Thursday a.m. Idea Post 09/24

After last week’s individual meeting and idea blog posting about how confused and out of sync I am with my work, I have spent the last six days contemplating many aspects of my life and how they are affecting my work. When I think of performances, I think about change, a process, a transition from one thing to another, progression or digression, movement, and action. Performances occur on a daily basis all around us and we may or may not choose to take part in the act. But performance for me has so much to do with what is changing in the action and ironically it’s the changes in life that I cannot swallow. I cannot handle when the norm that I have been accustomed to for so long is switched and I must adapt to a new habit. However, changes that don’t seem to affect me much I always notice but am not emotionally brought down by them. For example, tonight when I went into the bathroom at the restaurant I went into the third stall and the seat on the toilet was slightly pushed over to the right. This did not affect me much as you just sit wherever there is a seat. Nonetheless, I thought that was weird. Before I left the restaurant I went to the bathroom and used the same third stall and the seat on the toilet was slightly pushed over to the left. This stuck in my head. Me maneuvering around the cock-eyed toilet seats at the restaurant this evening was an act or performance in itself.
When I ask myself why I do performances my reasoning has come to be this: I do performance art because it is something I’m familiar with. I think of myself as a child as a non-stop performer. I loved the attention. Now, as an adult, I find myself still a daily performer but with different motives. I perform on a daily basis in an attempt to mask parts of who I am and if I’m very uncomfortable the performance almost becomes me conforming to whomever I’m around; all including my language, character, and my conversations. Really, we are all performers. Some of us are on the stage more often than others and some of us too naïve to believe we aren’t being true to who we really are when we act in ways other than ourselves; naïve or maybe just unwilling. I’m not sure if it’s more comical knowing you perform your life away and not doing anything about it or performing and pretending just to come to each closing day same person you woke up as. I want to grow. Becoming an artist, going to art school was my attempt and my vehicle away from my old ways and into a new life I want to make for myself. I want to tell the truth. In my youth, I was a happy performer. In my middle and high school years when obligations started to pile up, I conformed into the person/role model every one wanted me to be with very few outlets where I could simply be myself. This is not I complaining. This is a realization.
So I am either going to take part in the performances or be a part of the audience. I have been watching this tomato that sits in my kitchen window steadily decompose. It started out as a bright red, smooth skinned edible vegetable. With each day that moved forward, the tomato sat on the same windowsill in the same daily sunlight but steadily transitioned into a new form. I passed by this tomato every day, 10 or 12 times, and never felt the need to throw it away or do something with it. I just let it stay there and take shape into what it had already began to transition into. I was the audience for this performance. As the audience, I did remain passive but I was attentive and aware of the change that was going on. I would like to continue to explore situations where I can choose to be the performer or the audience.