Dancing on eggshells
In this art piece, we see a couple, dancing alone on a stage filled with eggshells to tread on. With a smile on their face, but their hands grasping each other tightly, in desperate attachment. I wanted to portray the tense “off-ness” in the weird mix of love, fear, desperation, hope and pressure, and the unhealthy and fragile bond of a connection held together by carefully filtering the words we don’t speak.
There can be a variety of reasons why one may feel the urge to filter one’s thoughts or words, edit and revise transported meanings. The fear of breaking something, someone, or oneself through the wrong words, meaning, wording. Whether it’s one’s own fear of abandonment, insecurities or external unstable behavior, volatile dynamics or a lack of consistent stability, or nothing current but the weight of past experiences. I myself have been struggling with it on and off, for as long as I can remember.
At certain points in my life, I prided myself in being fearlessly myself, and not minding losing people who I would have had to compromise myself to keep. I would purposely throw my sins, my flaws and failures in their face, in hopes to be seen in my entirety, and wanted for it, too, with all the ugliness included.
But, life affects you, we all carry our traces, and for a while I did not believe in even my own thoughts anymore, at all. But life is full of falls, and rebuilding oneself, over and over. Such is strength, and I constantly work on my primary value, fearless authenticity, within self and outwardly. Luckily, as an artist, people expect certain extravagance, either way, and I try not to filter myself and my words, adapt to a degree of betraying myself. Still, I often find myself feeling like I do compromise and filter myself and my words far too often. Freeze, when I should speak, regardless of the consequence.
Just writing this paragraph took repeated coming back to it, staring at the screen and a huge stepping stone to overstep. Much in my life has been about feeling invisible, a “right” to take space and be seen, against others, some who asked to see me more, others asking me to hide myself more, and the struggle within myself, between trying to be more seen, but feeling guilty and bad for it, then go for the other direction. I try to make it a habit to walk away from those who ask me to abandon and compromise myself now, but that as well is not always an easy thing to do. Visibility is as much an issue as invisibility. Which I feel, is often seen in artists, this or familiar subjects. We all need and fear the audience, I suppose.
Ask Bo Burnham, he portrayed it so well in “Can’t handle this” 😉