Houdini’s Got Nothing On Me
3rd February 2019
OK I’m not talking about being dunked in an olympic sized water tank tied up to my eyeballs in chains usually used to tether continental tankers.
Nor am I talking about being in a creepy subterranean room, empty save for a rickety chair on which I am sat, strapped in a straight jacket and tied up in reems of duct tape. And given 3 minutes to get free. (I only know about this weird stuff by scanning through Netflix. Honest.)
That’s insane.
And obviously full of trickery. No, I’m talking about the real McCoy. Being a fullblown lifelong #escapeartist.
I qualify. Now before you go thinking pfft! someone unable to deal with the real world, let me argue in my defence. Its not so much to do with fear of dealing with reality; its more about having been able somehow to transit from childhood to adulthood and managed in the upheaval to bring my inner child along with me. Its pristine and innocent okay!
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde
I think all creative people manage to do it. Comes with the territory. Childhood expectations are ludicrously simple. Both children and domestic animals have it. Love willingly and be loved. Give willingly and receive in equal measure. Simples. Perfect recipe for #peaceonearth. Unfortunately, domestic animals are more capable than adults of unconditional love and unconditional giving. (Says a lot about human evolution).
But cats are questionable. I think they can be vindictive. We have a vindictive cat. He has pissed on our sofas and mattresses, basically any absorbent article he could find which would ensure removing the stench of his vengeance would be virtually impossible . He’s cost us a small fortune in replacements. But he’s adorable, except for his periodic compulsive incontinence, so we keep him.
As far as I know, I wasn’t a bed wetter in my childhood. In spite of my abandonment issues. I think my strongest childhood relationship was with my Ayah (nanny), given that my parents chose to be very much absent in my formative years, doing the things that all colonials did, which involved much child-free partying. I don’t judge them nor love them less. And I think you could only understand if you also were a child of that unique bizarre space in time: the BRITISH colonial world.
Nor did my own kids thankfully subject me to the horrors of multiple bed wetting. Replacing four mattresses every year would have probably tipped me into putting them up for adoption. Given my struggling solo artist divorced motherhood status, you understand, I’m sure. Nothing heartless. But of course I would never have done it….I’d just have had them sleep on the tiles till they controlled their bladders. On the terrace tiles that is.
Hold on, how on earth did I end up delving into bondage and bed wetting when my intended topic was escapism? Even my inner child is starting to call me infantile. Apologies, behold the wonders of an artist’s erratic mind at work. Or are there some subliminal connections to be made. Don’t look at me for answers. You’d be more productively engaged if you were sitting on your lawn. Watching the grass grow.
Now if there’s one painting of the many I painted during my 13 year art career in the Middle East which I think best reflects and encapsulates my escapism syndrome, it’s this one.
This space in which I briefly sat, and later painted, spoke to me of blissful sanctuary. Relief and retreat from the frenetic highway of life. And why not, if one can. Its all far too busy and stressful out there. The very people who create these desert encampments to which they periodically escape, driving far out into the desert in their luxury RMVs, are indulging in nostalgic reminiscing. Of a simpler albeit harsher lifestyle far removed from their real world of urban comforts and conveniences. But the grounding and rooting, and nourishing of self-identity might well make their indulgence in romantic nostalgia more real than their real worlds.
I do the same when I create art. I can’t pinpoint exactly what I’m missing (a few marbles maybe), or what I’m longing for (dearest departed Mother, now at this past midnight hour please do not start shifting furniture in the room as I type), but I know of only one certainty: if for some catastrophic reason I could no longer paint, my sense of self-identity would likely collapse like a deck of cards when someone, on a windy night, suddenly opens a door.
Reminds me for some reason (erratic artist brain at work again) of one of my favourite poems.
T.S.Elliot
Excerpt from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
“And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea. “
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