2010/09/16

Today's Challenge: What's in your Art Pile?

So ... something interesting just came of a facebook conversation. It was one of those art, the arts, and trading movie titles conversations.

Here's the Challenge:

If you made a pile of art (of any kind) to represent you, what would be in your Art Pile? These are not necessarily your Top Ten of anything - nor are they titles of things you've enjoyed or even love. Your Art Pile is supposed to be YOU, in Art.

Here's one way I could do mine (there are different ways):
A box of movies would be on the bottom of the pile, and there would be books on top of the box, and on top of the books would be a few poems.

The movies in the box of me are:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967):
"You listen to me. You say you don't want to tell me how to live my life. So what do you think you've been doing? You tell me what rights I've got or haven't got, and what I owe to you for what you've done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you're supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don't own me! You can't tell me when or where I'm out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don't even know what I am, Dad, you don't know who I am. You don't know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life you will never understand. You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you've got to get off my back! Dad... Dad, you're my father. I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man. Now, I've got a decision to make, hm? And I've got to make it alone, and I gotta make it in a hurry. So would you go out there and see after my mother?"
The Big Kahuna (1994):
"I'm saying you've already done plenty of things to regret, you just don't know what they are. It's when you discover them, when you see the folly in something you've done, and you wish that you had it do over, but you know you can't, because it's too late. So you pick that thing up, and carry it with you to remind you that life goes on, the world will spin without you, you really don't matter in the end. Then you will gain character, because honesty will reach out from inside and tattoo itself across your face."

The Forgotten (2004):
"I had life inside me. I had life. I have a child. I have a son. I have a son, and his name is Sam, you son of a bitch."

The Village (2004):
"Heartache is a part of life, we know that now."

The Family Man (2000):
"I choose us."

Proof (2005):
"How many days have I lost? How can I get back to the place where I started? I'm outside a house, trying to find my way in. But it is locked and the blinds are down, and I've lost the key, and I can't remember what the rooms look like or where I put anything. And if I dare go in inside, I wonder... will I ever be able to find my way out? If I go back to the beginning, I could start it over again. I could go line by line, try and find a shorter way. I could try to make it... better."
On top of the box, I'd stack:

the Emily of New Moon trilogy, by L. M. Montgomery

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
, by Joanne Greenberg

The Scent of Water
, by Elizabeth Goudge
and

Beach Music,
by Pat Conroy

and I'd top it off by some of Pablo Neruda's poetry.

Leaning against the pile are the works of painters who capture a source of light - and from deep inside, there is music coming out.

And I notice something: I notice the triumph of love over confusion, oppression, and fear. I notice the power of articulated love. The honesty of love, and the love that is honesty.

Okay ---- Now YOU go. What's in your Art Pile?

5 comments:

Kathryn said...

Wow. You have quite an eclectic list here. Some of the movies i've seen or books i've read. I liked The Village.

Why the Emily books? Of all of L.M.'s books, i think that series disturbed me the most. It is also the one most biographical, i think. Curious on why you chose these?

Stephanie said...

Disturbed you? Why did the Emily books disturb you? It's very interesting to me that the Emily books get strong reactions from people --- and they often do.

Emily's in my pile because Emily's me. She's even more me than Elizabeth Bennett is, and that's saying something! I know "the flash" from my childhood too, and I have the same confusions and frustrations with people she does, and - now I think about it - feel the same way about my writing.

So I am really eager to know - why "disturbing"?

Genuine Lustre said...

Interesting that your box is full of "stacks." Mine is more like a junk drawer, so that one can rummage through it.

Baby teeth, dried up umbilical cord stumps and hair snippets from my kids. Fossils I've collected. My dad's gold class ring. My journals, my blue fountain pen. An oyster shell, a geode, and a piece of driftwood from a Lake Superior beach. A 1963 penny that lives in a tiny blue satin heel-shaped pocket - my mom and I had this in our shoes at our weddings. My baptism dress, made by my sainted grandma. A crocheted, chicken-shaped pin cushion made by my great-grandma. My genealogy notebooks. Too many lipsticks.

These are my actual treasured possessions.

Kathryn said...

The first Emily book was enchanting. (I didn't learn of L.M. Montgomery until i was a young adult. I read the Emily books when i was about 21-22.) The second one held a lot of promise & i rushed thru it. I couldn't wait to read the third & i stayed up all night reading it. I was so distressed by the mis-communication & lost years of Emily & Teddy that i almost couldn't function for a couple of days. The book seemed incomplete to finish there, & frankly i was distressed also at the pain Emily caused Dean.

But at the time, i was also in a very unhappy marriage (tho i was in denial of that). I think i needed that "happy ending" to overcome what was happening in my life.

Having come from an unhappy childhood with no Cousin Jimmy or Aunt Laura to balance things, i over-identified with the pain of Emily's childhood.

I think i was expecting another "Anne of Green Gables" & found the differences a shock.

I've re-read the books since, & still enjoy them as L.M. was a masterful writer, but these books did cause me to be distressed. As i've learned more of L.M.'s life, i know they are the most closely related to her life, which did not have a very "happy ending," either.

Stephanie said...

And I'm finally okay with the fact that great literature can sustain many viewpoints of interpretation and reaction ... and I thought the Emily books ended sublimely. I did!

Emily's distress of Dean was entirely something Dean knew all about. He was old enough (in every sense of the word) to know exactly what chances he was taking, and he knew she chose well. He gave her the house.

To ME, the most distressing part of the book was awful, awful, Aunt Ruth. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.