Remember the little boy entering the Woods of life without sign post in yesterday’s image? What will he look like in forty years time?
The path is meandering, but level; the trees are crooked!
I only hope he doesn’t lose the spring in his step!
Archives for the month of: September, 2012
Last night I went to an exhibition opening of my students. I was impressed. This is one of the things I enjoy most about teaching, seeing individuals developing in their art. They are by no means all young kids. In photography we have a lot of mature students. Unfortunately I have the ungrateful task of teaching digital imaging. Generally, the younger ones just do it, the older ones say “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it”… but at one stage (and I can usually wait for it) they come up to me with a big wide smile all over their face and say something like “I am proud of myself, I have done so much on the computer”. The best of course is when they say “I love digital now!” I can’t take the credit for this, though. It doesn’t have much to do with my teaching, but with them gaining confidence in an area they never would have thought they could excel in. Good on you!
After the event I was hurled towards the opposite end of human emotions. I bumped into a friend, a very talented musician, who is currently drifting down the path towards middle age. I love him to bits. He really has something going for him, but he doesn’t know yet what, and he is increasingly running out of patience. He told me, and I repeat verbatim: “I don’t like what the world has on offer at the moment.”
Oh dear! What a puppet moment!
I had lunch today with a very dear friend of mine, who incidentally also reads my blog. She commented on me slipping into the deep and meaningful at the moment. Ah well, I am still on the search where the puppets came from. But I guess I have to ease up a little. My post yesterday didn’t go down too well :). This morning I was thinking of writing about what I call “emotional cross-dressers”, but I give it a miss. I have to think about the subject for a little longer anyway.
A few years back I attended a training course for a volunteer organisation. One could describe the course as psychology for lay people. Most of it was common sense. But there was this one diagram describing the basic mental attitudes, which I found very good. I re-drew it this morning; something I wanted to do for some time. Yep, I know representatives of each and every one of those four catagories.
Personally, I am oscillating between the two left images (as I guess most women do!) When I am in the top left, everything is honky dory. I strongly believe in win-win situations and I work hard to achieve them. When I am in the bottom left, my soul mate comes in very handy :). Thank you!
Problems arise, when I come across someone who has the mental attitude of the top right quadrant. Often I simply walk away, but I can also turn into a lioness, particularly if a third party is involved. Lioness mode, believe me, is not a pretty picture and it is very exhausting, so I try to avoid it… Unfortunately I am not always successful.
Further to my post of yesterday… I had a few conversations since and I realised I wasn’t entirely clear in what I’ve said.
It is very sad, but ultimately I think (and this is my very own cheerless opinion) we are alone in the world. I believe there is no way, one human being can ever completely know and comprehend another living being (often we don’t know ourselves). At the same time we crave for others to understand our individuality, we are searching for closeness, for acceptance. We want to be understood, we want to be looked after, we want others to help us carry our burden and share our plight. We want for someone to complement what we are lacking. We want, we want, we want… But of course on our terms… People are selfish! But if we wouldn’t look after ourselves who would?
I can understand that humans look to Him and find solace. We are here on borrowed time and only once, so we have to make the best of it! There might be re-incarnation. I don’t know. I will find out one day. In the meantime I try to be nice to people. I say I try, as it doesn’t always work this way… I have no influence on how people perceive me. They might not like my frown lines, they might not like the pitch of my voice or my accent… all things I can’t change, and I shrug my shoulders and say: their problem not mine… On the other hand, if somebody is grumpy… How do I know what happened to them before we bumped into each other? Maybe their wife just left them, or their father had a car accident, or their child was diagnosed with an untreatable disease. Their grumpiness might not have anything to do with me at all…
It is this split second of eternity in which we meet and make a decision about whether we like or dislike a person. Scaaaaryyyy! And, be honest, once we have formed an opinion about someone it is very, very difficult to change.
To cut a long story short, what I am advocating is, find yourself a person who has similar values as you have, fall in love with this person and note, IN love is a completely different feeling than love itself. Being in love is a wonderful folly, and a period of exaggeration and best behaviour. Love itself is a feeling that has to be nourished to grow, a feeling of warmth despite all the flaws, the farts and burps. If it is allowed to grow it will lead to the ultimate trust… in the acceptance of two people in their individuality and differences. And this is what I mean by soul mate.
First a warning: Most people actually don’t want to be happy – as truly happy people are so, so boring. What makes life interesting are the spikes, not equilibrium.
I have learned to embrace my ups and downs. I have learned that the proverbial brick wall stops me only temporarily. I don’t have to force my way through it, there is always a way around it. Finding this detour often requires a pause, to sit down and ponder.
On my personal list of happiness there are only two items, and they are by no means fame and riches. On my list is one item you should have and one you shouldn’t. Not too difficult, is it?
The item you absolutely need to have is a soul mate!
What you need to get rid of are any personal expectations you have of him/her, so that you will keep this gem for a long long time to come!
As easy as…
Funnily enough, most of my friends seem to think the first part is the difficult one. In fact it is the second, the working on the relationship, trying not to re-model the person you’ve found to fit your ideas. Without expectation the ideas will grow together in due time :)
Then when you hit the brick wall your fall will be cushioned!
I use my art to dissect ideas that float around my head. It relaxes me tremendously and helps to solve any difficult issues I have to deal with.
When I was at school, my doodling habits drove my teachers absolutely bonkers. I never finished a period with any sort of usable notes and therefore couldn’t revise at home. In the end I got kicked out of school because my English and French weren’t up to scratch… Ah well, as time goes by… I wish my English teacher could hear me now.
I am still doodling when I am in meetings, some habits never die! Funnily enough, I can take in conversations much better when I do this. I am pretty sure all the other doodlers out there will agree :)
It takes twenty-one days of hard work to form a good habit. Why does it only take three to slip back into bad ones?
…The complete Like – What? installation. The figures are looking outwards and the connections at the modems form a pentagram. The heads are sitting on clay balls at the top of aluminum tubes and when somebody walks past they sway ever so slightly. I will leave the rest of the interpretation up to you…. you know the characters already :)
I wanted to make new puppets last weekend, but got side-tracked with revamping my blog. I updated the Home page and the About page and added the Milestones menu, though I haven’t added the installation characters to the Character page yet. This will have to wait until next weekend.
I am now in my seventh month of writing this blog and I do notice a gradual change from the initial difficulties of sharing my art with an unknown audience. It has become easier over time. The biggest hurdle for me is seeing how many gifted people are out there, and I wonder who should read all this…. I personally would like to have more time to spend reading the other blogs and discover new ones. In the end it is no different to real life is it? You have a couple of blogs you always check up on. You hang out with some more than with others, but it changes over time until you suddenly notice that you haven’t seen one for a while.
A big fat Thank you to all the people who check regularly on my progress. I really appreciate it!
I will have to concentrate on my book for a while and I was going to check out LULU last night, but then I skyped for ages with the other side of the world, so this didn’t happen. I came across a German self-publishing site called Tredition, this could become plan B.
Reading today’s post again, I notice it is all about what I wanted to do but didn’t … I guess I will have to start on my Procrastinator puppet soon.
Smug Little Devil is the last of the figures of the installation. He does his own thing and makes sure it is always to his advantage. Empathy is a word he has never heard of. At first he seems friendly enough, but when you know him better, you will find out this is the only emotion he ever shows; a smug grin. There is no way you can figure out what he is up to, but the horns give it away, it’s nothing good :).
Now that the whole thing with the Art Awards is over, I have to re-think my marketing strategy for Hermit’s Web, my book. I still have to contact German publishers… the Frankfurt book fair is only a month away. Personally I think the story is very suitable for the German market, after all I am German and it shows in my sense of humour (okay, some people say the Germans don’t have one – we do… admittedly it’s sometimes a bit obscure).
Lately I am also considering a paper back issue to sell via Amazon. I am looking into Create Space to publish on demand (the book gets printed when somebody orders it). I have been a bit reluctant to pursue this option, as I have no experience with their print quality – in particular their colour quality. With the puppets, my book has of course colour images throughout. My worry is if they are reproduced in poor quality, it does more harm than good – Oh, these artists are picky!
Anyway, on the upside, my friends in Europe could order their copy more conveniently. So this option will get pushed around in my head for a little longer.
dedepuppets 