Laughing Heart

Your life is your life.
Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission
Be on the watch

There are ways out
There is light somewhere

it may not be much light
but it beats the darkness
Be on the watch.

The gods will offer you chances.
Know them, take them.

You can’t beat death
but you can beat death in life.

Sometimes the more often you learn to do it
the more light there will be.

Your life is your life.
Know it while you have it.
You are marvelous.

The gods wait to delight in you.

At first glance at it in my google images page, I thought, “wow, some old tyme homosexual photos, interesting.” Then i realized IT’S DECAPITATED HEADS. so cool.I found the artist’s name is Joel-Peter Witkin. Do a google image search for him and you will find all kinds of creepy stuff (this is the NSFW part.) As I was looking though, things were looking a bit familiar. Remember the NIN video “Closer?” Yeah, Trent Reznor and Mark Romanek made CLOSER as a pretty complete homage of Joel-Peter Witkin works. Here’s a page where someone has handily compiled everything.

Due to the look of the photographs, i expected Mr. Witkin lived in the daguerreotype era, perhaps in the late 1900s. BUT the majority of the photos were done in the late 70s and early 80s. Apparently he had to assemble the bulk of his works in Mexico because he worked with a lot of dead bodies and body parts and Mexico is a bit…looser than the US. Take a look at a few of his images. Disturbing and lovely.

That phrase probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’s something that was said a lot when I was an art major back in college.

When I looked at this statue, I suddenly had flashbacks of medieval oil masters and the flame-maned horses, always threatening to catapult their riders off the painting’s edge. It was always in battle scenes (I suppose who could afford to hire artists but the conquering emperors!)

It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed art. I almost went to a dedicated art college. But i ended up going to a regular college. I vacillated back and forth between journalism and art majors for years, finally graduating with a journalism major (I had to pick which had the most credits), but art has never been far from my heart. But I’ve never really allowed myself to do art- officially. It’s been more…craft. I was always the person who made you a homemade gift for Christmas (when I was young it was because of money), but now it’s because I think it’s so much more personal.

Well, now that NabloPoMo has chosen ART as the September theme, I thought now would be an excellent time to re-establish my relationship with art. Or at least explore how I feel about it now.

It’s just what it says: drawing exercises to flex your right hemisphere! I’m very excited to try it out. Will post my experiments (if they are any good!)

So who appears in my life? Eyal, a conflict resolution specialist who needs a website. We’re doing a barter arrangement: I build his site, and he’s teaching me what he knows about “having difficult conversations.” I am always pleased how the universe sends me people exactly when I need them.

The important thing isn’t bringing up the issues.

We all know the basics of bringing up “issues.” We’re supposed to state the issue or behavior, and how it affected us, using “I” language whenever possible and not accusing or blaming. I think most of us do an adequate, if sometimes clumsy job of bringing up issues (or maybe that’s just me).

But what if you bring up your problem, and the conversation doesn’t seem to be going the way you hoped?

Eyal says “Having a conversation almost NEVER get results the first time you bring it up.”

THIS WAS THE MOST EXCITING THING I HAD EVER HEARD.

Again, being from the house of non-communication, I had been trying to have difficult talks with people, and if after the first attempt they weren’t productive, I either got flustered (thinking I didn’t say it right or something) or just gave up, thinking it was futile. This has made me feel SO MUCH BETTER. Ok, then I need to ask…

So what are you supposed to do if things don’t go the way you hoped?

You have to practice RESILIENT LISTENING.

Eyal says,

It takes a great deal of restraint to stay in that space and continue to speak without getting upset. If you can do that, that demonstrates your good faith.

Usually on first broach of a topic, someone might feel defensive. They don’t know what your intentions are. They might not trust you. But if you can stay present, stay understanding, stay resilient, stay in active listening, hopefully the other person will understand that you CAN be trusted, that they CAN drop their defenses, that you are not there to hurt them.

Some things you can say:

• If the person seems to be a little guarded, you can say things like: “My sense is that you don’t want to have this conversation,” or, “I can tell by your body language that you don’t want to have this conversation.”
• You can offer your willingness to try to “get” the other person. You can say things like:
  • Can you help me understand why this is upsetting to you?
  • I want to understand what is upsetting to you about this.
  • Here’s what I understand. You’re are annoyed that we’re having this conversation.
• Ask them to tell you how you can have the conversation more effectively.
  • How can I bring up the things I want to talk about in a way that you want to talk about them?
  • How is it possible to get the thing I need addressed? Name your terms.
  • Is there another time we can have this conversation? (That’s an invitation to collaborate)

This last one was news to me. I think I would have said:

• “WHEN can we have the conversation if you don’t want to have it now?”
  However, Eyal says saying “when” is more commanding, not inviting. It seems a subtle difference to me, but explained that way it makes sense.

In this whole process Eyal says, the most important thing is to try to make the other person “feel felt.”

You want them to feel “Wow, they GET me.” If they feel that way, hopefully their defenses can then go down. You can have a dialogue with them.

You want to feel like, “I get you, even if you don’t get me (yet).”

Just in case you are feeling bad about your communication skills, Eyal says “EVERYBODY sucks at this.”

I’m looking forward to learning more about this delicate art.