Art in Spite of Crazies

Varo, Ruptura, 1955

Last night I looked at my google analytics account for the first time in months. Grad school has kept me kind of out of the bloggyness since January. But watching some kids dancing with horse-shaped balloons at a Gumbohead concert yesterday, and the one balloon flying off into the sky and the child's broken face and my sweety's insertion of the word Pegasus into the lyrics of the song he was singing on stage and the whole miss-mash of that moment that seemed to me like it should have been captured on film for some reason got me thinking about art, and performance, and those who don't know when they're encountering that. This thinking took me to three instances that have pissed me off on principle: one, the flack I got in my MFA poetry program for writing "confessional" or "the wrong kind of" poetry -- i.e., anything that made people uncomfortable; two, the crazy stalky woman who was reading this blog and then interfering in my life is freaky ways based on her "impression" that I'm a nut case, based on my blog writings (there was also the incident with that obsessive x-lover, but why go into that). That is the reason I closed the blog to public viewing for a while.

An invitation from my food blog employer to dine out for free if I'd blog about it got me inspired to do some posting on my other blog over the last few days. So I promoted that a little bit, then went in to google analytics last night to see how that promotion was working (and yes, very well, thank you). Doing that, I noticed a lot of activity reported on that blog from a network location that corresponds with her physical location. No big surprise, I guess. I just hadn't thought about looking before.

Now, I'm not claiming to not be a nut case. Personally, I don't know anyone who isn't, once you get to know them. But I am claiming for all of the stand-up right to our art, and the right to laugh at people who want to confine art to whatever boxes keep them comfortable, whatever inane things they give themselves permission to write, and whatever equation they work out in their heads wherein the art equals the artist. Mr. Tarrantino, John and Paul, Mr. Picasso, Senora Allende, Ms. Rice, be careful what you write, be careful what you paint and don't get too carried away with those movies if you care about what frightened people are going to think of you as a person. And if your art happens to fall between genre lines, if it's hard to tell fact from fiction, or god forbid you should write something auto-biographical be aware there is to be no fudging, no embellishment, or else. Everyone knows that artists are the sanest people around. So we never expect writers of the not-inane to challenge us or make waves in are consciousnesses or incite our anger or our tears. Personally, if I ever publish my hard copy memoir, which I fully intend to do, I am going to put a disclaimer all prominent on the front page about how memory is flawed and besides that my life hasn't been so thrilling that no embellishment is necessary and so I make no claims for perfect accuracy of the movement of things around for dramatic effect. As a matter of fact, I'm not even going to call it a memoir. I'm going to call it an embellished life.

In the mean time, dear readers: judge away. Decide if you like me or not, if I'm a good person or not, if I'm worthy of someone you covet's time, go ahead and try to convince them otherwise if you want and tell yourself you're trying to protect them from themselves; decide that the art = the artists, decide that art should be inane (unless someone famous or Other made it), use people's art against them when it serves your interest. I can't tell you how tired I got of being censored in grad school. One unfortunate fallout has been that my internal editor became more powerful than my creative voice. This blog has been part of my work to free that voice again. It isn't easy. And I say "Fie!" to anyone who would try to make me stop it.

What I'd like for you, my fellow bloggers (and you are the people who mostly read this stuff, anyway) to take away is this one little lesson: google analytics is your friend. If you get a stalker, you can track how many times they came to your blog, what days they came there, what pages they read, how long they were on each page, how they got there, what service provider they're using, where it's located, where their computer is located (by city), what kind of operating system they're using, what their screen resolution is set at, and a whole slew of other stuff. It was months before I knew that this person was doing what she was doing, but I am now able to go back and look at the pattern of it. Let's just say she's been this blog's #1 visitor this year. Ya, I know.

And to you artists who are crippled, or think you might be undermined even a bit by that voice in your head that says Don't write that! or Bad girl! or Bad boy! or Be nice! or Don't tell people too much about yourself! or Be careful! or even That sucks, write/paint/film/play something else, to you I say: Fuck all that. Do what moves through you. Bitches and assholes and the generally frightened, contracted, jealous and crazy can find their own way in the world, God Bless Them One & All.

(Oh, and P.S. We can debate all day about what is and is not art. Good luck.)