Friday Letter to my Loves
On storming, brownoutting, how LIFE is for LIVING, Nan Goldin, the oxy epidemic, and how silence = death
Good morning! It's Friday! Friday, I'm alone! What are you doing? Glad to see the end of the work week? Or do your days (like mine) not really flow as work or not work days? More like work or not work hours? That's how I tend to roll.
I haven't written in a while. It's been a bit of a crazy week! I went to a two day long razoring intensive workshop in Sacramento for Monday and Tuesday - which was really fun. I learned some things and got a bit lit, creatively. I got to drive home in that epic storm! My goodness I thought the wetlands out there were about to take over that one long stretch of the 80. Since then, we've been in various stages of blackout and brownout. The brownout was weird and made everything seem like it was haunted. just a trickle of electricity - enough to keep my LED string of lights flickering, but not enough to have wifi. For some reason, my furnace - which hadn't been turned on for 2 years (I use my gas fireplaces) turned on and then didn't want to be turned off. It was all very strange and a bit of a scary encounter when I was tired at 11pm. And then the next day we worked in the dark without heat for our hi-lights in the salon. That was weird, too. And everyone's phones were freaking out, all the time. I'll tell you what... when the big one hits? We are not prepared.
Another storm coming in a couple of days. Remember when El Nino was a big deal? Now it's all about the atmospheric rivers. Trees are down everywhere. When the redwoods start to just fall - you know things are in a revolt. You know there's an issue. I thought about calling my friend who has a mobile tree mill - but wondered what the rules were for Berkeley and downed trees. Do the folks who own the property get to sell that wood? I guess my friend would have known.
Apparently my aunt is worried that the house above me is going to slide down into me. Time will tell! Here's the thing about life lately - I feel like my ability to deal while being perfectly regulated is ever expanding. Maybe this is a midlife thing? Or maybe it's just a me thing after I spend a hundred million dollars on therapy and coaching while going through a series of traumatic life events. Maybe it's a me thing when I realize that I am a dog person and that need a dog around me, most times. Maybe it became more of a thing when I realized that I actually am a musician at heart and need a guitar around me, most times. Whatever it is, I'll take it. Slam that house right into me and I'll go down meditating on what an incredible journey this has all been.
A while back, maybe a year and a half ago, I lamented to a then lover that sometimes I just didn't get the point of life. I was frustrated and still felt very disconnected all the damn time. This is a recurring phase that I go through that I understand is an affect of folks with c-PTSD. Call it loss of faith. Chronic loneliness. Complete distrust. Ridiculous hyper-vigilance. Serious disconnection. I was still in the haze of it a year and a half ago. Felt like I was going through the motions. Putting on the face I knew my children or my friends needed to see, but not really feeling connected to that face. Anyhow, I said to this person who was briefly in my life, "I just can't understand the point to living anymore. Just. Why? It's all so ridiculous"
That sounds bad, right? It wasn't the worst I've been, by far. It was just this sense of having lost the zest in all of this absurd. I think that what keeps you young at heart is your delight - or even just interest - in having this life experience - and I wasn't experiencing that delight at all. I was faking all delight for a good long spell there.
My lover friend, with whom I no longer speak (but, like, not for horrible dramatic reasons because we are old), who will not be a huge part of my life story, said something that I've dwelled on ever since. He said, "You know what life is for, Kellianne? LIFE! is for LIVING!"
I didn't mean to go off on that tangent and yet, I guess I did. Last night, I watched the HBO documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, about artist Nan Goldin. It's as much about her body of artwork and history as it is about her radical and successful protest against the Sackler family and their extreme, incredible prescription profits from the opioid epidemic. It's a powerfully layered documentary about how we are to face this epidemic, how we are to fight the forces that put us here, and how - if people aren't allowed to live the wildly artistic and queer lives they feel compelled to live - they are forced into depression, recurring trauma, sickness and death.
I've been a Goldin fan for a long time. When she made headlines in 1988, I was young and scandalized. Later, when I studied her a bit in my early 20s, it was a big lesson for me on the trouble with media spin. Her photographs speak of a young life I feel I lived - but was never able to capture. The beautiful young people who come out at night to regale and worship one another. The artists and the freaks. The beauty and the bloodshed. The ballad of sexual dependancy. My people, these people who were asked to raise themselves because no one quite understood where they fit. Probably they were parented by people who also didn't fit, but were forced into a standard set of expectations. Nan captured it for her era. Every layered photograph looks like a character - but the character is a very person in their moment, as they feel inside. Beauty and bloodshed. A Nan Goldin slideshow is never not compelling.
Anyhow, in watching this documentary, these beautiful people, in watching the nature of Nan Goodwin's strength and ability to have the Sackler name taken off several major museum galleries, I am reminded of how LIFE is for LIVING. What a powerful expression of the radical nature of art. Shots of her protest in the the Guggenheim made me applaud with tears and delight. You should 100% watch this documentary if you haven't already. I will probably watch it again.
Let's talk about how life is for living. Let's talk about how we shouldn't stigmatize all the death we see around us in the opioid crisis. Let's talk about how major, major profit came pouring into one family from of the oxy epidemic. Let's talk about how our lost lovers, our friends, our parents, our siblings never stood a chance in this epidemic. They aren't dead or dying because they were weak. They are dead or dying because they were prescribed incredibly addictive drugs and then they couldn't stop because these drugs change your body. On top of that, they needed to be silent in their addiction and were offered little help. We need to normalize their experience so that it doesn't need to be hidden - clearly, we need to talk again and again, on and on, about how silence = death.
I hope you are surviving. I hope, even, that you are surviving while experiencing moments of wild, unbridled happiness. Even more, I hope that you are surviving while experiencing moments of beautifully quiet contentment and fullness presence. I love you. Life is for living, and I'm glad we are living it together.