Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Valentine’s Greetings from the Artist in Residence
Update: jellyphotos on the photoblog. Now back to our post, already in progress:
First, I know I’m in the middle of a series, such as it is - consider this a hiatus. Second, I’m not usually much of one to make a big deal about Valentines Day, it’s a weird old holdover and I think it would be healthier to remove the erotic pagan elements from our national day of eros but hey I say that about the NFL too and look where it got me. However, last weekend - no, two weekends ago, I’ll get to last weekend later - I did stumble into a valentine so honest and powerful that I actually withdrew from it a little. That is a shame that I’m trying to rectify through recollection and recounting the story here as best I can. Thusly and so:
It takes forever these days to get the kids out the door, and then they dawdle and poke along so’s we’d be making better time if I was just picking them up and chucking them down the street ahead of me. But eventually we won out and all of us were wandering through Dave and Kim’s mature and stately neighborhood on a glorious pre-spring day. You get those here - they’re a local specialty. We’ll have a period of winter with days in the 40s and 50s, colder nights, and a wet pervasive wind that chills things down in a very personal way; there’s no question but that winter’s upon you, even if not in its fiercest possible guise.
But then the weather breaks and you get a few days of real warmth and clear humid nights and a confused anticipatory budding of trees and shrubs that had been dormant two days prior. You know more wet cold weather awaits you but for a while it’s all about the hot sun on your back and a delicious redolence around certain wise old trees. It was one of those days, so glorious and bright that even the obstreperous passel of kids (four is a passel, right?) got with the program. Everybody was out for a lovely walk in Kensington.
First we saw the house with the cool abstract sculpture out front - that was fun. Then there was some other house that was cool, I don’t recall why; whatever, it was not a day for keeping notes. It was just a beautiful pre-spring day with the munchkins and that’s all the thought I gave it.
Dave and Kim obviously expected her to be there; but the rest of us had had no warning. We had just come around another twist on another little hillside road to find yet another charming pre-war bungalow. In front was parked an obviously inoperable vehicle, completely covered in alternating fields of blue and white paint full of swooping ideogrammatic symbols. These symbols continued on the flagstones leading to the front door, on the door itself, and over the exterior walls of the house. Pinwheels and spirit-catchers dangled here and there from sticks and strings. Out front, a beautiful silver-haired woman was bidding a fond farewell to a small family that was just leaving her home; she turned to us with great joy and enthusiasm and, without missing a beat, welcomed us in.
Her hair was full and straight and gleaming, brushing her shoulders in a distinctive, attractive, and very well-maintained style. She wore a full-length velvet gown, maybe with a velvet cowl?, in rich, noble colors. Her skin was taut and tan and positively glowing with life and vibrancy. Her lips were a flawless carmine red as her smile beamed out at us, her graceful hands beckoning us to follow her as she led us toward her front doors, garlanded as it was with her peculiar painted swoops and shapes.
“It’s very lovely,” I mumbled as I got close enough to get a good look at the designs.
“Do you know what it is?” She spun and stepped; the question was directed directly to me. Her face was animated, delighted to be engaging another person.
“No, I don’t,” I predictably, somewhat hesitantly replied. I was getting - well, if not actually suspicious, at least a bit concerned about the direction things were going. She’d inveigle us all into her house, get all artsy and metaphysical on us, and guilt us into buying a CD or something else I didn’t want. I was not sure I was in the mood to spend this gorgeous day with the kids inside some eccentric artist’s studio. However, I seemed to be in a minority. D and K were obviously in on all of this and tacitly had approved, and Kel seemed fascinated and was eager to be led on into the trap, with little Zach toddling happily behind her. I started feeling a little pressured, a little resentful. My sourness interfered with my perceptiveness. I know there was much I missed in the rest of my visit but I’ll try to cover it as best I can.
She answered me: “It is a language I am learning through meditation, a combination of hebrew and hieroglyphics.”
I looked more closely, didn’t see what she was getting at. “Oh,” I replied noncommittally.
She ignored my rudeness and spoke with each of us as if we were long-lost friends, locking eyes and sharing a passion she seemed both powerless and disinclined to resist. She spoke on universal themes as she led us into her place, themes like overcoming difficulties, bearing no person ill-will, living life as a way to share peace and love and joy, and using her art as a means to articulate all the challenges and complexities of the human condition. She drew us into her sitting room, decorated rambunctiously with plaster masks and incense burners and a plastic bin of cello-wrapped cards; there were flowers and crystals on the tables and sills, and photo-collages and paintings (seemingly self-painted) featuring our hostess at various and varied points of her life (because, she told us and I failed to follow up, “I have led an interesting life,” which, I now learn, involved the Egyptian and U.S. diplomatic corps).
Canvases lined the walls and several more were propped up on the floor, generally cheerful and bright, with one tucked not very subtly in a corner all red on black - “this one’s about some not-so-happy thoughts, a dream really; I put it back here so it will not frighten the children.” The paintings were not overly refined, stylistically, nor overly sophisticated in content or theme, but each one was obviously a page torn from this woman’s soul and each was festooned with her fanciful script.
Further in, in the kitchen space, she showed us her actual studio, around a corner from the front door. I hovered at the entry arch, loathe to leave the exit out of sight behind me, as she displayed some of the hundreds of life-masks she’d made over her lifetime, pristine plaster castings that preserved and yet circumscribed individuality. “Do you know how I do it?,” she asked. We didn’t, so she told us, with a mysterious grin: “You keep just one eye open.”
We’d spent about ten minutes at her home before we extricated ourselves. As we worked our way back to the front lawn I began to wonder if I had given her short shrift, if I’d have handled myself differently had I been alone or kidless. She hadn’t asked for money; nothing in her home had a price on it that I’d noticed. All I really know is that I walked away impressed with her total submission to her muse, and I’m more impressed as the days go by.
As we left her home, Bibi (that’s her name, Bibi Barrett, and not the one who does special effects for blockbuster movies either) gave us a cheerful yellow and orange card, printed with a self-portrait of herself in pigtails with three geraniums growing from a heart where her nose should have been, and a gingham blouse that turned into hebrewglypics, and a script-printed poem that I will share here now because I think doing so honors her art more than I allowed myself to do while I was in her sanctuary with her:
Happy Valantine / Meditation 2.2.08 / Bebe Barrett
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Translation:
The purpose is a direction. It is fulfilled in each moment that you are “on purpose.” It set your course in life. Purpose is to be discovered. Quentin Crisp: “My function in life was to render clear what was already blindingly conspicuous.” Purpose will be for the remainder of your life. Robert Byrne: “The purpose of life is a life of purpose." Bebe: The purpose of life is to live, work, procreate and die! False humility is a form of egoism. Let loving, giving , joyful, playful caring… etc be your life purpose!"
Thanks, Bebe. I think I am beginning to absorb your lesson, though it is hard to keep that one eye open as you recommend. I hope to have another chance to sit and talk with you. For the meantime, I am glad to be able to make your beautiful ideas a part of my valentine’s gift, to be distributed to all who give themselves leave to hear it.
and with that, I am mostly done with valentine’s day. This past weekend has been gargantuan - Saturday at the Monterey Aquarium with the Rosses, Sunday doing fun east bay outlet shopping (including the last bottle of “friction fix” massage lotion on 4th Street and a tasty tasty lunch at Vik’s), and Monday at the Discovery Museum’s Lunar New Year’s fest as well as a joyous and luck-inducing Year-of-the-Rat trip to Target. I know there was plenty of other stuff too but I don’t have time to share it with you. I intend to return to the Festival of Ephemera soon, I’ve got a few more items to toss on the pyre there, but right now I’ve got a nearly-three-year-old who needs more attention. Catch ya later, yo.
