When I was a boy, I had a good friend named Alexander Skolnick, and he and I used to like to invent and draw superheroes. We would almost always draw them frontally, the figures looking directly at the viewer, but with their feet facing outwards to better show the designs on their boots. I don't remember why we always drew them with boots on (as opposed to wearing shoes), but seem to recall that classic superheroes always wore them.
One day, my father, me and Alexander were visiting at Alexander's father's country house in rural Massachusetts, when his father began berating me and Alexander for the way we depicted our characters' feet. Like my father, Arnold Skolnick was a painter, and objected to the poses in our drawings, which he felt unnatural and anatomically incorrect (they were, but we liked depicting them in this manner). After a moment or two, my father interjected, and explained why he thought we drew the feet that way, which he was correct about (to better show their boots), and which surprises me to this day that he was able to understand. It didn't occur to me consciously at the time, but thinking about it now makes it even clearer how important that interaction was for me. The memory of it remains very powerful, and I believe this is because I had the feeling of being supported by someone, and that is a feeling that I basically never had throughout my childhood, teenage years, and has persisted into much of my adult life; I still struggle to not feel that way at times currently.
I've been thinking quite a bit over the last couple of months about how completely alone and vulnerable I felt as a child, and it took me many years to understand that in many ways, certainly emotionally, I really was alone, and that is a difficult thing for a child; at least it was for me.
I don't have many memories of my childhood years at this time in my life, and although this fact may change, it seems that the positive ones that I do recall remain so vivid precisely because of their scarcity. The feeling of being understood and my ideas approved of is always memorable.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Imagining myself as a Californian in the 1960's
I have lived in California for almost nine and a half years, since I was forty two years old. In those early years, I considered myself a "New Yorker" that lived in San Francisco, but for the past four or five I have thought of myself as a Californian from New York.
Having choices is a wonderful thing: I feel like one can at times, if the circumstances are good, have some choice in where they live, but cannot determine where they are born. Although feeling an integral part of place or thing is sometimes a bit tenuous for me, I still wanted to be a "Californian" during those first years, no matter how I thought of myself.
I remember buying quite a few pairs of shoes by a brand called Seavees, whose motto is and was "Authentic California". I would catch myself looking at my feet, sometimes drifting off, imagining being on the beach in the mid-nineteen sixties, a part of some laid back culture that I have no background or familiarity with. I also recall first listening to the Zombies' classic album, "Odessey and Oracle", believing I could be in a room somewhere in California, maybe high, as the music seemed to give sound to the world around me. It was probably my way of easing into a culture that felt very different to me.
When I was around seventeen years old, I dressed primarily like I lived in the 1950's, as I liked listening to rockabilly music, but never really thought of myself as somehow living in that time. Perhaps it is because I was actually alive during a good part of the 1960's that I am able to better imagine myself as a part of the culture of that time than I was for the 1950's. I've also thought that because I never really cared for the politics of that earlier time that I never envisioned myself there, but I think that the fact that I search for how I felt during the early year of my life makes the 1960's more interesting for me to explore, and seeing myself in California then is an attempt to bridge gap between how I was and who I am today.
One method of transport
Having choices is a wonderful thing: I feel like one can at times, if the circumstances are good, have some choice in where they live, but cannot determine where they are born. Although feeling an integral part of place or thing is sometimes a bit tenuous for me, I still wanted to be a "Californian" during those first years, no matter how I thought of myself.
I remember buying quite a few pairs of shoes by a brand called Seavees, whose motto is and was "Authentic California". I would catch myself looking at my feet, sometimes drifting off, imagining being on the beach in the mid-nineteen sixties, a part of some laid back culture that I have no background or familiarity with. I also recall first listening to the Zombies' classic album, "Odessey and Oracle", believing I could be in a room somewhere in California, maybe high, as the music seemed to give sound to the world around me. It was probably my way of easing into a culture that felt very different to me.
When I was around seventeen years old, I dressed primarily like I lived in the 1950's, as I liked listening to rockabilly music, but never really thought of myself as somehow living in that time. Perhaps it is because I was actually alive during a good part of the 1960's that I am able to better imagine myself as a part of the culture of that time than I was for the 1950's. I've also thought that because I never really cared for the politics of that earlier time that I never envisioned myself there, but I think that the fact that I search for how I felt during the early year of my life makes the 1960's more interesting for me to explore, and seeing myself in California then is an attempt to bridge gap between how I was and who I am today.
One method of transport
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