I had the chance today to do something fun: share high English tea with a friend, talk for the first time with her about my unorthodox career, and visit the local art museum.
I don’t recommending outing your sex working friends to mutual friends without permission. However, it was nice to have the call of “tell or don’t tell” made by someone with a more intimate knowledge and better prediction potential. Friend E found out when she was talking about how she and her boyfriend handled a situation with what they thought might be an underage sex worker. In order to more heavily weight my advice and also because I’m always straining to tell all, I confessed my intimate connection to this young stranger they tried to help. So E has known for several years now. K, another book club member, is much closer friends with E than I am so when E drunkenly told my secret one night, they knew it would be met with curiosity, not condemnation. It turns out that K had, off and on, considered trying out my profession but, as with many folks looking into it, didn’t know where to start and had other fish to fry so never tried to find out. Now most of book club knows which brings interesting light to stories and characters involving the world’s oldest, and my, profession. I kinda dig it.
Anyway, E and K are interested, as am I, in expanding out cultural consumption so we like to go the the free and cheap museums around the city. Not as often as I would like, but more often than I would on my own.
The Frye art museum has an exhibit going now (and not for much longer) all about mental health, current and past treatment methods, an examination of the commercialization of self care, and some werid experimental silliness. Primal scream therapy felt fake. Which makes sense, because it was actors on a screen being actor-y. If you’ve ever know a middling actor who takes themselves very seriously, you’ll know what I mean. I felt the same way about the ecstatic dance exhibit and likely would have felt the same if the tarot reader had been there. I tend to prefer a certain amount of not-taking-yourself-too-seriously in my modern art so the whimsical and absurdist room full of short films was more to my liking. I liked the monsters and their periodic table, found the sound bath meditative and pleasant, had to send a link to the anxiety exhibit to a friend, and was disappointed that the guided meditation soundtrack was malfunctioning, but the most fun I had was the word-item association exhibit.
I’m deliberately being vague, because art is hard to share if you haven’t seen it and also because I’ve been feeling awfully capricious lately. I want you to wonder what the heck ecstatic dance is and how I saw it if it’s an art museum, not a performance platform. I want you to fill in your own ideas when I tell you which Items I associated with which words, and if any of you have a background in psychology and find this interesting, I encourage you to book an extra half hour because I would LOVE to hear what you think, ha!
The word prompts are on the left, my items are on the right.
| The cradle | Weird marble baby. Lol. Its junk is showing |
| Mother | Mother theresa/mary/sant |
| Father | Gumby |
| Grandfathers | Pink stone pyramid |
| American Flag | |
| Grandmothers | I forget |
| German doll | |
| Playspace (shrinkin) | Toy whistle |
| The classroom (growing) | Marble bust of weird old guy |
| Experience | Shiny gold poop |
| heart break or heartbroken | Headless silver skeleton |
| Finding my way | Tape measure |
| Partner | Explorer figure with dynamite |
| I am a “____” | cat(s) |
| work/love dilemma | Eviscerated innards model |
| Money maker | Silver weird boob bust |
| Seven year itch | Marvin the Martian |
| The legacy | Busted arm statue of liberty |
| Family | Acupressure map hand |
| A career | Chattering teeth toy |
| Death | Medicine bottle |
| Aging | Dirty barbie |
| Descent | Rubber Centipedes |
| The key | Water cooler |
I like having fun with culture. I like not taking things too seriously. I like chatting about my unconventional life with folks who have no idea what my world can look like. I like laughing at myself and I like surprising myself. I got a little of each this afternoon.
P.S. There is some jewelry for sale in the gift shop at the Frye. It’s frivolously priced, a vain purchase if made for oneself, but if someone wanted to help make me a very spoiled young woman…. Standing at the counter looking down, displayed on the right hand side, There are four pairs of earrings, simple gold strands with white or blue stone accents. My preference even conveniently goes from top to bottom: smaller blue, triangular white, longer blue… There’s a lovely necklace to match, but the earrings bring me more pleasure. Ha!