Learning to be Something
I Do Not Want
to Un-Be.
“Creativity is relational; it needs to be approved in order to become a shared asset. Too often, however, we are afraid of this creativity, even our own, because it makes us ‘different.’”
- Carlina Rinaldi (2006)
“I’m an artist,” says the young woman sitting beside me in the hot, crowded mini-van as its engine roars into motion. She speaks to me in English amid a sea of Thai tones. “An artist,” her words repeat in my head. I have never met an “artist.” The sound of it makes me want to be closer to her, like there is some radiating force of confidence that will ooze from her creative soul to mine.
“What do you do here in Sangkhlaburi?” she inquires about my small Thai town on the remote border shared with Burma.
I want to tell her that I am like her, that I have been involved with performance for as long as I can remember, that my approach to situations is unconventional. I want to say that I, too, am an artist.
“I’m here on a fellowship.”
I later find out that her name is Robin and she comes from Philadelphia. On this four-hour bus ride, colored by rice fields and banana trees, we become fast friends. In the weeks that follow, over Thai teas in the morning market I learn that an artist can be very much like me, and not a distant name on a museum plaque.
* * *
Three years later I accept a job as a “performer/educator” with an educational theater company, touring Northern California and conveying health messages through theater. Despite my job title, I am still unable to identify myself with its language.
I ask my colleague what she says when people ask her what she does. She has been in this job for a few years. I am fishing for the word “actress.” Apart from wanting to name my creativity in this way, I think it would be immensely sexy to say at dinner parties.
“I’m a road manager for Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theater Program,” she replies to my inquiry. Ugh. That sounds so… stiff.
“That’s what you say to people when you first meet them?”
“Oh. When I meet people from outside of Kaiser I tell them I’m an actress.”
An actress! Finally affirmation of the label I crave! A wave of excitement pulses through me and I try to hide a delicious smile. I go home and practice saying, “I’m an actress.” It doesn’t roll off my tongue easily. “I work for an educational theater company.” Eh. “I am in a theatrical show everyday.”
It all still sounds like a bit of a stretch. What’s more, it feels like one. And I know exactly where it comes from.
* * *
Growing up in a wealthy, mostly white Boston suburb, despite its liberal leanings and my parents’ openness to and acceptance of all types of people, somewhere along the culture train I picked up the view that in life one must pursue a track. Perhaps it is in the legal field. Or maybe: real estate. Whatever it is, it definitely involves a desk and benefits. Being an artist, unless that entails becoming a Frida, Diego, or Picasso, does not fit into this category.
I find my thoughts surrounding the definition of what it means to be an artist incredibly confusing. The messages I have picked up about artists are: 1) artists are invaluable cultural agents and those who rise to fame shall be revered and their work will be replicated and awed by masses, and 2) those who spend time on arts but do not rise to a level of notoriety have either failed or are blithely pursuing a hobby. (“Laura, Have you met Bob? He does a lot of community theater,” followed by a demeaning smile and knowing arm squeeze.)
In this division of artists between the famous and the others, only those who rise to fame are on a “track.” Only they can claim the title “artist.” And the strange thing about this is that often fame comes posthumously.
Therefore, the thought of “being an artist” felt wrong to me. While fame would satiate my ego, it was not the reason why I pursued work in the arts. When it came down to it, following the arts was something that simply felt right and moral. But if I was not going for fame, how was I on any path that would lead me to health benefits?
As I settled into my work as a performer/ educator for Kaiser Permanente, I slowly came to embrace the “actress” term. It happened through practice really. At first I said it meekly to the family friend at dinner, then more robustly at a bar, then finally with confidence at a birthday party. I found that people did not question the veracity of my claim, nor that they humored me by nodding along incredulously, but rather that their eyes lit up when I said it. It was as though we were back in a minivan traipsing around the Thai countryside and this time I was Robin igniting something deep in the heart of all these Lauras. By stating that I was an actress boldly, I invited others into the world that Robin had shown me: a world where our traditional definitions do not need to apply.
When I moved on to other work that no longer involved stages and audiences, I continued to define myself as an actress. I even became courageous enough to say I was an artist. In fact, I cannot imagine the day when I will no longer be able to describe myself this way.
What strikes me about the evolution of defining myself as an artist is how complicit my own beliefs were in this situation. When I combated what I felt were societal pressures by connecting myself to the words “artist” and “actress,” I watched as others melted their beliefs into my own and delighted in these labels. When I claimed that I was this entity, they acknowledged me for it. When I felt distance from being an artist, the notion of it indeed felt far away.
In recently reading work by Carlina Rinaldi, it becomes clear that this desire to share one’s creativity with others and experience authentic acknowledgement in return is a shared value. (Rinaldi, 2006) This is so not only for humans, but particularly for artists who often dip their toes into water without first knowing its temperature. By having others affirm an identity that is frightening or at one point presented as the “other” is essential in the personal growth of any creative individual.
The value of being an artist to me is having the confidence to declare this identity. It feels like a political move. It feels radical. And to undergo this process of claiming such a label is a tie that binds those of us who have made this leap and create a community.
What Robin gave me four years ago in a crowded, too-small-for-long-western-legs-minivan was an invitation into greater self-confidence and, most importantly, an invitation to critical examination of my beliefs about what was and is acceptable on my journey.
References
Rinaldi, C. (2006). Creativity as a Quality of Thought. In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, researching and learning. New York: Routledge. 118.
