Artful Living

Art and gender are intimately intertwined in me. Both are subjected to confining definitions and plagued by a sense of entitlement on the part of a society whose members believe they can impose their own fears, insecurities and need for conformity on others. Both are also my haven, my door into the universe, and perhaps most of all my key to connecting to others in my world and with myself as I exist in the world.

I’ve never been ‘good’ at drawing. My brother Gary was good at drawing. I’m the youngest of three ‘boys’, based on the old paradigm. The terms ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’, when imposed presumptuously, are archaic on my planet, and how I see my life now. I’m not from that old planet, I never belonged there, and I’m living on my planet now. Gary was the middle and I’m the youngest. Douglas was the oldest child. Gary was very good at drawing, was a sensitive and creative person in every way, and very much loved by the nuns at St. Bernards Catholic School in Riverdale Maryland where I grew up. Gary could draw people! They could draw hands!

I use They and Them pronouns when I talk about Gary now, as I do for myself. They were a person of many spirits and one precious and kind soul.

I couldn’t draw well but loved to draw. First it was race cars, particularly drag racers in profile with giant rear wheels, a long rail of a body, tiny wheels in front and a massive engine. Then tanks and airplanes, with the echoes of World War II still vibrating into the Vietnam War, so real and pervasive, when I was a child in the 1960’s. Bombs were fun to draw as they streamed out of the aircraft and exploded in mushrooms all over the people below. And to think I was more ashamed of drawing dicks and tits when I was in my thirties than drawing the carnage of war when I was seven. When it came to drawing people, as a child and into adulthood, I never was able to really let that flow naturally until the last year or two, after I came out and welcomed my woman inside to take my hand.

My drawings of women when I was a child were especially interesting because they weren’t the kind of feminine that was expected. When I drew women of different professions for a grade school assignment (the Catholic Church was more progressive then than it is now), I remember someone commenting that my lady doctor looked like a linebacker. I was drawing then the kind of strong women I always found attractive and later drew in my erotic sketches, often still doctors and nurses! I drew non-binary people. The gentle and lithe figures wouldn’t flow from me until I discovered and accepted that spirit within myself. There’s a whole universe to gender in art that I’m now beginning to fully explore and express.

In the late sixties and into the early seventies I was faced with stress and violence at home and at school. My oldest brother Doug returned from Vietnam facing PTSD and addiction problems that  made my time at home a constant stress, rocked with outbursts and the oppressive and hidden currents of my parents failing marriage. My time taking refuge in my friendship with Gary faded as he grew into teenage years and spent time with his friends and was increasingly pulled into a world of drugs. School was a constant barrage of conformity for a child who did not fit. From wearing school uniforms to being called a freak for reading Karl Marx and the Bhagavad Gita, and creating presentations in favor of vegetarianism in 1968, I was faced with constant oppression. Not only my ideas were under attack. I was bullied because I was thin and gentle and more feminine than the boys. I did not play sports. There was strict separation by gender so there was little opportunity to develop the kinds of friendships with girls I needed to survive.

Art was my haven and my rescue, as was my sense of humor and the friendships of others who could see how funny the world is. In high school in the seventies and then exploding in college I began to open and expand my idea of art. The Beatles were a huge part of my cultural experience of the sixties, and it was John Lennon and Yoko Ono who led me down a deep line of inquiry into art. Their actions for peace, the Bed-Ins and ‘War is Over’ campaign led me to learn about Fluxus, John Cage, and Andy Warhol. I found a whole magical world of wild individuals, each one different and full of unique ideas, that expanded my definition of art to include everything, including myself! I realized that I am art, that what I’m doing right now is art, not only the process and result but also my intentions, ideas and decisions I make. There are no boundaries, and the boundlessness itself is art.

The Artful Life
12/9/2018

Live life as an artist
Live life as art
Many think that artists
Take elements of everyday life
or elements of utilitarian life
and elevate them
appreciate them
and set them apart from that life
to appreciate their beauty
or their essential nature in some way

But living life artfully
means approaching life
as an artist approaches a project
when a sculptor sees a stone
or a painter a canvas
they see the possibilities within that space
they see a direction
and they may see a goal
or vision of a future state
or they may see a direction alone
and allow the future state
to come about on its own in time

with this vision in mind
the artist gathers their tools
plans their project
and sets about carefully
with passion and patience
to realize their work of art

live and appreciate your life this way
to live artfully

Most people have a more or less
set concept of how the universe works
they see you through that framework
of how the universe works
whether it’s at the will of God
according to principles of physics
or the complex psychology of the brain
They want to experience life
within this framework
and relate to you
within this framework
However, there are rare people
who don’t want to experience universe
by experiencing a concept of universe
They want to experience universe directly
Removing all the filters and limitations
of expectations
that define experience as having met
or not met their expectations
The rare person
the person living life artfully
experiences universe
above the level of expectations
experiences each moment
as an act of creation
with guidance, with direction
but ultimately without expectation
knowing that the experience of creation
and the experience of life
must be experienced directly
in unity with the universe
from within the universe itself

In the context of art I could do anything. That was the first key to becoming myself. That provided me with a safe space in which to exist as myself, if only in my imagination. Gender dimorphism faded in my favorite artists; David Bowie, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol. Sexuality was free in art and artists, and erotic art and pornography excited me in every way into orgasms of body and mind. I needed this freedom, but there was still shame attached to it from my upbringing that caused me to bury, hide and sublimate some, and transform and insinuate others in external presentation.

I didn’t know I was transgender. I knew I was an artist. Drawing had nothing to do with it, Duchamp taught me that. Artist is my identity, my way of looking at the world and living artfully. But something was holding me back from taking the stage and giving art the full control it needed in my life. That was the release of being a man. Being a man came with guilt, shame and holding back when the woman in me expressed herself. Scores of destroyed erotic drawings, hidden pornography, notebooks with fantasies thrown literally into a fire. I didn’t know Her, I didn’t know who She was, I didn’t know that she was me. I wanted to be the girl in the pictures. I wanted to move my body in long curved with gently swaying hips. I wanted the makeup and the clothes that make me feel sexy, cool and beautiful. I struggled with a lifetime of addiction entered to escape from myself.

I’m in a new relationship with myself now, as well as a new relationship where I’m experimenting with being my true self, honestly and openly. So much of my compartmentalized life is coming together now, because into the arts and crafts box of my experience I’ve poured the warm glue of my gender truth, of gender freedom. It’s only now coming into contact with all the elements of my memories and proclivities, as it brings all the wild elements of my life into the circle of one Me. True Me. I feel my body relax when I accept myself, especially when I accept openly the things that once weighed me down with shame. Bra, panties and dresses. Masturbation, sex toys and kinky sex. Playing with my inner child. All while sober!

I’m an exhibitionist. I feel a deep need to share my experience and to be experienced by my world and the people in it. I want to show me to you. I want to stop hiding all the best parts of me, and the best way to stop hiding is to start showing.