The unbearable burden of perfection
Why does my generation have such a fraud complex?
This morning I visited the studio of an artist to conduct an interview. This woman embraced me quite literally straight away, pronounced my name properly and proceeded to go deep. Despite her not being a Christian ( she is a Polish Jew), by the end of our one-hour chat she asked if she could visit my church. My aunty is an iconographer and is currently working on frescoes showing key miracles and a few scenes from the gospel. Our church is in the artist's neighbourhood too—and it's a beautiful landmark with its golden cupola framed by greenery and bordered by a creek. I am almost relieved to talk about it openly with those who are truly interested.
Occasionally, people tell me how lucky I am to have had my upbringing, especially in 'fragmented Australia'. I was surrounded by art, music, love and God, in a strong community that got together and built a remarkable church, brick-by-brick. Occasionally it takes a stranger to broach the subject for it to really sink in.
Despite having a 'lucky', well-fed (in contrast, my dad grew up during a famine in northern China), safe childhood, I am so insecure.
I wait for disaster at the close of each day.
I don't believe I am good enough, or deserving of the opportunities that present themselves. I push myself into a frenzy of anxiety, trying to be the best mother I can be, a faultless editor, a well-regarded writer. The more you know, the more you realise you don't know and you spin in this plughole of fear. The Dunning-Kruger effect is like this – the not-so-bright skate through life self-confident, and those that are more cognitively clued-in are rife with uncertainties. Self-assessment is not an accurate tool.
The artist that I visited today feels the same. Perhaps we find our privileged creative lives so jarring against the trauma of the not too distant past – the Holocaust for her, the upheavals of Russia in the 20th century – or the four decades living stateless in China, for my family. The 'peace' we live in feels like a thin veneer, we're afloat on a continent away from most of the stuff that goes on elsewhere. Deep rifts are showing in what has been tentative civility for the last 30 years. We talked about Europe becoming more divided along partisan lines, and here too, the political situation is bizarre and unstable. We know how dangerous it is when the world looks in the wrong place for answers, from the Left or the Right.
Perhaps we find ourselves in ridiculously competitive fields, trying to maintain sanity, wanting to be seen as artists but remain unseen as private individuals. Or do we? Does success mean we need to buy into the cult of the self, to promote ourselves endlessly?
In her studio, ceramic sculptural objects showed her internal reasoning. There were objects she called plugs that resembled medieval metal works, like almost recognisable bolts, knobs and knockers you might find in the charred remains of an old building. She also made objects resembling buoys that she called weights, these were to be pierced with bronze. The plugs made me think of the things that we lack and the crutches and props that we use to fill those holes. The weights are the sins and burdens that we carry. Clay itself is a medium that is related to the human body – God having fashioned Adam out of it.
We are like her clay bodies. We are heavy, yet we are full of holes.
How do we address this? There are minimalists, there are ascetics, there are those that try to escape from materialism and look for a community of likeminded souls. I think of one of the scenes in my aunty's unfinished fresco – when Christ is in the temple preaching and the crowd looks to him and says that His mother and brothers are outside. Christ asks – "Who are my brothers and mother?" And He looks toward the people listening to Him and says, "Here are my mother and my brothers!" There are so many lonely people who can't look upon non-family and feel any connection to the greater community. Church is not a plug. It's the only place I truly feel like I am with my brothers and sisters. It's where I can take my baggage and ask God for forgiveness.
And here I am, sitting in my dining room, looking at the most glorious spring sunshine filtering through the boughs of an enormous tree. The pomegranate tree in our yard is about to burst into leaf, the red youthful buds are backlit and look like hundreds of candle flames. Everything is clean and still. I drink my green tea.
I will hold this artist's hand, like she asked to hold mine today. I will show her my church if she wants. And for now, my brothers and sisters will be the candles in church.
This morning I visited the studio of an artist to conduct an interview. This woman embraced me quite literally straight away, pronounced my name properly and proceeded to go deep. Despite her not being a Christian ( she is a Polish Jew), by the end of our one-hour chat she asked if she could visit my church. My aunty is an iconographer and is currently working on frescoes showing key miracles and a few scenes from the gospel. Our church is in the artist's neighbourhood too—and it's a beautiful landmark with its golden cupola framed by greenery and bordered by a creek. I am almost relieved to talk about it openly with those who are truly interested.
Occasionally, people tell me how lucky I am to have had my upbringing, especially in 'fragmented Australia'. I was surrounded by art, music, love and God, in a strong community that got together and built a remarkable church, brick-by-brick. Occasionally it takes a stranger to broach the subject for it to really sink in.
Despite having a 'lucky', well-fed (in contrast, my dad grew up during a famine in northern China), safe childhood, I am so insecure.
I wait for disaster at the close of each day.
I don't believe I am good enough, or deserving of the opportunities that present themselves. I push myself into a frenzy of anxiety, trying to be the best mother I can be, a faultless editor, a well-regarded writer. The more you know, the more you realise you don't know and you spin in this plughole of fear. The Dunning-Kruger effect is like this – the not-so-bright skate through life self-confident, and those that are more cognitively clued-in are rife with uncertainties. Self-assessment is not an accurate tool.
The artist that I visited today feels the same. Perhaps we find our privileged creative lives so jarring against the trauma of the not too distant past – the Holocaust for her, the upheavals of Russia in the 20th century – or the four decades living stateless in China, for my family. The 'peace' we live in feels like a thin veneer, we're afloat on a continent away from most of the stuff that goes on elsewhere. Deep rifts are showing in what has been tentative civility for the last 30 years. We talked about Europe becoming more divided along partisan lines, and here too, the political situation is bizarre and unstable. We know how dangerous it is when the world looks in the wrong place for answers, from the Left or the Right.
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| ‘Mon Seul Desir’ c1500, from The lady and the unicorn series. wool and silk, 377 x 473 cm. Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris. [Earlier this year I had the good fortune to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries which were on loan at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. The final tapestry shows the lady returning jewels by her own free will and choosing to live the life of the soul instead. Read deeper into this here. |
In her studio, ceramic sculptural objects showed her internal reasoning. There were objects she called plugs that resembled medieval metal works, like almost recognisable bolts, knobs and knockers you might find in the charred remains of an old building. She also made objects resembling buoys that she called weights, these were to be pierced with bronze. The plugs made me think of the things that we lack and the crutches and props that we use to fill those holes. The weights are the sins and burdens that we carry. Clay itself is a medium that is related to the human body – God having fashioned Adam out of it.
We are like her clay bodies. We are heavy, yet we are full of holes.
How do we address this? There are minimalists, there are ascetics, there are those that try to escape from materialism and look for a community of likeminded souls. I think of one of the scenes in my aunty's unfinished fresco – when Christ is in the temple preaching and the crowd looks to him and says that His mother and brothers are outside. Christ asks – "Who are my brothers and mother?" And He looks toward the people listening to Him and says, "Here are my mother and my brothers!" There are so many lonely people who can't look upon non-family and feel any connection to the greater community. Church is not a plug. It's the only place I truly feel like I am with my brothers and sisters. It's where I can take my baggage and ask God for forgiveness.
And here I am, sitting in my dining room, looking at the most glorious spring sunshine filtering through the boughs of an enormous tree. The pomegranate tree in our yard is about to burst into leaf, the red youthful buds are backlit and look like hundreds of candle flames. Everything is clean and still. I drink my green tea.
I will hold this artist's hand, like she asked to hold mine today. I will show her my church if she wants. And for now, my brothers and sisters will be the candles in church.
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