برچسب: Cameron

One way I respond to her statements about what holds back women is to feel how they apply to my own art practice/life, then turn them around, and affirm the reversal:

i stand up in front of the world, unique and sovereign.

I have found reversed statements like this both bracing and encouraging. They have given me courage on days when being an artist feels so hard, such a waste of effort and precious time.

i throw prudence to the wind and

try to emerge beyond the given world

I can even try:

i have this madness in talent called genius

and if that sounds too much, I can still ‘try on’ the statement or ‘hold it against me to see how it might fit’.

This OWN-TURN-OWN practice of working with de Beauvoir’s words has been very formative for me. It has given me energy to continue on bad days, and to place my work in a larger perspective. It moves beyond a reprimand into spine-strengthening encouragement.

Next time: Themes and metaphors in Chapter 14, all the words

From Chapter 14 The Independent Woman, I extracted statements that Simone de Beauvoir makes about women artists and writers, in particular and in general. Doing this is an act of noticing and attending that you might want to do for yourself. If not, you can find the list of quotes here: List of quotes from Chapter 14, in order.

The next step was to TURN each statement*, using I … rather than she, woman. For example:

she tries to deny her intelligence as an ageing woman tries to deny her age

becomes

I do not deny my intelligence… or my age

Each act of turning took me deeper into de Beauvoir’s ideas and my responses. I recommend doing it yourself but if you want it, my list of quotes and turnings/reversals is here.

This list has accompanied me throughout the last 8 years I have pondered it, read it aloud while walking the room, hidden it, refound it, and been re-energised by it countless times. They have become a list of affirmations, a kind of creed, a manifesto.

————————————————

*I’ve come to appreciate TURNING or reversing as a technique from the Byron Katie’s Four Questions in her book Loving What is, from Jung’s ideas of the Shadow, and David Richo’s book Shadow Dance.

In the next post, the themes of Chapter 14, a summary.