Life As Performance Art 1

Since I have mentioned this in my recent travel blog a couple of times, I thought why not explore the concept a little on these pages, now that I am back in ordinary life, Gentle Reader? I will begin with a conversation I had yesterday with the fellow who was fixing my toilet. He was interested in my art, which he saw hanging all over my walls, including in the bathroom, and he had previously studied art history. I somehow began talking about how my career as an artist got started. Now, it can be very interesting the kinds of conversations one can end up having with the person who is fixing one's toilet, and this was no exception. We somehow got on the subject of death and dying when I was telling him how my mother's untimely passing from cancer led to my career as an artist. I was doing a little art therapy as part of my grieving process, taking coloured felt markers and making all kinds of spontaneous abstract drawings on paper. Eventually the drawings began to work as pieces of art, some of them becoming quite beautiful and intriguing. I showed them to a local painter, whose response was that I have to start painting and taking my talent more seriously, which I did. He only had to bark at me to quit arguing and do it, and that was enough to get me started. Or, in other words, he kicked me in the ass. A year later, his girlfriend became my agent and helped me sell four big beautiful parrot paintings to a pommy Brit architect to beautify the hotel he was working on and the rest, as they say, is history. At that time, I had been reading about the Monteverde region of Costa Rica, not yet quite on the tourist map, and I was resolved to somehow get there, even though I didn't have the funds to travel. Then the said girlfriend of said painter saw by happenstance my art show in a local coffee shop, and she phoned me and we started working together. The proceeds of the art sales went quickly into the purchase of a plane ticket and travellers' cheques (that was back in 1994), and just following the summer solstice of that year, and a false start when a bumbling travel agent had tried to book me a flight to the wrong San José (California instead of Costa Rica), and before I knew it I was luxuriating in the almost otherworldly beauty of the Central American mountain tropics. My two weeks in Costa Rica prompted me to become fluent in Spanish, as I wanted to return to that beautiful country, but also to be able to communicate with and befriend the local people, since I didn't want to experience the place only through the prejudiced eyes of white foreigners who were living there at the time. I am now fluent in the language of Cervantes and Goya, and have been enjoying a number of visits repeatedly back to Costa Rica, as well as Colombia and Mexico, where I have the opportunity every year of practicing and strengthening my Spanish skills, as well as doing tonnes of art in my sketchbook. Even if I have missed my mother terribly, I am not really sure that my life would have taken this kind of direction had she lived. In a way, she had to step out of the way for me to really get on with my life, and for me to take a direction that was for me the most appropriate. This also suggests to me how beautiful things and new and meaningful directions in life can come out of the bitter process of death and bereavement. This is the whole process of redemption at work. The perpetual creative dynamic at work here begs no explaining, but there has been in this process, despite the many setbacks, obstacles and traumas that I have also incurred, an underlying thread of joy and celebration, and this is why life for me has become a kind of living art performance. Life is a gift, and only those who receive it gratefully as a gift can grow into the joy that is really our due and calling as human beings. My single regret is that it has taken me this long to begin to learn this. But I am also grateful that I have come to clue in at all to this beautiful mystery. There are many who never seem to ever get there. Which is really unfortunate, because if there is a secret to ageing well, then joy and gratitude must play a significant role.