Welcome 2020: on art, narcissism and practicality.

A new decade....

In 2010 I was in my 2nd year of grad school....

The truth is, I abandoned myself. I went to grad school because I was a writer. I wanted to write memoir, poetry....

But I was terrified. I didn’t see how I could support myself as a creative writer. This had been the case for some years already, after I made the decision leaving college that I wouldn’t pursue photography because — how could I pay the rent?

So in 2010 I was in graduate school studying the social sciences ... which I loved. And I wanted to be a creative writer. But I made what I thought was a practical decision — I would be an academic and I could write academic things and it would be the perfect combination of practical and artistic.

2010 was the year I continued to harm my inner artist, abandoning myself... and it just got worse. I knew the truth in 2012 when I graduated grad school. I had started writing a make up blog and gotten internationally famous and instead I went back to practical writing. I knew the truth in 2015 as I published more than anyone I knew and yet felt hollow and empty inside because the work was only partially what I wanted. I knew the truth in 2018 when I left teaching to start a business “so that I could save money and one day I could be an artist ...”

It all fell apart. It kept falling apart.

Being an academic eventually broke, running my business eventually collapsed....

I am thick-headed. Life had to beat me over the head into submission before I finally looked at myself and said GIRL WHAT. what. What are you doing?

***

Yesterday a friend of mine and I talked about me working towards show in a gallery of my oil paintings and she said — you have to make sure your work is marketable so that they want to show you.

And that made sense to me.

Until later that night when a little voice inside me, a little voice that has been getting stronger and stronger since I have been painting more and more said “you already did that. And look what happened?”

I went into teaching saying I would “write on the side.” I went into academic research and publishing saying, “this is a great way to make money and still write.” I started a business saying “you can have a business that gives you the freedom to make art, eventually....”

No.

Being practical got me two failed careers and a failed business.

Being practical left me feeling like a zombie.

Being practical got me student loan debt.

Being practical left me starving for myself, abandoned, alone.

There is no more time for practical.

*******

Everyday for the past three months I have painted or worked on painting. First. I put it first. Not last. Not in a year. Not “once this happens then...”

First. Art first, life second.

My business and a new line of work in fashion suddenly materialized.

Marketing felt easier.

I was suddenly able to deal with my student loan debt and began working out negotiations.

I began to feel more whole and fulfilled than I had been in years.

I experienced major changes in my romantic life.

I reconnected with my parents.

And it was all so easy; flow. Flow.

************

Welcome 2020. Welcome new decade. You are the decade of magic. You are the decade of frivolity, luxury and laughter. You are the decade of feeding my artistic soul selfishly and unreservedly. You are the decade of deep wealth and healing the choking sickness of debt. You are the decade of sexuality, and love, and jewish home-cooked meals. You are the decade of pursuing impractical desires at any cost.

2020 you are the decade of never making a single marketable piece .... the decade of fiercely protecting my narcissistic tendencies to paint what pleases me.

I am a compulsive, magical artist. As I paint, I recover my lost self .... who I always was, what I loved, how I loved.... for time is not linear you see but circular. Each day I live my history as a young artist all over again, guiding myself into different choices and practicing the greatest of all healing arts— self-forgiveness.

You first, art. You first, now. I commit.

I love this poem

Big Bessie's feet hurt like nobody's business,

but she stands-- bigly-- under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed.

In the wild weed

she is a citizen,

and is a moment of highest quality; admirable.

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.

Nevertheless, live.

Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

-Gwendolyn Brooks, From "In the Mecca"

How committing to beauty changed my life forever.

I was diagnosed with PTSD in the Fall of 2016... just 3 years ago. Here's what happened next.

I sought every healer from every modality possible - from tantra, to dance, to meditation, to neuroscience-based trauma recovery. I reconnected to my faith and took the name Sara as a symbol of my commitment to my spiritual development, self-healing and self-love.

After my diagnosis I left my full-time job. I started a business as a fashion entrepreneur. Life felt too precious not to follow my dreams.

But what you don't know is that I repeated the ugly patterns of my past and turned my business into the same toxic life that I had had prior to my illness and recovery.

Bob Proctor talks about paradigms. A paradigm is the deep shift in perspective that takes many, many, many attempts and failures to achieve.

And so it was with me. I felt completely demoralized. Here I was, doing all this spiritual work, and I had ended up in what I thought at the time was the exact same place I was trying to heal. Out of options, I closed my first business, the Brazen Beauty Movement. I had tried to change my life and center art, love, joy and effortlessness in my life-- and didn't.

That was in January of this part year. The following four months were the darkest of my life. I honestly didn't know if I would make it back into the light.

And then I met Craig.

Craig was leading a spiritual workshop on time and money. I came in expecting meditation and budgeting skills. I left with the final key to unlocking the pain I had been in since I was a small child.

Craig took a single, long look at me (or so it felt. I think we actually chatted for a while) and said, "Paint for an hour a day."

You see, I had grown up in a family of painters, gone to art school -- and never picked up a paintbrush. I hung out in the painters' studios and modeled for them. I lacked the guts to commit to art in any real way.

I had no other solutions. Nothing I had thought up worked. Plus, I was broke.

I did it. I painted every day and slowly by slowly, my life transformed. After finishing a painting at 2am one night I burst into tears. "I am whole," I said. Aloud. "I am whole."

The last piece of the puzzle dropped into place.

And that is -- when we do the luxurious things first, when we commit to beauty with the same passion that we may be committing to pain, disease, annoyance.... we are whole and everything follows.

Ps. That's the painting I painted for Craig, above. It's called "Alive."

What is the single thing that if you did it, it would change your life?

I want every moment to feel luxurious for you.

Tales from Working In Fashion

#1. So today a customer walked up to me at my J-O-B and asked if we had Fear of God. Everyone around me looks mystified. So I just started going on about F.O.G. and my colleagues are like huh? And I’m like — what you don’t watch 15 year old Korean kids on YouTube talk about streetwear obsessively? (For the uninitiated it’s a streetwear brand.) 

#2. The lady who came in with 30 little pink dresses to return and no receipts came in with like 8 more pink dresses. And no one can figure out what to do but we are like besties already and I’m like “Hey Mrs. Goldberg, Did you keep all those notes I made for you about how to keep your receipts in one place and use your phone number I look up your order.” And she’s like “oh Sara” and it’s like .... ❤️❤️

#3. My downlow fashion nerd colleagues and I all gave each other the eye when we got hired because you know, we know. I am not sure how we know. Its a certain shoe or hat or extra long dreads.... but we can smell it on each other and we also know that no one else gets it why we care, or why it’s worth saving up every dollar and maybe skipping a few meals to get that vintage JPG see through dress shirt thing. It’s like a secret club. So yesterday my fashion nerd colleague taught me some stuff about sneakers and then gave me a tip about a drop — a raffle to win one of 30 pairs of a designer collab on an Air Force 1.... So you know what lunch time finds me doing? Writing postcards to enter the damn raffle. Yes. Postcards. 

#4. All I’m saying is that when you are bit with the fashion bug it’s kinda like an illness that is incurable. I spent all of 6th grade bent over a sewing machine poking myself with needles accidentally when everyone else was outside playing. And all these people are like “meh, clothes whatever who cares” and your old roommate is like “no, actually not everyone comes home talking about what people were wearing on the subway...” And you realize it is incurable because it won’t go away and then one Wednesday in November you are like .... old as fuck and filling out postcards for Air Force 1, and getting to know the lady with the pink dresses, and talking streetwear with Korean teenagers and it all seems perfectly normal.