(05 15 10, “Fading” self portrait, pinhole photograph on Fuji instant film.)
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“What transpired was a splintering off that satisfied both my weak sense of self and my childlike dreams.”
This is a tale of self-integration.
I was thinking again about the Puer Aeternus (something I had watched on Youtube) and my own life. The Puer is the eternal child, a shared human archetype or mythos posited by Carl Jung. In literature the Puer is personified by Peter Pan, a character who refuses to grow up. Those who live in the grip of this archetype are the free souls who live for the moment, free of attachment, responsibility and accountability. The Puer is the one who dreams, has big ideas, and sails on waves of fantastical images and ideas. This archetype is the engine that blindly drives great creativity and leaves mommy and daddy to clean up the mess.
The resolution of the Puer archetype consists of integrating its positive, life-giving aspects while breaking free of its negative influence. Someone who wants to come to terms with their inner Puer has a number of options. They can simply conform. Take a career path that seems reasonable and opt for a dull, workaday, conservative life, forgetting about their free-spirited youth. Others may succumb to the Puer’s seductive dance. They can live lives free of long-term plans. Sometimes they have big ideas but never realize them. They exist drifting from one thing to another, often flunking out. They may even find a protector, a fatherly figure to shield them as they continue to live the same way as they did as teenagers—rudderless and without growth. Then there is me.
My love of art, nurtured through my interest in photography, was too compelling to ever give up, but I had no clue as to how to integrate it into adult life. A true adult admits they don’t know, their parents don’t know, and they need to take steps to find out what the career landscape is. A Puer, and I was one, makes assumptions, trusts the uninformed opinions of their parents and flails around hoping something will work out. The original plan had been to go to RIT and study photographic science, integrating my math-science ability with my interest in photography. Rochester felt like an unworkable place and I didn’t go. Instead I went to Binghamton and studied physics with not a clue as to what I was going to do for a career.
Luckily, I found my way back to creativity via a summer job and a switch of majors to tech theatre, but again I made bad decisions. My weak core self was protected by an over-inflated ego that believed there was something superior about my design philosophy, a belief not shared by my colleagues, especially by the head of the department who didn’t like me. I thought he was a pompous ass. I was not willing to consider that although he was a stuffed shirt, I should hang in, finish my degree, and work towards a more welcoming environment, perhaps in graduate school. Maybe I did need to really hone my craft? Could I find a mentor? An ally? These thoughts never occurred to me.
So, I went into the fine arts, but it was in many ways it was the same story; however. the inherent fascination of seeing my own internal machinations play out on paper (even if in many ways I was blind to their significance) held me in its sway. I told myself I was moving toward being an art professional, either an independent artist or more likely a teacher, but my focus was not there and the steps I took in that direction were scattered. It was only by virtue of time and tenaciousness that I finally got into graduate school for an MFA.
In the art department I looked for approval, got little, and didn’t know how to improve my work. I ending up just walking out one day. I did eventually return, took more classes, improved somewhat, and also finished my theatre degree. Meanwhile, because I was resourceful, I ended up working at the college. What transpired was a splintering off that satisfied both my weak sense of self and my childlike dreams. This became the pattern: Having a job by day that I did my best to not invest in too heavily, even disassociating a bit. Not having much deep interaction with other people, and then delving into my art at the end of the day. Essentially, I had two lives in a kind of lopsided existence. This repeated when I moved to Philadelphia. Yes, there were bits and bobs of breaking out of that mold, but for the most part it held.
The sad part for me on the drawing/painting end is that even though the amount of time and effort I put in could have led me to some kind of art career shortly after graduating in my mid 30’s, it didn’t. My photography, which creatively solidified a decade before my drawing, didn’t happen until my 50’s. Especially on the drawing end, I didn’t realize where the problems were in my work and I tended to run all over the map. I worked by my mood, not by an overall plan. I indulged the Puer. Now, BTW, I work largely by series in a problem-based way, embracing issues and then resolving them.
2017 was a turning point. I remember writing that I felt photography could not contain the complexity and intensity of the emotions I was feeling. I started to draw, a lot. I started looking deeper and into the formal problems I had always avoided. I created a daily practice and kept an anatomy book at hand. The goal was largely to improve my drawing, primarily by being more accurate.
The 2022 Covid-19 Portrait Project show at InLiquid in Philadelphia was a professional arrival point and around that time I started to teach more. This was highly satisfying. My art had finally stepped into the world! What it left me with was a desire for the rest of my being to do that as well. Although the path I took in my life can temporarily suspend the issues of the Puer archetype, it is not one I would recommend. It wastes a lot of time and energy and you miss out a lot. My gender, my sexuality, and other aspects of my core self are out of focus and frequently confused, conflicted. I often seem like a ghost moving through a kind of surreal movie. I think for years I have felt like I’m not in my body. This week, as I sort these things out, has been peculiarly productive but has also engendered an even stronger sense of the self-alienation that has so long loomed in the background. It’s a hard realization to see that art has been holding the patchwork of me together. I feel rattled, yet I forge on.
That anybody even read this, much less restacked, fills my heart with joy! Thank you so very much!
Your journey is interesting, and I relate to some parts of it. I floundered with no direction and didn’t approach an art degree until my mid 30s. With one year left in my BA program, I’m realizing I have to buckle down. I’ve been drawn to Peter Pan types because I see myself in that but know I have to be grounded and focused to achieve this (and the only way seems to be on the singlehood journey).
Yet we aren’t islands. It’s hard for me to tear away from something I’m studying (or to not talk about it) but essentially, I prepared for this degree without realizing it, for a decade.
Anyway! All this to say that I appreciate your perspective (and your writing skill!). This helps me sympathize with the Peter Pans types that haunt me (or approach me) and to gracefully approach the inner struggle in myself, to focus without detaching from everything else. I hope your path forward evolves and becomes easier as you process this. 🙏🏻🤍