Daphne
from a presentation at PechaKucha Santa Fe 2020
Hello. It is an extraordinary moment to be here—the moment must be acknowledged and it is extraordinary. I have ceased to hear the constant nagging sound of the second hand of the clock forever judging and demanding “do this,” “stop feeling this,” “be this,” “hurry.” I know, of course, that we are in the middle of a global disaster and I hear and see the distress of devastated people. It is just that the prescription for protecting each other in this disaster happens to match my rhythm, while work and school schedules are discordant with the movement of my limbs, hips and the beating of my heart.
Wine Dark Sea 2020
Perhaps, I might now learn to dance; now that the tightly bound corset that is our effective and productive world has had to loosen its ties a bit. It is not as though the fact of being mortal and loving mortals weighs any less on me right now than it does on anyone else, just that I can breathe.
The paintings that you see here are an exercise in time. I began painting as a young child. It was the spontaneous declaration of my soul—the paper served as a saucer to catch the over-pourings of an intense and emotional nature. I began exhibiting my paintings quite young too. As I grew up, I sometimes painted less and sometimes not at all. I became terribly ambivalent about the practice—what were my intentions? What was my message?
Daydreaming 1993
The Golden Hour. 2020
It seemed to me then that art ought to begin with a mission statement and end in a contract. The cataract emerging from deep within, uncontrolled and undisciplined, frustrated and annoyed me. Nor was I successful in my attempts to order that spontaneous geyser. When I bothered to paint, my paintings were left unfinished and a little bit resented. Still, I carried them about with me. Recently, I decided to rent a small office space—a room of my own if you will. There, I began to work on some of those unfinished paintings. In the slides you will see both the unfinished version, the roots exposed and bare--some of them may be 30 years old, most are more like 20—and how they have grown.
We speak of roots as though it is through our roots that we are connected to a past. Yet, I’ve always imagined myself to be propagated from a species that is more like a dandelion than an old grove tree. The wind blows, a seed is carried off—when at last it lands by the side of the dusty road, the tap root reaches deep into the soil in search of water and nutrients while the bright bud that is consciousness flowers, its yellow heart following the sun: “see me,” it mutters or whispers or shouts—“see how I reflect your color, your heat and your light back at you. We are alike, you and I; two solitary beings in vast emptiness. How lucky I am to turn my gaze towards the heavens and to find my kin.”
The myth that we ourselves are the source of spontaneous brilliance more like the gaseous ball of light suspended above than the dark, cool decay at our feet has long captivated the people from whom I have sprung. And in some ways, we do embody a sort of spontaneous becoming; the potential of our individuality, self-contained within a hard protective shell, its emergence left to the whims of the wind, the sun and the rain. But something happens when that seed lands in the dust or the dirt and sends out it’s searching roots—the life that begins to emerge is invariably of the same kind as that from whom she descends. While the roots derive sustenance from the earth into which chance has dropped the seed, the emerging creature is already determined. She may be abundant in health or starved and broken, but she is of one kind, and only that kind.
Roots 2020
The persistence of the dandelion to live and to be a dandelion despite her conviction that she is in fact the sun deserves respect and admiration. The roots deliver nutrients required for what is and not for what is imagined. Consciousness alone is fooled.
My mother has had some time recently, too. She went down into her basement to begin to sieve through the past-lives of the many women who have flung their cherished possessions down the stairs to be sorted out at a later date when there would, theoretically, be time. She texted me a picture of one of my scribbles the other day:
Behind me all has been erased but a pattern of footsteps. If the future belongs to the hands then the past belongs to the feet, a history of new shoes in new sizes. It is a great responsibility we give our feet, asking them to remember what we ourselves are so willing to forget. I find that when my mind is tired my feet begin to wander, crossing cities, and streets, and oceans. They walk along paths they’ve walked before with a quiet determination, and all at once, I feel the embrace of a past moment. It will be the pause before a corner is turned, a step that I never noticed but my feet never forgot…It is as if I inhale forgotten air. I do not miss the girl that walked, solitary, along these roads. No, I do not miss her at all. Indeed, I am glad to let her slip away enveloped in her great loneliness. It is with pride that I declare her disappeared. It is with pleasure that I deny her memory. But our feet are glued together, so she haunts me.
It seems that I have spent a lifetime exploring but one question—I have refused to reconcile that which is bound to that which is free.
Daphne ran naked through the woods, exultant. The Thrower of Arrows, the Patron of Doctors, the Bringer of Plagues, Phoebus Apollo pursued her. She ran faster, for it seems women have always felt that they had the right to choose for themselves what to do with their own bodies. As Artemis’s brother closed the gap between them, he was a god after all, Daphne swore her allegiance to his sister and prayed to her father to save her. An ancient river god, her father answered her prayer by rooting her glorious woman’s form in the ground. As Apollo reached for her, her flesh became bark and her body, a laurel tree. Daphne, gone—her naked joy aged long before its proper time. When I was young, I hated the end of the story even more than I hated its beginning.
Daphne, Caught 1992
Daphne, Clothed 2020
Apollo loved the tree as he had the nymph. He asked her whether he might take her leaves and make of them a crown. Daphne bent down in assent. Where was her anger! Did he not deserve punishment? I’m older now. I find Daphne, rooted and clothed, every bit as beautiful as she was naked and free. And to that assent, that act of grace, I can’t help but aspire—not a divine forgiveness, a mortal one. The sublime act of a woman; rooted, pliable, and willing to forgive the sins of even the gods.
