Starting Over, Back In The Same Place
Leaving an old life and creating a new one = starting over.
The real starting over involved coming back to where I’d started over in the first place, in 1971, as an angsty young art student: Providence, RI.
Coming to Providence to attend art school, I (along with all the other angsty freshman art students) was intent on becoming the artist I knew I was supposed to be. At the age of 18, having left the confines of a small city in upstate New York, being in Providence felt like being transported to another planet.
The old brick sidewalks, New England Colonial architecture, historic views and stunning urban skyline were fodder for art, poetry, romance, creative questing. I reveled in my newfound freedom in this historic city in The Ocean State, loving the grittiness and mystery it afforded. I was a fortunate, if naïve, art student, and eventually graduated with a BFA.
Fast forward to another starting over, when I left Providence, in 1979, and began another lifetime, post-art school, post-Providence, in Connecticut. A totally different life, resulting in a marriage, a family and a house in the woods. A 180 degree shift from the naïve, questing art student. That lasted about thirty years.
My next starting over was in 2010, when I made the rash decision to leave that life and build a new solo one, by moving back to Providence. I left my friends, community and deflating marriage, and moved back to my old art school stomping grounds, feeling as if I knew no one, but at least I remembered how to get around. Providence had changed, in some ways, much for the better- the downtown area had been revitalized, top-notch restaurants were burgeoning, the art scene was flourishing, as was my alma mater.
I ended up discovering that in fact, I did know some people, began running into old acquaintances and making new art connections. Suddenly the starting over became a renewal of a past self.
Old neighborhoods I had known thirty years before became new ones. Old friendships became renewed. Places that held old memories began to be new places with new memories created. Walking on the historic brick sidewalks on College Hill, I saw young art students heading to class carrying portfolios, absorbed in intense conversation, exuding that air of creative, tormented uniqueness that belongs to all art students, and I recognized my younger self.
I believe we’re continually starting over. I’m still creating this life, having recently relocated to an open loft space, the kind I’ve always dreamed of living in. It feels like it was waiting for me to move into it; Providence feels like it was waiting for me to return. After all, it’s providential, it connotes fortune. It’s auspicious, favorable, fortuitous, propitious, opportune, promising.
Who wouldn’t want to start over in Providence, RI?
Oh yes, and I’m the artist I knew I was supposed to be.
This piece is my response to KiKi Walter’s January prompt “Starting Over” for The Memoirist
