So, it has often happened that when I say something nice my kids stop and wait for me to follow it up with something else before they react. I get that Where exactly are you going with this? stare from them and I have always assumed that they for some reason think I'm kind of mean. I don't think I am mean, what I think I do is use sarcasm as a tool to avoid saying my own painful truth. I shared some photos I took yesterday with my friend the poet and she sent me back this reaction: "Stunning. I can't wait to write the blurb for the back of your book." Which is a very nice and caring way to respond.
So, I can't just say Thank You!!! I'm so excited with this project!! like a normal person, I have to answer in a way that is sarcastically funny and dark in a harsh reality borderline mean way. I tell her:
If you want to start writing poems about a woman who is emotionally estranged from her demented husband and is forced to stay within the confines of her own yard in between preparing his meals and cleaning his house/laundry/dishes and starts to go all Snow White with the yard birds because they’re her only in-person friends and spends her quarantine days wandering back and forth on her property waiting for her new bird friends to show up so she can take a photo you can go ahead and get a head start. I feel like your poetry with my photos would be very successful.
Which is all true. Especially that last sentence. My friend can really write, she is the kind of person who can create an entire world in 6 lines, and I feel like if we can get this right together (she really gets me, I really get her) we can market the book to both the photo world and the poetry world, but I don't come out and say that to her, instead I write that last paragraph, which I'm not sure how I'd take it if that was someone else's response to me.
Oh, who am I kidding? I somehow ended up with he world's thickest skin. I am thinking in particular about the guy in grad school who approached me after almost all of my critiques and offered apologies in case he had "offended me" with whatever it was he said during my critique. Except he is the kind of guy who talks in gibberish that just sounds intellectual so I couldn't even recall a single thing he had said because I thought he was such a total loser (also, he had absolutely rancid B.O. which made me hate him) that I didn't even listen because in my mind there were never going to be any gems of wisdom coming from his ugly pie hole.
Ooops. There I go again.
But in the end, I will not let my cruel sense of black humor stop me from getting what I want and I will send a normal person's text to my poetically gifted find. I will compose it right now... Let's see how about....
Hey Girlfriend!! I could barely sleep last night just imagining your poetry alongside my photos in a beautiful handcrafted volume that will turn poets into photography fans and photographers to poetry fans. Seriously, all kidding aside, I think that once I get this artist statement down you're going to really understand it in that special way that we get each other (I mean, you obviously already do, you'll just be able to read about it, you know what I'm saying?) thanks to our shared experiences and empathetic natures, and I am really truly fantasizing about your words with my images. I know you already get the gist of being lonelier than lonely when trapped with someone who doesn't respect or honor you, and the need to seek out comfort, and how this pandemic is panicking me, etc... So, think about this seriously. I want to collaborate. Seriously. If I am going to possibly publish a photo book anyways, I feel like it would be incomplete without your words. I once published a College Yearbook without any writing in it because no english majors would volunteer to be on the yearbook committee. It's true. Fabulous photography, but not a single piece of writing. I feel like my photo book without your poems would be as sad as that yearbook was. Love you. I am going to bug you about this. Writing poetry is better for your soul than drawing cartoons from youtube tutorials. I tried to be honest and real without making jokes. Can't do it.
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