Passive Confessions

I used to be a professional belly dancer… well I guess I still am technically, but without the ability to gig or teach it doesn’t really feel right to say it that way and hasn’t since April 2020. I used to perform every week and teach classes and private lessons and, to be honest, things were going well. So well that I had finally given notice at my other job and was ready to go all in with this dance thing. I was overjoyed about this and the confidence it gave me fueled ideas and choreographies, big plans for my future as a performing artist.

When the pandemic hit and it became clear that it wasn’t going to be a brief, almost vacation-like break from normal life, I, like so many other people, felt overwhelmed by desperation and helplessness. I honestly can’t say what caused me more anxiety and sadness: the inability to make money or the sudden loss of the joy of performing. It wasn’t one or the other… it was BOTH. Coupled together I felt a wave of depression slip over me as sneaky as the southern summer heat. One day you’re fine, the next it’s hard to breathe.

Now at that time we had a housemate, my partner's cousin, living with us. I’m forever grateful because it provided another outlet of expression, another person to converse with and, maybe most importantly of all, a fellow artist to be creative with! We would do photoshoots and write poetry, wax nostalgic about the dreamy freedoms of yesteryear. One random and otherwise uneventful summer night we decided to set up on the living room floor with some cushions and a low table, about 5 different types of glue, 2 pairs of scissors and several piles of old magazines and books. We had nothing else to do, why not collage?

The first thing I noticed was just how differently two people can approach the same craft. She had a plan and searched for the pieces to fulfill it (I believe at that time it was a series of love letters between Romeo and Juliet), I had no plan and fluttered aimlessly from image to image, slowly cutting and gathering piles of what I guess defines my aesthetic. Bold manila yellows, vintage graphics and many stacks of letters and words formed my first collection of materials. It began subtle and sparse.

After that first night I felt alive in a new and old way, my artist self expressed through a different craft. It wasn’t long before I cleared off my desk and designated it my collaging station. Drawers filled with torn out pages and envelopes of various aspects: solid colors, small faces, good backgrounds, you get it. We searched for garage sales and hit the motherload in Metairie one afternoon; came home with boxes and boxes of books ranging from Bibles to architecture, National Geographic sets to strange old southern novels filled with things that should have never been said.

I might mention here that I am also a mother to a wonderful 8 year old girl, the light of my life and an all-around incredible human being to share my days with. This fact is important in understanding my time, or lack of personal time to be exact. After cooking and cleaning and reading and laughing and all the other fun and sometimes not-so-fun parts of mothering were done, well that was my time. I would sit for hours and until way too late, sometimes just cutting out images. Other times laying them out slowly and testing out combinations. Slowly so as to not create anything resembling a wind and risk losing a creation not yet glued down.

This became my gig-replacement. Systematic and careful cutting, the borderline ridiculous joy I get from organizing and, finally, the satisfaction of creating something unique to share with others. I was making art again. Slowly but surely I bought more tools and created a new routine. It may have stolen some hours that should have been allotted for slumber but hey, that’s just the way it goes. When I would finish a collage, the first thing I would do was bring it over to the scanner and create a digital copy, safe from physical damage. Then I would place it in an emptied chocolate tin with Auderey Hepburn on the lid, some thing I just had to buy one time while running errands, and she would guard them in her own charming kind of way.

Being honest, it would be months before I actually shared these pieces with anyone. I decided to choose three from a series and get them printed as greeting cards… they addressed the times we were in. They arrived one day in the mail: impressively glossy, professional and shining bright through their somewhat dark sentiment. The plan was to share them as a product: unique greeting cards for an exceptionally anti-social time.

A new type of critical eye, judgement and reflection grew in me once I shared these images and it continues to this day. A dance is experienced in person and may remain, dream-like, in the audience's memory, or perhaps captured on video from a usually unfortunate angle. But those collages, they were the first pieces of visual art I’d released into the world. They may have only measured 4 x 6 inches but they felt like a really big deal. I had never been embarrassed or weary of stating I was a dancer, but to claim the title of artist was surprisingly frightening. I think what scared me most of all was to give-up, even momentarily or partially, on my previous plan and identity.

In my life as a dancer, there wasn’t always room for expressing my emotions. Those were often dictated by the setting or music. With collaging I was able to “say” things I hadn’t even verbalized, or maybe couldn’t will into sound. These pieces often conveyed my deepest thoughts, distanced from my personal self by way of scissors and glue, old words from old books, a river of red rippled glass, a forlorn look and a brief remark. A lot can be said in three words.

You see, the pandemic hit right after a fairly significant juncture in my life. In the months leading up to it I had swiftly and painfully become a single mother as well as a single woman for the first time in 9 years, and then began a reconciliation with my partner. To say it in a few words: yeah, I had a lot on my mind. Processing and healing had only just begun when the whole world flipped upside down. In times of stress, in this case on a global level, it is easy and sometimes necessary to sweep some issues under the carpet because there are more immediate problems to face like rent, bills and how to afford food. We all know that this isn’t healthy in the long-term, just common under the circumstances.

This new “me time” and art form let me innocently cut and paste phrases on images, unafraid of a response. Just there. They weren’t an argument or conversation, they were my passive confessions, released from my mind and heart without repercussions. In this way I created my own type of therapy, almost a Rorschach test. You could sit anyone down with a pair of scissors, a glue stick and a magazine and each person would create something different. Even now I’ll look at something and realize new meanings, perhaps things I wasn’t ready to acknowledge yet and in those moments I couldn’t be more grateful. The fear ebbs just enough to reveal my shore of confidence and say:

I am an artist.

I am an artist.

I am an artist.