Bear Witness

Frida Kahlo, Moisés (Moses), 1945, on view in The Making of an Icon.

January galloped in under auspicious clouds. Those of us born with optimism in our blood can’t help it. We see a fresh page and believe our collective hope will surely twist the plot. But we know, I know, that tides don’t turn before our very eyes and yet, we are willing to look naive. Silly, even. And what are we hoping for, anyway? The good ol’ days have never been good for more than a few. We are hoping for something that has never existed in my lifetime. Nevertheless, there is a magnificent flower blooming out of some raggedy crack as I type.

My life never fails to imitate…life. In a series of unfortunate events, I got hit by the most incredulous bank thieves, a bout of pneumonia that sent me to the ER and then Bob Weir died, a rapid succession barely three weeks post-Solstice. But hey, I actually have money in my account to steal, I have stable health insurance and I got to see the Grateful Dead twice before Jerry died. The pendulum returns and also, that is what it’s like to be me.

Me and my dog, Pedro, August 9, 1995. Trying to mourn Jerry. Probably not drunk enough.

It’s hard to remember the pendulum returns when we’ve damn near lost sight of it. As always, I need some proof. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated a year before I was born. The month following my birth, Neil Armstrong stepped out of a space ship and onto the moon. The year I graduated from high school, the Dow Jones saw the mightiest one-day fall to date. Two years later, the fall came from Berlin. In college, I was joining campus-wide protests against South African apartheid. In 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from a twenty-seven year prison sentence. I like patterns and will take any miniscule amount of comfort I can extract from them. It doesn’t mean I don’t mourn for the many black, brown and now, white bodies that have become the detritus as we fight for the shift.

Grief always comes in like a wobbly toddler for me, bringing up the rear. I’m all thoughts and action; my grief needs an invitation. That used to be in the shape of a wine bottle or three. I could perform grief but I needed alcohol to let it fully seep in. Coming on twelve years alcohol-free, I still need something tangible that acts as a delivery system. I watch the videos, all of them. I am concerned that I’m becoming desensitized though. Like with my meds, I’m building a tolerance.

Last weekend, my husband and I traveled to Houston so that I could catch the Robert Rauschenberg fabric show at the gorgeous Menil before it wrapped. When I learned that we could also see the new Frida Kahlo show at the Museum of Fine Arts before it opened to the public, I couldn’t buy a membership fast enough. The Making of an Icon displayed some of Frida’s clothing and adornments, many photographs and fourteen paintings, more than I’ve ever seen in one place and never so near. I was swallowing sobs before I left her first self-portrait.

Hanging were also many of Frida’s contemporaries, as well as modern pieces that paid tribute to her, many by feminist, queer and disabled artists. It was a stunning collection. Through the art and the grief so unabashedly on display, I was finally able to embody mine. Art as messenger tells a story of present interiority but also of systems, oppression, power. But art that has longevity transcends context. It is why Georgia’s flowers aren’t just another pretty still life.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Grey Lines With Black, Blue and Yellow, 1923, on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

In the end, artists assure us that pain is transmutable. Throughout the last decade-plus, through art and my own creativity, I was able to replace the booze with a different induction system to access and process my emotions. Drinking to oblivion was the antithesis of hope. I need hope like air.

Young lovers viewing Georgia O’Keeffe at the MFAH.

Since I began writing this, another person has died. Another sweet soul lost to this American tragedy. What do we do? We think, we act, we mourn—we all have our roles.

This is for the artists: bear witness. It’s the only way some of us can catch our breath.