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THE ARTIST'S WAY

Dreamed 1994/6/10 by Chris Wayan

THAT DAY Cover of Julia Cameron's 'The Artist's Way'.

I'm reading Julia Cameron's excellent book THE ARTIST'S WAY. One of its exercises is: "imagine five other lives." She means occupations, I think. But when I try, out come five identities with strange sex lives:

  1. I'm Silky, my alter ego. I'm a short girl and I still get carded--look like a teen though I'm grown up. I'm a cartoonist. Draw out my fantasies in simple doodly cartoons, not trying so hard. Just draw whatever feels healing to me. Playful, childlike--and sexual. Controversial. A lot of lesbian readers in town though, and I have to admit I meet a lot of my girlfriends that way. Groupies! A guilty pleasure. I love being able to say what I do at clubs and cafes: "I write 'Silky'."
  2. I'm a musician. Male? Yes, I can imagine a happy life as a male. I don't perform on stage much, I'm mainly a studio composer--I still have environmental illness. I don't have to be cured to have a life. My girlfriend makes films; our friends, too, are all busy creative artists.
  3. 20 or 30 years from now altering one's genes is possible. So I become a cat girl and just enjoy the attention and the petting. I can cope with the specism--after my awful childhood, this is nothing. Work as an actor, dancer and model in VR. I love having attention on my body, on being told I'm sexy, beautiful, being stroked, gentled, handled and deferred to, my temperament being considered. Having professionals getting hot for me, cheering me on. Feeds the hungry part. An unbalanced life? Still good. Healing isn't always balanced.
  4. I'm male, in a stable, equal three-partner relationship like that of Nina Hartley: two bisexual women and me. I like being an advocate for nontraditional families. This life just feels good, secure, sexy, solid, and a strong base from which to be a writer.
  5. Lead dream workshops... but have no lover. Own an Orgasmatron like most sophisticated people. A woman who comes to interview me has never been in one. I say go ahead, I'll see you in an hour. She comes out soft and dreamy and wet. I get instantly turned on and as we make love I feel guilty about letting the machine seduce her--it's so easy, it feels so good without being able to provide emotional reassurance, you come out glowing but embarrassed to let a machine affect you so, you want to be petted and told you're desirable and good and...
As I imagine these 5 sexy lifepaths a thick heavy dizzy sensation, as in hypnotherapy, comes back. An attack, no question. I say "I won't give in to you. I deserve love. I deserve sex. I deserve attention. I won't let you bully me. I can stop you!" I breathe deep and stretch... and the attack fades away.

But so have the fantasies.

So I put on a song from "Rocky Horror": "Don't dream it, be it!" and dance.

THAT NIGHT Dream: I stand on a Sierra rock. A parade of barefoot kids walks over me, but I don't mind.

I'm in a dense little crowd of people, library workers I think, lined up on top of a strange granite keel or tiny ridge, 3 meters wide at the base, 5 high, 20 long, rounded but steep-sided: like a fossil schoolbus smoothed by glaciers. It's in a clearing in a pine forest. Feels like the Sierra Nevada, a mile or more up. Around the base of the tiny ridge, small groups of people march, each group the creator of a book or a CD.

One group stands out because they're all children, down to about 5 years old. A girl of 13 is leading them. They chant the words of a strange poem they made up together. It's just been released as a book or song. I can't quite make out the meaning, yet it's compelling.

They parade around the rock rib, then climb up onto the end. I explain who they are to the man in front of me. The ridge is too narrow for us to step aside, so the child artists make their OWN way: they climb up onto us and walk over our shoulders and heads. It doesn't hurt a bit, in fact it's a nice massage: they're mostly small and light, and they're all barefoot.

The artists' way!

NEXT MORNING

And maybe you should too.


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