Unicorn's Ass

Hey sisters,

It would appear that there has been some inexcusable lag time between postings!! Thanks Mar for breaking the gap.

I have to make a confession, in the interim of posts I have become transfixed by the Warblers, the a cappella/choralography splendor of Glee fame. Oof I’ve watched their video an embarrassing number of times, always with a silly grin plastered on my face.

I did some digging on the actor who plays Blaine, the star soloist of the Warblers. He is very attractive and astonishingly talented, and Blaine (aka Darren Criss) is 23 years old. The same age as me. Then I was watching interviews with other cast members. Kurt admitted on Chelsea Lately that he is a ripe 19 years old.

Who knew watching a cast of gleeks could make one feel as small and unaccomplished as the biennial shamefest known as the Olympics?...

Later in the day I caught an interview on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air with the writer, director, actress, cinematographer, general all-a-rounder Lena Duham, a young (24-yr-old) who made the independent film Tiny Furniture, nominated for multiple awards at Austin’s SXSW Festival.

All of these findings lead me to amount: What have my 23 years done?

Without realizing it I, panicked, turn to Facebook. Yes, to soothe the nerves and the mounting fear of destitution I turned to Facebook. I scroll through friends and acquaintances pages. Where are they, what have they done with their lives? Is it more than I should have done?

Friends I see are in bands, touring, recording, in Harvard, at Berkeley, in Seattle, curating art shows, in Portland with jobs and galleries and a studio. The paranoia begins to seep in, until, in the midst of assessing the lifetime achievements of a journalist-aspiring friend, I stumble across an article which she has posted to her wall about the twenty and thirty-somethings of our day, a group dubiously coined the “Failure to Launch” generation:

http://www.washingtonlife.com/2010/12/02/twenty-something-the-failure-to-launch-generation/

And yet, reading this interview, I become fixated with how old the authors are. HOW DID THEY GET THIS INSIGHT AND WHO DO THEY WORK FOR??

Then of course the paradox hits. The author’s warnings: “Don’t compare my life based on peoples’ Facebook profiles.” Check. “With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, everyone wants to be famous and listened to and watched. Instant gratification is the norm.  It’s seeped into our generation a little bit but the next generation is going to be even more entitled, selfish, and self-centered.” Check.

Queue the sinking feeling that I, and many others apparently, are tangled in the promptitude and gratification of instant newsfeeds and the self broadcasting networks. We are the 21^st century Alice, peering into and then leaping into the virtual looking glass, only to find that the mirror is an unending image, forever perpetuated within itself -- the projected image indecipherably small (for optical accuracy, let’s call it the Droste Effect).

And here is where I’ve left my self worth to rest!

A favorite essayist, Joan Didion, wrote a piece entitled “On Self-Respect” which I read years ago, as a painfully shy 17-yr-old. Until today I had never reread it but had always remembered the essay in how it struck me with its simultaneous resonance and opacity; I had no idea what in the hell Didion was saying, yet in my gut I knew it applied precisely to me. 

“If we do not respect ourselves…we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out – since our self-image is untenable – their false notion of us…One runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.”

And so, again, in my job hunts and seeking (see Joel Madden post…), it’s happened again, I’ve left no one at home. Except this time it happened not in the midst of maroon lockers, streamers, and pep rallies, but within the confines of my own home, robbed by the 15 in. monitor on which I’ve come to depend for self-assurance. I forgot the simple words of my beloved mentor, spoken hesitantly, with tight lips, in anticipation of the years of art and failed art following graduation, “You have to have a strong core.” To compound the idioms of advice: Keep your head up and out of Facebook, out of the chocolate cake (thanks Kal). And out of the unicorn’s ass.

See piñata