When I look out my windows I see bricks and, above the bricks, clouds. There are bricks and clouds in the foreground of my view, bricks and clouds in the distance;in fact, the only sights my eyes encompass,from the vantage of my little aerie, day in and day out, are bricks and clouds. No, I am not in prison, nor am I imprisoned.
I live in the industrial sector of the city. Our block of flats is amidst warehouses and factories,having once been home to a dress company.At the back of the building,which affords me my only external view, there is not a tree, a bush or the scraggliest patch of grass in residence. This is no hardship,as it is almost exactly how I envisioned my future adult surroundings when, as a child, I used to dream of becoming a writer.
I dreamt that dream long, hard and seriously ,past the point where I could think it feasible.Only in my dreams, which are plentiful and intense to only and cousin-less children, as I matured into young adulthood I was propelled back in time. No, I wasn't drafting a future with an impossible Benjamin Button-esque twist. I simply wanted to be the best kind of writer I could ever envision, the kind that I just didn't see represented around me.In other words, dead.
All of the writers I so admired, from such a young age, were dead or so old that they should--or at any moment could--be.I didn't want to be them in old age, naturally;I wanted to be them in their youth. Anita Loos, Katherine Mansfield, Zelda Fitzgerald ( the next best thing to being a writer was inspiring one to greatness, or so I believed then) and countless others but none more-so than Edna St. Vincent Millay.She was divine, delicious and so admired.By everyone. Even those who disliked her still admired her. Having that effect on people must be heady. And, to give me a bit of real hope, she looked a lot like me: little, redheaded, pale, and beautiful without being pretty. She was also a bohemian. Actually, her mother, sisters and seemingly everyone she knew were intellectuals or bohemians or, when fate really converged in just the right way, both.
Being black-sheep born and raised ( thanks, momma, in the best way!!), I knew the lifestyle I wanted to have when I read about it, even at that young age. Greenwich Village in the 1920's, with the occasional foray to that genuine, across-the-water Bohemia, Paris, was my ideal. I should have been a be-stockinged, be-flasked, bee-stung flapper, one with the added attraction of be-jewling those around her with words. I was robbed.I was cheated. How could fate be so stupid when a kid could figure it out? To this day, I maintain that I was born three-quarters of a century too late to have any fun.
What I wasn't born too late for was success, in art and lifestyle. I have, perhaps a bit belatedly, come to recognize, accept and embrace this fish-out-of water and place-out-of-time-ness to my talent and perspective. It has made me recognizably me and not like anyone else, then or now.
I haven't given up on all of my childish aspirations. I live in an old building that pre-dates the flapper-era, with brick walls and banged up wood floors, with its uncongenial but homey view. I live among well-off professionals instead of starving, snarky geniuses but that's only a small piece of the puzzle missing. As for those poetesses and novelists and girl rogues?
They still inspire me but as one working female artist to another. My admiration is perhaps a bit more prosaic these days--starving for food and publication isn't a whit more fun today than it was then, surely--but it is even more awed because, having long had the privilege of living a sort of modern version of their lives, I now know what fortitude it takes.They made it look whimsical, joyous and easy. It is never easy.
As a quick aside: Yesterday marked the 107th anniversary of the birth of Edna St. Vincent Millay, a fact of which I was only reminded yesterday evening. The title 1000 Follies was, as you may know if you have already read the 'About This Blog' section on the right, inspired by a phrase from one of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poems. If it were not for the Oscar telecast, this would have been written and posted last night;but then it would have been entirely different. I could have pre-written this post but that would have broken the only self-promise I have made about this blog:while ideas and inspiration may be gathered ahead of time, all writing will be done 'live',which is a rare opportunity artistically. Jump first, Ask Questions Later.
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