Aha! - this explains much of my dating history... (Yes it's lame to post a Cathy comic, but it fits right in with the 27 cats I'm going to adopt soon.)
Dancing about architecture - so is watching TV or movies about art a useless pursuit, or can you actually learn something about the process of creation by watching things about how other people do it? I find myself watching TV or movies or reading articles about the creative process, and I find it strangely fascinating.
I know this about myself - I have to work myself up to things. If I have something difficult to say to someone, or I'm not sure how a conversation should go, I have to work myself up to actually having the conversation (or talk myself out of it entirely). Similarly with other big life choices (changing jobs, changing the nature of a relationship, buying a car/house/moderately expensive geek gadget), I have to research it, think about it, debate with myself whether I really need/want the thing, etc. So I think I'm working myself up to a creative rush. Maybe if I learn about how to write, or how a director or actor puts himself in the creative groove, etc. that maybe that will actually spur me to get off my ass and create something myself. The hardest part isn't finding something to say (at least I'm finding that out now), it's shutting up the inner critic that says that whatever you just created was sophomoric or trite or that it just doesn't ring true. The last scares me the most - what's the point of art if it's not about expressing a truth? That's also the scariest part on a different level - that in order to be really truthful, you also have to vulnerable, a bit naked. That's a big leap of faith to put yourself out there - are the rewards worth it? You never know until you take the leap...
Catholic guilt versus Jewish guilt - a brief conversation at brunch sparked a branch of thought for me. We touched on the difference between Catholic guilt and Jewish guilt, and I don't remember all of it, but the part that stuck with me is that Catholic guilt seems to settle into your guts to fuck with you as an adult in terms of sex. Interesting that a quick Google search for "Catholic guilt" and "Jewish guilt" yielded completely different types of things - the first things on Catholic guilt all seemed to be about sex, but the stuff about Jewish guilt seemed a bit more across the board. Maybe Jewish guilt is meant to instruct/teach/change, and Catholic guilt probably started that way, but it feels like all it does is beat us over the head into submission to the fact that anything fun/exciting must be bad/sinful/wrong and that we must be bad people for feeling those things.
Guilt pervades all areas of a Catholic's life, but I think you sort of slough off the minor guilts (after all you can binge/purge, confess/do penance) and save all the really good guilt for sex. (Except that the reasons I'm fucked up about sex aren't only, or even mostly, from being Catholic.) Apparently some teachings stay with you more so than others. For me the guilt about sex seemed stupid (it's enjoyable, God gave us these bodies, and if you're not using your body for children, then isn't it an equal waste to not use it at all?), so I let go of that pretty easily. I think the thing from my childhood teachings (and it's impossible to separate whether they were because I'm a girl or because I'm Catholic or because that's what the teachings from parents of that era were like) that is harder to shake is the idea of being a "good" girl - be a "good" girl or you won't be acceptable to people (they won't love you). Good girls had all kinds of rules that bad girls didn't - don't sit certain ways, always be polite, put others first/yourself last, always be kind/helpful/appreciative/a good listener/good sport, speak when spoken to and not before, always offer to help, never say no, be considerate, share, etc, etc, etc. Those things stayed with me to the degree that I didn't (and still don't much of the time) say how I really feel about something because it might hurt the other person's feelings (never mind that they've shredded my entire self-confidence), or I put my feelings/thoughts aside as being unimportant. Then again, the fact that I have a contrary/rebellious streak doesn't play well with the fact that I'm essentially pretty conformist/non-confrontational. Yes, these aspects are in opposition - which means I am completely random about what I'll be ballsy and rebellious about/which conventions I'll flout and which ones I'll toe the line to without thought to whether the line makes any sense or not.
Posted by cshell at July 28, 2003 09:14 PM