I love things—and people—that stand in opposition to the fascism of modern life. I suppose we'll never have a society without ridiculous constraints. There's never been a Golden Age free of tyranny and the evils of poverty, disease, war, organized religion, or brand-name hoodies, except in the imaginations of we Don Quixotes of the world. Maybe this is what makes certain things like music and art more beautiful. And adds a halo to those who stand for freedom.
Lately I've been thinking especially about three people with those halos: Frida Kahlo, Stephen Fry, and Gram Parsons. Silly, I know. I just love what each of them stand for, and I think my admiration says something about the things that hold me back.
Consider Frida. She wasn't afraid to be different. She was beautiful, partly because she accepted herself (and her mustache) the way she was. She didn't give a flying f*ck what other people thought of her. Her art and style were completely fresh and contemporary, but celebrated traditions. She constantly referred—with pride—to symbols and values of the people of Mexico, whom she loved even as she put up with misunderstanding and rejection. And her art is so good—unique, personal, symbolic without being comical or simplistic.
Then there's Stephen Fry. I'd be oh-my-god so embarrassed if he read this, but I don't think there's any reason to fear that will happen. He's intelligent and funny, and he's capable of being both without allowing skepticism and cynicism—natural outcomes of his high level of intelligence and humor—to make him come across as negative or hateful. He's wonderful. I aspire to achieve his mixture of humor, intelligence, and kindness. And I only wish I could be half as charming—a gift my brother was granted in excess but that skipped me.
And Gram Parsons. For me, he's a symbol of the American West (even though he's not actually from the West, and his music more closely fits the "country" in "country western")—and of a lonely kind of freedom. He died at that age and at a time when purity and beauty began to give way to corruption—that's really when beauty shines the brightest. This, too, is how I think of my West, of the land of trailer parks and dessert flowers and logged mountain peaks. Like Frida, he didn't seem to care what anyone thought, or at least he didn't let that stop him, and he embraced the old and the new together in a personal kind of religious symbolism. If you don't see what I mean, consider that he called his favorite music "Cosmic American Music." And he sang it really beautifully. Wearing a white leather Western suit bedecked in rhinestones, with images of pot and pills and naked ladies—and a burning cross.
Others, by the way, include Woody Guthrie, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Richard Brautigan, Shem (the wild one, Rumi's best friend), Billie Holiday, Bill Murray, Pancho Barnes, Joni Mitchell, Emerson, Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Picasso, Gary Snyder (notice a trend? They're almost all artists); for all their flaws and shortcomings (being human), they stand for freedom and creativity. I guess the cause of my admiration is rooted in my own fierce shyness and fear of rejection, both with my art and in my personal life. Maybe in most of them I also detect a bit of that shyness and vulnerability that plagues me, but maybe I'm assigning traits based on my own experiences. I don't know any of them; how can I admire them as actual people? They just stand for something, each a little differently, that I would like to nurture and grow inside myself.
A coworker once told me (in my impressionable 20s) that if I admired somebody else, I should consider what traits they possessed that I so admired. And name them. And then recognize that I must also possess these traits; otherwise I wouldn't recognize them. And the same went for things I disliked in others. (By the way, that coworker turned out to be an immature jerk, ultimately, at least in the workplace. What does that say about me? Hm.)
It's a scary thought. If you can give it a name, you own it. You possess the same trait. But it's also nice to consider. Maybe I can be as brave and colorful as Frida, or as bright and witty as Stephen Fry, or as beautiful as Gram Parsons. Maybe the fascism I referred to is really just the roadblocks I put in my own way.
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