Behind The Make Up

Confessions from a professional dilettante

I used to have a thing for Jackson Pollock and his kind. I would sit in museums, trying to look very deep and intellectual and mysterious, trying to think very deep and profound thoughts while waiting for Mr. Pollock or Mr. de Kooning or Mr. Rothko to hit me with an even deeper emotional epiphany that one would expect from, I don’t know, Gandhi or something.

“Oh the power of the profound,” I would muse, “oh the abstract expressionists… a authentic image of human reaction to increasingly chaotic world of the nuclear nineteen fifties family.”

Yes. You are correct. I used to be a professional dilettante. If you know anyone who pays for this service, by all means, send that email on over.

I imagined Pollock as an angsty artistic genius beating out his emotions with paint. I fervently defended his works among those subscribed to the “my five year old could do that” theory of art.

“You just don’t understand, ” I’d say channeling my best look of genuine sorrow and perplexity for this obviously misguided intellectual imbecile, “This, this,” I’d stress pointing to the vast painting “is reality, an utter expression of feeling, it’s more real than any realistic painting; it’s the depths below the material.”

(Above: Jackson Pollock's Lavendar Mist, 1950. Not casacade of raw emotion materialized paint, but a very deliberate, thought out painting.)

I’d sweep into a dramatic ending, with triumphal look of pity that said, “I am sorry you’re a shallow materialistic sheep that cares more about Britney Spears than politics or the environment or philosophy or world poverty or literature or art or, or, or anything of any true meaning in this world.”

Whipping my head back to the painting, I'd continue working my hardest at thinking deep thoughts and trying not to fidget while awaiting my epiphany about the meaning of life. 

Well, you see, my analysis was very wrong. Very, very, very wrong.

My self righteous Pollock fantasies were brutally crushed during a rather grueling class my last semester at Berkeley, taught by one of CAL’s most famous art historians. I was in love with this woman; her lectures sent me on a rocket trip through the artistic solar system.

Anyways, she asks some question about a Pollock painting and I shoot my arm up high in the air, trying my darnedest not to wave it madly and literally bit-ting my tongue to prevent,

 “OOOHHHH ME ME ME ME ME ME! PICK ME!!! OVER HERE!! MEEE!” from avalanching out of my mouth.

 She looked severely around the room, as she generally did, pierced her eyes on me and with a deep, slow and menacing voice said, “Please, Allese”.

I spouted off some answer about unbounded emotion and feeling and passion and reality that left me sputtering in my own words, keenly aware that now some 100 students and, like my hero professor was staring back at me with wide eyes.

“Uh…. and, and and, yeah, so yeah. Right. So, yeah thus, that’s well that’summ that’s umm it.”

My face flushed in heat and I could see students staring incredulously at me and mentally comparing me
to that Miss America contestant that answered,

“I personally believe...

Creating A Schedule

The schedule vs. reality debate

 (I wrote the following earlier this week as part of a comedy writing workshop I am taking. We were asked to write a piece on a neurosis we had---- please leave thoughts or advise!!).

Nothing excites me more than a spanking new planner. It’s sections and graphs of thirty or thirty-one or twenty-eight days are like bright lights at the annual fair, booming with prospect and excitement.

Of course I am a reasonable, sensible, rational individual. I understand that creating a perfectly color coded spreadsheet of next weeks schedule, down to, well the minute, does not mean that it will necessarily happen. But it endows me with certain high, an extraordinary sense of ambition and purpose. Control.

Staring back at a well scheduled week, I loose myself as the blocks of colored hours marked “coffee”, “walk the dog”, “write in café”, “drinks with Nicole”, “grocery shopping”, “return emails”, “therapy” begin take life in my head and blend into some beautiful movie that I imagine myself as the fascinating leading lady of.  I feel satisfied and excited. I sense that I have met my destiny head on, he gave me a wink, I gave him a smile, we shook hands and decided to work together. Magic. I know. I think so too.

So, I have developed what some may term a scheduling/planning/list making substance abuse problem.