The Art of Exposure

Miss Tesla

How do people stay alive? By “alive” I don’t mean breathing. I mean the immortality of memories attached to feeling and thoughts. I remember my grandparents with aliveness, but now, more than two decades from their vital passing, those memories are depleting, narrowing to a moment, a look, and a short two-sentence conversation. The life of my grandmother is the strongest because we spent more time together, alone, just her and me on the path of breathing. The moments are not made of gifts, though certainly she gave them, I'm sure. They are made of acceptance and exposure of honesty. I was a young child for a time, and was most vulnerable, but then she was an old lady finally, and was most vulnerable, and we accepted each other for that. We shared vulnerability openly, and that has kept her alive in my breathing life for over twenty years.

Artists, writers, filmmakers and actors stay alive for us by making themselves vulnerable in some way as they express something that should be private, that should be shared only with those who are closest. They’ve crossed the line and revealed themselves. Those who pretend to cross the line, but don’t, never last very long beyond their passing breath. We do not know anymore the pretty faces who did not share their pain and fear. The shock an artist shares with us is the thing that sticks to our heart like a virtual post-it note. The less than sane words of a writer struggling to come to terms with darkness that is truly dark, follows us like a sewn on shadow. Admitting that the answers are hard to come by and maybe not lasting is a sensitive difficulty that relieves this audience of our own loneliness. The obvious answers bore us and are easy to forget.

And, yet, to be this vulnerable is abjectly painful to the point of dying a little bit upon the page, the canvas, the stage. The question of whether it is “worth it” comes down to, perhaps, a desire to stay alive someplace else and in some other time and in some other mind. Do artists paint in order to live? Can a writer write without wanting to be remembered? Does the actor slash open his heart in order to distract us from the truth or rather to live with us there for as long as possible? Yes and no. We do this little dying in order to be alive. It's an anti-thesis of existence, but it is the most aware and present moment we can get to while living. 

How is creation a bit of dying? We are attempting to capture the free moment and plug-it-in to something that will make it last. We are trying to understand and also be understood in the same moment if we're on target. We are wrestling with honesty and fantasy to tell it like it is, to show our point of view, to discover and to create a path. A spiritual monk releases the need to make permanent the moment of awareness. Think of the Tibetan monks and their sand drawings. Those are momentary and are kicked away before too much time has passed. That is a practice. The more interested we are in making something that lasts, the more the creation is something about dying.


Just to momentarily change the frame of reference...How is this different from the builder, the entrepreneur, or the mad scientist? Surely, they hope that their inventions, buildings, and discoveries speak of them far and wide, and tell the world that they were here, even after they are gone. That is the future at its heart, and it is also our history. Thinking backwards in business is like a plane flown by flight attendants who are convinced it flies because of a strong jet stream. We, the consumers of that flight, do not sit backwards gazing at the paint upon the sky. We gaze towards the horizon, and hope the pilot is in the nose of the plane. This flight requires less certainty, though, and much more adventure. When we put the cockpit on the ground, someplace in a repetitive system, is it any wonder that accidents will happen? Even the most automated creations must be constantly updated for the moment of choice.

As full of pain as a child who is unsure that she’s loved and approved of, or as horrified as the loss of control in an aged body, discomfort drives me to to face my fears rather than seek comfort. When I commit to one or the other, the choice I make decides whether I will stay alive or die on the spot, and it happens every day. Do I want to live in the memories of my children, my community, and my culture because I admit I am every day ordinary and vulnerable? Yes! I do not want to fade as a fake and disappointing superhero. I want to create the incredible disclosure! I am willing to reveal my pain and fear that is so bad that I don’t know what will happen when I flip the switch on this creation. Grin. It is daring to come to the breath of this moment knowing that in the next and the next and the next I am susceptible to the death of being comfortable but forgotten. I want to know that when death comes I have lived as transparently as is possible for me, whether well-received or rejected. That's how I'll know I've done my best in what I can do in this world.