I went to the opening reception at an art gallery the other night featuring a sort of farewell art commemoration of Arlene. She passed away last year after battling serious illness for a while. I hadn't been in touch with her too much before she left this realm, but she was certainly present at a poignant turning point in my life.
In the early 2000s, I was young and full of energy and dabbling in a little bit of everything, creatively speaking. I was making new friends daily, hitting all the parties, mingling, working in an art museum....I really felt alive and full of vigor and hope for what was to come. I was also being pulled in a million different directions, not really understanding all of the implications. Arlene was an intelligent, funny, articulate lady who befriended me at the museum and despite our age difference, we always had a hell of a lot of fun. We talked a lot about family, or in our case, the lack thereof, and bonded in spirited friendship over it.
So among my dabblings, I decided to try my hand at conceptual art. I don't know what I was thinking. Who the hell did I think I was...Yoko Ono or something? I experimented and created something to show at a gallery in Pilsen with my colleagues. I was nervous about it, probably because I felt I was over people's heads. And I don't always think that's a particularly good place to be. Not for me anyway. One thing led to another and I vaguely remember weird conversation with some curator, and another thing led to further confusion, and that final confusion led me to undergo emergency psychological evaluation.
Little did I know it would continue for the rest of my life. Breakdown after breakdown, I soon realized I couldn't handle being pulled in a million different directions anymore by adults with sometimes questionable intentions.
My introductory lessons in being diagnosed as bipolar probably didn't happen in the most promising of circumstance, as I saw in the hesitant faces and second guesses of those who were involved in the intervention. It was Arlene who brought me clothes and deodorant and socks in the hospital. It was Arlene who reached out to my family despite their disinterest in visiting or supporting me. It was Arlene who took care of my cat. It was Arlene who picked me up from the hospital and drove me home and cried as she saw me stumbling around my apartment trying to readjust to my new life on medication. It was Arlene who first realized that Risperdal took a hold of me and shook her head in this difficult battle I would continue from that point forward...
What is the cure to end the suffering of mind battles?
Our relationship was skewed for years after that. I saw her a few more times. Friends of friends intersected our different paths. And then she fell ill and I never got a chance to talk to her once more. We made plans several times to have lunch but she was too sick to make it. And so as a final homage, I went to look at her art. And I faced the past. I saw some others who were part of my intervention. I stepped into an art scene again, feeling enormously outsider-ish as usual. I was so dazed I got on the bus heading in the opposite direction. It took me 20 minutes to realize it. The blur of the last 11 years is like a giant, misunderstood abstract collision involving all of the frustrations that I guess only art can answer. And I guess that's why we keep making it? I guess that's why we create?
In an odd way, in the acrobatic optimism that seems to permeate my life journey, I am grateful for my misadventures in art. I have been given front row obstructed seats to a surreal opera of sorts. I am grateful for Arlene's presence and her intellect has influenced my further artistic endeavors. I hope she's found her peace, and that the light seeps in slowly and surely, where it will radiate forever.
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