I Thank Art for That
A Happyplaces story by Devon Reid, illustrated by Rich Wells
I felt happy today. My boyfriend and I have been going through a difficult time for a few months. We took a long weekend and in that long weekend, the edges soften, the walls crumbled and what lay underneath was remembering who we are — why we fell in love — why we want to continue loving.
What also lie beneath were pain, shame, and vulnerability. Shame about things in our lives that we were not proud of, things that haunt us. Situations, people and things we could of handled differently, better. But could we have? No, we did the best we could with what we had at the time.
To get to this place of truth, or something real, authentic and raw — is a place of happiness, freedom, deep appreciation, compassion and love. This place is happiness for me. To feel the chasm between my experience and myself close into a river, to feel the chasm between someone I love and myself turn to a wide-open and sunny field full of potential, is happiness.
In many ways this happiness is subtle — no great horns blowing, no incredible external experiences, no dances and no money raining down on us. It is the gentle unfolding of layers, it is the well of feeling rising, it is the release of all the bullshit — the stuff that chains us to old stories, old ways of doing, chains us to protective shields that honor what is dead and gone and not what is in front of us, living, breathing, being.
To see him again, to really see. That curtain went down and there he was and in me an all-encompassing love. Not the love of beginnings, not the projection of unmet needs or shadowed experienced. The love that comes with presence, less of an arrow that projects to the heart but a love that is a body of water, endless, supportive, expansive, flowing. This love is simply there.
To really see another, to really experience myself, to enter into relatedness has been and still is scary for me. It is my ‘edge’. It is the place where demons rise, memories stir, and it is sometimes the place where panic sets in. It is the place that can be avoided through my thoughts, through my busyness, through blame or avoidance.
I am a visual artist and the process of making art has taught me much about living through unknown places in myself, sitting with the not knowing, sitting with my experience, not running or hiding or moving away from the canvas. Moving through these feelings towards action, the brush, the paint and the making of art. Unsure of how it will unfold, how it will end. A deep sense of faith in the emergence supports this process. Experimenting, re experimenting.
The canvas will reflect where I am dishonest with myself. The painting will tell me when I have left my direct experience to try to come to some resolution before it’s time. Sometimes I want it to be finished and I know in my gut it is not. I do not look for perfection, or someone to please or think about who will buy it (although these thoughts arise in the process — little demons). I know when it is finished as a felt experience, I have done the best I could do with what I have right now. Without honesty, without the capacity to sit with all my feelings, what I paint will be a reduced and diminished version of art, a ‘husk’. I also know that when a person stands with my painting they can feel (they may not consciously know) whether I have been able to get ‘myself out the way’ and let life work through me, or whether it was all ego. All ‘ego’ art works can feel this way, they can feel superficial or that there is something missing we can’t put our finger on, or unfinished.
Relating is similar but more challenging because we have another living being in front of us, with all of her or his own experience in the mix. Yet the painting taught me to stay, to reach deeper for the insecure, the vulnerable, to know the irrational and to know when I want to run, hide, blame. It also taught me to stay with the joy, the excitement, the feeling of a presence beyond my personal self. Depending on our life experiences even the positive feelings stir us to confusion and wanting to move away from something unfamiliar or that may overwhelm us. So joy can trigger fight or flight just as mush as anger.
To be able to translate my art making process to my life, to my relationships to my vocation as a facilitator has been tremendously supportive. To take something I love doing, to distill it and to have that support all aspects of my life is a happy place for me. To share this little secret to support other people is a happy place for me. It might not always turn out, I may loose myself over and over again, run away from my ‘edge’ but the bodies memory of art making, my experience of staying with what is, is something I can return to — if I allow myself — I thank the Art for that.
