[Free People Tattered Up shred slip + Madigan cardigan + Free People coin necklace.]
I’m trying to decide why, at this point in my life, I’m so upset I haven’t ended up doing something more creative. The only thing I can reason, outside of general regret, is that something inside me needs to get out. You can be exerting a lot of energy, and be determined and motivated, but that doesn’t mean you’re firing on all cylinders.
If you’ve been around someone who was firing on all cylinders, you know what an incredible thing it is.
Adolescence, which took me 8 tries to spell properly, was such a colossal waste of time for me. Can we just skip talking about high school here? Such a huge waste of creative energy spent on things like chewing cupcakes and spitting them out before swallowing them (I tried that again recently and it sucked. I have an R-rated metaphor for it which I’ll leave off in favor of a resounding: EFF THAT) or creating collages of items from the J.Crew catalog. It’s sort of nauseating. The only real ties I had to creative stuff was the letters I’d write to my pal back in VA. Thank god for that.
I think this is the phase where being creative is akin to giving in and blowing it out. And I had zero time for that.
Creativity was quickly becoming something that I processed as a diversion from the areas where I wanted to be competitive. If we’re talking about expending energy, I was a bit daft with mine. Looking at course catalogues, art classes looked like the most fun, and for that reason I felt like I needed to avoid them.
What are your fondest memories of hidden nonconformist behavior? (I’ve decided that’s what we’ll call personal creativity from here on out.) For me, they’re in the want vs. should war that waged on during nights and weekends. I’d set up our video camera in my room and made music videos (odes to Robert Smith or Anthony Kiedis), or direct my friends in movies about career women being stalked by murderers on their answering machines, invent sketch comedy shows with intermissions for Dr Dre performances, and fake news broadcasts during which I’d usually find one way or another to moon the camera. We all did this, I just had a hard time managing a sort of manic dedication to it. It wasn’t just playing around for me; these were potential masterpieces that never made it into the final round.
This will start to look less like an examination of artistic outlets and more like a middle schooler’s diary, but I suppose that’s the point. Outside of sitting awkwardly around the snack bar at CCV trying not to say anything stupid, my happiest moments were with friends younger than me—they still had imaginations and weren’t self conscious about stupid stuff. I shot a pyromanic short film starring a hairspray-soaked flaming stuffed bee and my next door neighbor, Sarah, which I felt was pretty poignant at the time. When she tried to come over later to play while I had older friends over, I was so mean she left in tears. You were a good sport, Sarah.
So, you get the point.
Generally, I stayed pretty weird. I forwent watching popular shows like 90210 to draw up architectural plans, landscaping, menus and write brochures for imaginary resorts. But I wasn’t immune: my first VOGUE magazine was my greatest shame. I only flipped through it with my door locked. God forbid anyone think I was remotely interested in fashion. Fashion was like an admission of idiocy. I hid it like a Playboy.
And then, I finally got my hands on those impossible compliments. The ones against all odds. And they did something weird: they psyched me out. Briefly distracted by this odd, excruciating sport that made people cry—crew—I fell in love with a team and the superiority of pushing your physical limits. As unremarkable as I was—medium build, medium height—I crushed the first erg test. “Skinny Minnie here has the time to beat, guys.” At a team parents’ dinner, a reel of footage from practice was projected on a wall. My parents must have registered surprise to see me sprinting to the finish of a 6-mile run. My coach said, “I know. She’s actually quite the athlete.”
How I loved that compliment. I think about it at least once a week.
We won a shitload of races, other teams feared us, and for a while, again, power replaced passion. My dad could introduce me to colleagues or friends and mention my 2-a-days or how I was eating like 7 meals a day to keep up with my metabolism. Hashtag proud.
Do you remember when art started to seem angry? The snark escalated all around me. Because I could never figure out the system for saying what was quality and what wasn’t (or: what was art and what wasn’t) I backed away slowly. Y’all can sort this out on your own; I have early decision applications to fill out. High school is regimented accomplishments. That’s the point. Stack them up and place bets on college. It makes sense pursuing creativity wouldn’t be a priority, at least for me. But that didn’t stop me from being aware of those who were still making it happen. And feeling superior for my sacrifices.
The academic direction I eventually chose wasn’t purely random or reactionary. Cutting ties with creative stuff opened up another world I wanted to explore—the part of my process where genetics and family and how one is raised started to bubble up. I wanted to understand dinner table discussions. I wanted to know how to argue effectively with people who annoyed me. Wall Street Journal wishes and Dow Jones dreams. It parlayed into Ayn Rand. Public policy classes. Middle Eastern politics seminars. The emotionally wrought pleas from left-wing opponents I could squash with a well-researched rebuttal. It was my first real awakening.
Doped up with a luke-warm passion for politics—a jaded knowledge of what the world plans to take from you as soon as you’ve gotten it—I pitied creativity. Going to an all-women’s college that embraced free-thinking and arts, I thought creativity was blithely naïve. It was the classes with pass/fail grades and kindly professors. It was the loud-mouthed feminist who painted her naked body red and protested on the quad. It was the pubic hair dyeing parties I had to step over to get my frozen dinner while reading a 700-page book about Yasser Arafat. It was the pathetic aiming for, then complete overshooting of, the bull’s-eye of artistic freedom.
Yay, college.
When I was supposed to be tapping into this paradise with great abandon, it was my last course of creative chemo. Defending myself before the honor council in a trial for skipping a yoga class was the twine that tied it all neatly up with a bow. It was clear: you needed to learn how to bite back to get by. From cradling a lacrosse ball to verbally pinning someone to a wall—I knew what I needed to arm myself with.
“A friend’s brother is lending me some LSAT books; taking it in the fall,” I repeated, lining my bookshelves with political pundits and my closet with crisp button-ups. Final nail in the coffin. Nice n’ cozy.
I came out ready to cut it in the real world. Phoenix-style. An apartment in Charleston, SC. Honor council-trial hardened. A poli sci degree and a passion for justice.
[That one painted naked girl, btw, ended up fornicating with a piece of raw steak on stage in front of Kanye West in New York City. Does that count as making it?]
Alternately, some of the classmates I found to be the most pre-packaged, calculated bores ‘made it’ on another level: exciting, glamorous fashion jobs in NYC, working for high-profile famous designers. One classmate, I heard, was publishing a book. (Still pissed about that one.) Lots headed to grad school and med school. A few entering journalism, photography, business, comfy marriages, or working for politicians on the Hill. But I wasn’t jealous of anyone—not yet. Anyway, their parents were probably paying their rent.
And so we enter the workforce.
I had determined exactly what I needed to do, and it was everything I wanted, and nothing I wanted at all.
-C.
Part 2 here, and part 1 here.
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