an exercise in optimism

i prefer being friends with smart people, especially smart women. i would rather talk to you than get drunk with you, and like it when we disagree because that brings up real discourse; i can actually learn something new.

my friend jay is a very good writer. and she is also a real thinker; she loves ideas, books, art, film, music, fashion. (just go read the blog, ok?) but she recently posted this, which i really want to respond to. in large part because i am one of those happy people she so fully distrusts.

updated: if you do not want to read about me, skip down to the last two or three paragraphs.

i want to start by re-iterating my goals for this blog, my exercise in optimism. i think too often we move to new york, mobilized by some romantic ideal about the city and what it means for our creative or innovative or professional lives. and then we deal with the daily grind of packed public transportation and bodegas that only take cash and paying a lot for a very little space and the aggressive disappointments of working too hard for too little money. (unless of course, you are lucky and can live in a larger lap of luxury than i will ever experience.) and so our new york blogs begin to reflect that wearing down or wearing thin, and instead of remembering why we did this to ourselves in the first place, what motivated all of us to seek out new york, when there are so many other places we could have chosen, we begin to give in to the crank, the whine, the complaint.

and i wanted to avoid that. this blog is my reminder of what brought me to this place, helps me look beyond the things that get me down (and there are things--i am no pollyanna) to the things that bring me back up. and for me, those things are times with my friends, my boy, a funny story from my commute, the chance to experience something new (great art, contemporary music, delicious if overpriced food), and even sometimes the things that i could do anywhere. like watching tv. i like lost. so sue me. i put my stories out here, on this blog as a reminder to me (and anyone else who stumbles on this, though i think usually it's just for me) that there is magic in this overwhelming city. and that i will find that magic, that it will brighten my days. that i will overcome my disappointments, my tired feet, my empty wallet, my sloping bed, my ten-hour days, my boring fridge, my nights alone, my nights in, my nights out.

this blog is not all of me. it is the part of me that i like best, however. the part that is inspired by life, by the world around me. the part that wants to try new things, go new places, meet new people. this me still knows why she came here in the first place, why she lives with this boy, why she works at this job, why she knows that while it doesn't feel like it now, she will make a difference in the world. and so if this me is the only one you know, i can understand why i seem a little naive. like maybe i don't understand how the world works. or that i am "bourgeois." this is what i have chosen to record for myself, this is what i want to remember about this period in my life. i mean, i will remember it all (and i am pretty good at holding onto sleights and disappointments), but this is what i am keeping a record of.

so i apologize if i seem like i am bragging about how great my life is. i can understand why you might think you wouldn't like me. that i am not cool enough, that i wouldn't be fun to take out on the town. so in the interest of fairness, to show you that i am not happy all the time, here are the things that get me down:

my boyfriend works two jobs. one is an unpaid internship in the field of his dreams (an unpaid internship with no finite end, i might add), the other an hourly gig that pays the bills while he slaves at said internship. this means that i only get to see him when he kisses me goodnight at 3 am, when i kiss him good bye at 8 am, and on friday nights and saturday afternoons. (this is only recently, however. we spent a few months long-distance, and it was not easy. in fact, it was awful.) so if you thought the crazy hours i refer to meant he was raking in some finance money or legal practice cash, think again. i haven't seen him in the daylight since last saturday. and that sucks. a lot. and the only reason i put up with it is because i love him so damn much.

i have a very nice job, but it is not what i want to do. it is only sort-of the field i want to work in, and while i like my immediate co-workers, i often disagree with things that happen. and i get yelled at a lot. not by my bosses, but by upper west side moms who are really angry that i left them voicemails they didn't listen to about canceled private lessons. i have to say "i'm sorry" a lot, which is exhausting. and i work long days and i don't get paid enough. i don't complain about it on here in part because i get a lot of venting done on the ride home with my work friends, and in part because i don't think it is interesting. everyone's job sucks sometimes, and who wants to listen to that?

i live with four boys, whom i like very much, but they are messy. and while the kitchen isn't so bad, i don't think anyone has ever vacuumed the living room. where there is a ping-pong table instead of one of the dining variety. our bedroom has no heat and is often a different temperature than the rest of the house. it used to be a porch, and it slopes down towards the windows that don't close all the way. i often have to listen to my roommates talk about fucking girls from bars. (and while i know a lot of this is in jest, and they don't have great records since this hasn't happened since i've lived here, it is enough machismo to make a girl awfully glad that she has someone already. even if she won't see him for three more days. even though they live together.)

i am thin-skinned. when "steevel" posted my first anonymous comment (which i could quote to you verbatim), about how much my boyfriend and i are ruining new york, i felt sick. when i got yelled at for the fourth time on thursday, after working two days by myself (poor mk was home sick), and i was describing it on the phone to the boyfriend i just wanted to be held by, i cried. i have spent a lifetime feeling badly because people have not liked me, and it bothers me. and i completely admit it. i shouldn't care what other people think of me, but i do. and i know when you don't like me. i know when you think i am dumb, or unattractive, or terminally uncool. i have enough practice, thanks to middle school, to know when you don't want to be my friend, and that's why you don't call me back. and i care. a lot. not enough to change who i am, just enough to get hurt.

so if you think my blog is sappy instead of uplifting, if you think i am naive instead of an optimist, if you think i am bragging instead of sharing, i am sorry you feel that way, but i am not sorry that i feel this way. and these are things i REFUSE to apologize for:

i AM an optimist. i always look for the good in people. i often get hurt, but i don't stop looking. and i like that about myself.

i WANT to share what makes me happy. i am hoping that you will share right back. or discover something new.

i will NOT post the things that frustrate me on this blog. this is my one-time major over-share. i want you to know i am human. but this is not what this blog is for. this is my one place to remind myself of the good in life, in people, and in this city.

i am not lying to you when i say that i am happy. i am not covering anything up. happiness is not the only emotion i feel, but it is the one i choose to share. i think it is more interesting to be friends with someone with a passion for life. my life has never been easy; i have dealt with a lot of things that i would have preferred not to. but they do not color the rest of my life. i will not walk into every new friendship or relationship or experience thinking that it will turn out just like the last one. i want the best from everyone and everything; i don't always get it. more often i don't get it. but i never stop expecting it. i believe in people, i believe in life, i believe in love. and i know that means i will probably never write the kind of book that people discuss while drinking black coffee and wildly gesticulating in some corner cafe. (if that even still happens.) i will never paint a portrait that distorts and distends, that creates a whole new kind of art. (in large part because i cannot draw. but i can appreciate such art. i mean i wrote my thesis on female performance artists, i can admire and understand and critique such things.) i will never write music that makes the theatre riot. (go look it up. stravinsky.) because i make things for me, things that appeal to me, and you've probably guessed by now that i am not a particularly dark girl.

which brings me to an actual critique of jay's piece about art and happiness. or art and contentment, i suppose. (and congrats to anyone who has made it past my inane blatherings about myself to the part that even vaguely resembles something intellectual.) i disagree with the posit that to make great art, you must be melancholy. i think that that is a dangerous idea. as someone who has lived with and loved clinically depressed creatives, i think it is false to suggest that to make great art you must be sad. desirous of change, yes, interested in "the darker emotions and facets of human nature ...[or working] at discovering what it actually means to be human and to ask difficult, ugly questions about what the hell we're all doing here", yes. definitely. i think most art is motivated by a quest for understanding the world around us. but why must this also mean depressed? as an art historian (which i totally get to call myself now that i have a degree and everything), i am afraid of the argument that to be truly great you must also be profoundly depressed. and it is an argument we make all the time. snobber even brings up the classic example of van gogh (saying "now, that is not to say i am for psychosis, although i think sometimes it helps"), as the "good" kind of psychosis. van gogh made art while healthy and unhealthy. he was more inspired by japanese prints than by his deep mental illness. in fact, he and family members felt that his health got in the way of his art. and he himself sought treatment, wanting to get better, treatment that (obviously) did not end up helping him. i feel that too often in the art world (and the music and film worlds) we are compelled to say "if only they could have gotten some help. what a tragedy they died, what great art did we miss out on?"

i am not an advocate for medicating or changing anyone. and maybe this is not a great argument, as i have not yet worked out what i am for. all i know is that i am angered by the idea that a happy person cannot make great art. if i am extrapolating, jay, i apologize, but i disagree with what i understand to be your theory: that a "happy" person has no desire to search, to understand, to question. that to wish to better understand the world or change the world, you must also be depressed. i think it is because you and i define happiness differently. i think that for you, it is an incomplete emotion, a shallow one, that masks something deeper. (and the deeper, you believe, is sadness.) but to me, sadness is an inert emotion, one that says "i have given up on this." i don't like to feel sad because i do not like to wallow. i do not seek out things that make me sad (but i do deal with things that make me sad. i do not ignore them--i think that is unhealthy.) i seek out the things that give me joy, the people that make me smile, the experiences that inspire me. if something makes me sad, i want to find a way to change it, i want to solve the problem. i think that great art is a struggle, the struggle to understand life and the world around us. but i think that people can desire that struggle even if they are not sad.

anyways, i have been typing for too long now. i would love to hear your comments. even if you want to rip me to shreds; i can take it. it might make me cry, but it will also probably make me happy.