On Freedom and Permission

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I was never permitted to spend the night at the Coronado Club swimming team lock-in. But oh how I longed to spend the night with my teammates. Nor was I allowed to experience the lock-ins associated with summer bible camp. And though, not as cool as my swim teammates, still an experience that I felt I was missing out on. It probably wasn’t until I was a senior in high school that my mom finally allowed me to spend the night at my best friend’s home, seven years after meeting her parents. It’s not like I wasn’t allowed out of the house, or that my friends couldn’t spend the night at our place, but to be granted a pass for the night out was a very rare occasion. So many of my tween and teen fights with my mama, in addition to what clothes I wanted to wear on my body, were about my desire to spend the night elsewhere… only to be granted until about 10:30, 11:00pm if I was lucky, when Dad would be sent to fetch me and bring me back home after the nightly local news. I was chatting with my Hermana last week about understanding this impulse, now that I tend to “get horizontal” around 8:00pm. Imagining having to get out of my comfy, warm home to go pick up an adolescent past my bedtime gives me the shudders. That I am now the age my parents were when I was 18, has brought with it plenty of compassion for them. And, the wounded child within still harbors some deep rage at her perception of being trapped, contained, not allowed the room to experience what others did. Fear of missing out before FOMO as an acronym even existed.

As a younger person, I remember the hot shame of having to leave the party early. Not only was I leaving the party typically right when things started to really get going, but before I could drive myself and finagle a car out of the garage, I had the extra layer of having my parents come take me away. As a young person is oft known for seeing themselves as center of the universe, I used to spend the agonizingly long drive home with a parent behind the wheel, ruminating on what those who were able to keep partying thought of me. What a loser they must have thought, why even invite her if she can’t even stay for the fun stuff? In hindsight, I’m pretty certain my mama was right - “no one’s gonna care” - though even recognizing that now feels like I wasted so many good years of angst. I now know, that this attention on my whereabouts was its own form of care; Mama would tell me she couldn’t sleep if any of us were not under her roof. Again, as a person cohabitating, I get the impulse, as my anxiety also manifests as a deep desire to control everything within my power to do so.

Perhaps it is this season of my life that has me reflecting on how I often feel a deep need for some kind of external permission in order to do what it is that I am trying to do. I’m currently finding myself between projects, about to begin the painting era on some new things, anxiously waiting on applications for funding, employment, and projects that could shift my daily trajectory, while embarking on some new experiences once Spring springs. It is not only the missed out slumber parties of decades ago weighing me down, but as an elder-millennial, I’m recognizing my social conditioning has been rife with the heavy sense of surveillance either from external or internal sources. Not only am I the first born daughter in my family of origin, but I also came of age in the era of Nancy Reagan’s D.A.R.E. program, and grew up Catholic. There were so many messages about what I should and shouldn’t do governing my reality in addition to the overarching societal scripts on who I should be in the body I was born into. It really is no wonder how much I have had to overcome in terms of the doubt, guilt, and worry involved with navigating a world with clear guardrails on appropriate versus so-called inappropriate behavior. And now, having freed myself from the cycle of academia that is a system completely structured on external validation (think grades, passing/failing, achieving tenure and climbing ranks), and as an adult with adult responsibilities, I am the one ultimately granting myself permission to do, or try things.

In the case of creating art, this has become a tricky entanglement. First, overcoming the initial resistance of wondering if I could even be an artist, required such a leap of faith and reconditioning of my thinking that I truly marvel at my personal transformation. Having overcome this limited belief I once held about myself, I now find my struggle to be a daily one, in which I am constantly asking, “can I do that?” Or, “is that even allowed?” Some of this worry I’m sure, is rooted in my mostly self-taught positionality - that I didn’t earn a terminal degree in painting gives me pause on having what I suppose would be a more inherent feeling of permission to do what I do. Though even with a terminal interdisciplinary degree I know I’d be (am) equally burdened by what is or is not allowed. Even leaving academia sometimes feels like something I wasn’t allowed to do. Not so much in the actual act of departure (clearly because I am no longer on the payroll) but in the sense of disappointing others. I guess, little me’s concerns over the slumber party friends judgment mirrors the flavor of dismay of my colleagues I left behind.

What heartens me as I continue to explore this part of me that seeks permission, validation, acceptance in my creative practice is that while those deep concerns sit atop my shoulders, I still forge on. Often through much deliberation, angst, worry, rumination, negotiation, but I do the thing even when it’s difficult. Recently working on a painting that is a new process for me, I was faced with so many moments at which I was unsure if I could do what I wanted to do. Part of this is liberatory in the studio. One of my favorite parts of being an artist is the problem-solving element. Much of studio practice is living the edict, “where there’s a will, there’s a way” in terms of thinking up something that I then would like to execute in the material realm. “Can I do that?” has a different ring to it in my studio practice, no longer bound to an external validator providing the proper permits, but rather a question inspiring one to figure it out. Can I make a quilted painting? Can I better integrate my elements of fabric arts with my painted marks? Can I find the right way through the sewing that doesn’t wreck my hand? Can I be skilled enough to marry my content and form?

I’m struck by this shift in myself because it feels like an important healing moment. “Can I do that?” in the safety of my studio is met with “if you want to try, sure!” What a beautiful response instead of “no,” or “I don’t think so.” It’s up to me to try, and see what comes of it. That freedom has been meeting me in the pause between my call and response, “Can I?”

“Of course.”

I’m not saying it’s always smooth sailing during the try to find out phase, but what I can say, is even in the worst thralls of doubt, trepidation, worry, fretting on if the painting is going to come out the way I want it to, that feeling is nothing like the pit-in-my-stomach worry of seeking permission from others. The “can I” question, is my freedom portal, the “should I?” question, on the other hand, remains my anxiety’s home.

Today my most difficult “can I” questions are around new ways of being. Can I make work that doesn’t have a show due date? Can I make a living from my paintings? Can I sell out a series? Can I pull an all-nighter if I want to? Can I find joy on my life path? Can I make meaning out of this time I have here, in my studio and beyond? Can I find new ways to define success for myself? Can I live in such a way as to not disappoint myself? I think the answers to these questions are, yes, with caveats, like if I keep painting, if I feel called, if I can pay attention, if I can stay open, if I can remain adaptable, loosen up my need to control or know. I know I can, now it’s a matter of will. Which thankfully for me, I also have been gifted in droves, my tenacity, my endurance, my willingness to see something (most things) I start to the end. It’s my double-edge character trait of fortune and flaw. I know I can because I have and I will. These are the gifts also granted by being queer. Being out, unapologetic, and loud about it. Pushing against the edges of conformity, gnawing at the forces that require us to show up in the way we are supposedly supposed to. I’ve been ruminating on this permission thing because transgender and queer folks are currently enduring record-breaking legislative efforts to deny our ability to access gender-affirming medical care, to dress our bodies and perform and entertain others through the art form of drag, to simply exist and be. Having lost the cultural battle of whether or not trans folk can exist, conservative politicians in the US have shifted toward a stance that they should not be allowed. They should not be permitted. What ridiculousness this is! Because we will continue to exist and push the boundaries, and seek freedom in all the ways it’s purported to exist for us, and beyond the ways that it has been denied.

Under these conditions, my meager “can I” in the studio feels like such low stakes. Though my struggles are your struggles, because as a good painter friend told me last week, “we’re all one and shit.” Drag bans affect all of us, because we are all in drag, all the time when we’re clothed. And once we all come to that recognition the freer we will all be on this planet we’re sharing. Perhaps this is the twenty-first century dilemma of our times, an era in which it is possible for us to have as much freedom as can be conceived and constant pressures from within and from those with power to attempt to curtail it. We don’t need permission to exist, we already are here. We don’t need permission to create, we’re already doing that. I’ve got to get to some other tasks within and beyond my studio, so I will simply leave us with this. “Can I…?”

Sí, se puede.

What I’m Reading

Luster by Raven Leilani

A weird yet enthralling tale of a young Black woman’s early twenties chaos. The main character gets sucked into a white hetero couple’s marriage in a thrilling manner of intimacies in more than only the sexual usual entanglements. She lives her life as if she has needed no one’s permission for anything. The writing was also intimate in that through Edie’s mind, we get to see her making the choices that twenty year olds are apt to do, while bucking conventions and learning about herself. As she fumbles her way though joblessness and houselessness and interpersonal turmoils she also is navigating her urges to paint and claim the identity as artist.

What I’m Watching

Yellowjackets (streaming on Showtime)

I know I’m a bit late on this trend, as the second season will be dropping in March, and I didn’t have access to showtime until recently so when I started this show whilst Vaimo was in quarantine from a Covid infection, it kept me company on these long winter nights with a touch of nostalgia for the 90s (who knew that would ever hit me?!), and the thrill of a couple of unraveling mysteries. For those not in the know the show follows a team of high schoolers who win their New Jersey state soccer tournament and are bound for nationals only to be downed by a plane crash. While stranded somewhere in the northern part of North American forest we see the young women and a couple of men who survived the crash try to navigate their surroundings as help does not come for them. Meanwhile we also are treated to a version of the cast in their current lives in the current time, making this thrilling television. I’ve got two episodes left and then I am going to rejoice when the next season comes out (in March!!). Tune in for a show about navigating trauma and its lingering effects with a banging soundtrack from my youth.

Creative Ritual

A quick turn around from one of my applications for a digital residency on Instagram through Mineral House Media was approved and now completed! I was the February Artist in Residence sharing my experiences of my studio practice with their audience through the form of an Instagram takeover for two weeks. It pushed me out of my comfort zone in terms of sharing a lot of works in progress instead of the typical more polished work I typically enjoy sharing on my IG feed. It also had me in my studio logging more painting hours than I have in a good long time. Felt good, highly recommend! Had a painting rejected from another exhibition, this time in Michigan, but it’s all good, I’m wracking up my rejections for my personal goal. Submitted the fellowship app I was working on, now we wait to see if I’ll be permitted to continue my studies or, if the universe has other plans for my talents! Either way, we will paint! Also, after I hit send here, I'm packing and heading out for a road trip vacation with Vaimo. Consider this my out of the studio message!

Questions to ponder

What permission can you grant yourself today that would help you feel more at ease?
What can you let go of/stop carrying to create more room for freedom?
How will we fight for the rights of our transgender and queer neighbors, family, friends?
Can I ________________…?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF

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