Moving right along, I next picked up "Floor Sample" by Julia Cameron. I was given one of her books, "The Artist's Way" as a gift a few years ago. Unlike the first book, which is designed to help artists unblock and access creativity, this book is a memoir of Julia's life. Ms. Cameron is enviably prolific as a writer. She has written twenty-four books, and is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, songwriter and poet, according to her book jacket. In her book jacket photo, she looks mostly like Gena Rowlands, a classic, if out-dated beauty. (What's with the hair?) As I read, I imagine her to be a tall, wild-eyed, frantic, freaky artist-type in a printed robe from the 60s. She looks slightly startled-- I think she's had some work done. She's got to get those soft-focus, my-hand-is-stuck-to-my-face photos off her website, though.
She begins as a young journalist, casually name-dropping the prestigious colleges to which she is accepted out of high school as she slips into a fitful cycle of attention-getting writing and binge drinking. As a highly-functional and creative alcoholic, she meets and marries Martin Scorcese, loses him due to her drinking (with a little help from a then young and seductive Liza Minelli) and finally finds the path to sobriety in Los Angeles. Whew. I have read a lot of former-alcoholic memoirs, and I wasn't thinking this was going to be one. (By the way, I am not going to read "Dry" next, if anyone has any other suggestions of what to read, I'd love to hear them.)
Once sober, Ms. Cameron begins a relentless pattern of hungrily pursuing creative endeavors and running away from home. Or running to home, as the case may be. I should have counted from the beginning how many times she's moved. Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Manhattan, Manhattan to Taos, New Mexico, from Taos, back to New York, back to Los Angeles, to Chicago, back to Taos, to Venice Beach, back to Taos, to London, back from London to Taos, no wait, New York, no, oh, I forgot Vermont.
The minute she completes a huge creative task, or sometimes in the middle of it, she decides that she's lonely for the place she left, or that her currrent digs feel "wrong", leaves her belongings (always for someone else to pack up and have delivered to her), her dogs (I keep saying to myself "but what about the DOGS???"), even her horses, and just rents or buys a "cute, airy, light-filled" flat, apartment, house, townhouse, condo, ranch, walk-up or brownstone in the next destination on the map. Sometimes she moves more than once within the same city, trying on houses like printed caftans and tossing them aside.
I'm about an eighth away from finishing this book, and I have had to put it down twice because I feel like if I have to read about her being led by her creative muse (or nervous breakdowns, or fear of the abyss, or psychotic episodes, or ex-husbands) to move again, I'm going to throw the book against the wall. I don’t want to be mean to her. I want to like her.
There have been a few moments of clarity in this book when I saw her as coming very close to a creative role model. Her books have sold millions (I guess that helps cover all those cleaning deposits) and she clearly is someone who has successfully merged creativity with financial success, which is not usually the case. But if she were my friend, she would really piss me off. I have a hard time believing in her.
At this moment in the book, she's feeling as though she's slowly slipping back into the same disconnected and hallucinatory mental state that could have cost her life, and did put her in the mental state that facilitated her surreal and casual rape in a park in London, while she was feeling electricity and talking to trees or something. But instead of seeking a doctor who will prescribe the one drug that actually seems to work well for her, she calls a Native American shaman in another state who diagnoses her over the phone and prescribes a plethora of herbal treatments and fasting. Because what a person needs when they are on the edge of mental collapse is to stop eating and start ingesting large amounts of unknown herbal substances. She's once again tossed aside all of the advice of supportive fellow sober friends about eating and sleeping properly, and she's channeling music from her creative god. (If she was Andrew Lloyd Weber, I think we'd have heard about it by now. Maybe you have. I haven't.) But perhaps I'm being too harsh. It is that time of the month.
I'm torn. I really want to believe that her "morning pages" daily writing exercise, wherein the writer allows the "muse" to speak without judgment, is a good idea, and something that would work to release innate creativity. But I find her a difficult person to believe in now that I've read this book. Or almost read it. As long as she doesn't move again.
And that's it for now.
*note, on page 327, she finally notices AFTER moving two more times: "Surely it had been madness moving from place to place to place, New York to Los Angeles to Taos." Where were all her friends when this was happening???
No comments:
Post a Comment