studied various artists: El Greco, Velasquez, Goya, Miro, Picasso, Frida Kahlo, and Salvador Dali.  We had to make and present a piece of artwork in the style of one of the artists we had studied.  Most people did Miro or Picasso, because Miro and late-Picasso are super easy.  I chose Goya (in his rose period) because the rosy-cheeked, picnicking couples appealed to my 15-year-old romanticism.

One of these styles is more difficult than the others...

Fast forward about 5 years.  I was in St. Petersburg, Russia on a summer abroad trip for my Russian minor.  I was in the Hermitage, one of their palace-turned-museums. I came around a corner and almost literally ran into a huge, doorway-sized painting.  I backed up a bit so I could better see what I almost hit.  Gaunt, long-limbed, grey-faced priests stared down at me.  "Oh, my god, it's El Greco!" I said, not even having to read the placard next to the painting (which I could have done in English, Spanish, or Russian) to know that this was "The Interment of the Count of Orgaz."

I'm not kidding, y'all, this is a HUGE painting.

A large portion of my college experience revolved around the humanities, actually.  I went to a school that was heavily liberal-arts leaning.  On top of that, mine was the first class that had the option of a 4-semester Humanities course for which we could receive credit for 7 or 8 core requirements (literature, history, religion, philosophy, art history, 2 writing-intensive classes, and possibly one I'm forgetting).  A lot of people took it as a way to get 8 requirements done in half the time.  I took it to "free up space" in case I decided to double major.

The course was set up by time period - 1st semester was the ancient world, 2nd semester was medieval, 3rd was early modern, and 4th was modern/contemporary.  In this class I learned about things in conjunction, rather than learning about art or literature or religion separately of the historical context in which they occurred.   We studied the wars, religious and social upheavals, ideas, and inventions that inspired these works, or that these works were reactions to.  It wasn't the first time that I had learned that these things were tied together - in that sophomore Spanish class, we had learned how the Napoleonic wars had influenced Goya's work, just as Franco's regime in the 30's is why we have Picasso's Guernica.  But it was the first time we started at the beginning of civilization and said, "these ancient beliefs influenced this art style and these literary works, then this war changed the way people thought about X and that influenced the music and the architecture and so on and so on, and it's still growing and changing and evolving today."

There's no way to explain all this in a blog post, really.  It takes more time.  It takes more study and investigation.  And its why you can't remove art, literature, or music from their historical contexts.  To really know, to really understand, you have to have the whole picture.