I recently had a video go viral detailing a “date” where the Pitbull look alike that showed up doused in Drakkar Noir ditched me by going out the side door when claiming to get his coffee. I filmed it moments after I discovered he had left and unmatched me, so I was unable to ask if he had fallen into the toilet, thus ruining his cream colored jumpsuit. It garnered me a lot of new followers, many of them older men who then DM me odd things with the rare kind one sending pictures of him and his wife fishing or a poem. I also had a woman recognize me when at an estate sale and tell me that my video made her feel better about her own dating horror stories and less alone in her search. Her reaction, has been my goal, all along.
The virality of the video presented a re-discovered opportunity in my new TikTok followers asking about my blog. I’d originally abandoned this project as I’d felt my few readers were not comprehending the true mission – which was to share experiences and thoughts in an effort for others to find similarities in my life, within their own. Anyone who has studied art for as long as I have likely will want to share something of themselves because it is the way we were taught to communicate. It is those among us who are comfortable with being uncomfortable that are meant to share our lives so you feel less alone. I can sit in discomfort, wallow in it and roll around like a pig in mud…this, I’ve come to understand in my aging, is not common.
Not all art will be interpreted this way, as an artist sharing their mind with the world, many people will see a pretty painting and think there is nothing more going on than the translation of light onto canvas. They will see a sunset, not the painter watching the sunset. But as someone who had to unlearn that every artistic move HAD to mean something, I learned that every move DID mean something. These are two different thoughts, one is that there needs to be an intentional message and the other is that there is a message that is void of the creator’s perceived intention.
This was explored in Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message, where he postulated that the way that art was delivered was the message vs the content of the art itself. With the rise of social media and the different technological eras of reaching the masses we have seen the truth in what McLuhan meant. Blog posts originally brought people in to a curated image of one’s life, then Instagram posts with food set up just so for that perfect shot to show a tranquil morning and since 2020 with the rise of the video format, we have seen an increased desirability for “authenticity” going toe to toe with curated to perfection Trad wife content. In the past week we have seen two large companies post ads that some consider cheeky, while those learned in media, read as eugenics propaganda. This disconnect has served as a warning bell of how few people are able to interpret art and see that there are often multiple layers of meaning- especially in a paid for ad campaign.
In the 1950s the CIA used artists in a psyop campaign, and art has been used many times over to sway the masses mentality- authoritarian regimes have targeted political cartoonists because they have power in how they are able to deliver a message sans words to the world. Art is political, it always has been, it always will be. Even when that is not the explicit intention. In the 1990s we saw a rise in female musicians who were angry at the labels women had been given and were vocal about it, to the point where in 1995 ten year olds were understanding that an older man had used Alanis Morissette and we too were angry about it. Shortly after the end of the Lilith Faire, that music was taken off main stream stations and moved to the Indie channel as there was a push for young, over sexualized popstars and ‘bimbos’ in the mainstream. The image of women transitioned from soul powerhouses to sultry partygoers hounded to insanity by the Papparazzi. One is hard pressed to continue to refute that narrative change of women in music was not by design. As Diddy is found not guilty, after damning evidence, and we lose the right to abortion, it becomes easier to see all the cultural milestones that have been attempts to push women back to a time we refuse to return to.
When I was in school it was very common to disdain people whose work was like Thomas Kinkade, in an arts college it is harped on that your work must have an explicit meaning beyond beauty. In my early years of arts education, I took painting classes every Friday from the age of 8 through 14 and there was this one star pupil (her name was not Jillian). Her name was Susan and she could replicate any painting you put in front of her. It is common when learning to paint to copy paintings of masters- this has happened since the days of Gentileschi and Michelangelo. Our modern masters at the time I was in these classes were Bob Ross and Thomas Kinkade, and everyone left Mrs. Adams’ class knowing, at the very least, how to paint happy trees. Susan was a few years older than me, and was the only kind girl in my first art critique, so as any 8 year old would, I began to idolize her. A girl named Renee made fun of my clown painting to the point where I cried. I was eight, Renee was 12…memories. Over the years as the older girls faded away Susan kept showing up to Fridays class. She actually enjoyed the meditative painting, in a way that I honestly have never have been able to. Around the time I was 10 she began to copy the Kinkade pieces and as this was the mid 1990s, it was rather amazing. She could capture the warm light that made you think of a cozy village set in the 1880s French Countryside pre-electric light. As I would bumble along using too much blue paint to create another flat sky, Susan was understanding the way light played over a landscape, be it moonlight or the warm lamp light that could be found in Kinkade’s paintings.
There was a meaning in the Kinkade pieces that I didn’t understand when I was in my highbrow art theory years; comfort. Kinkade created scenes that were a blend of fantasy and familiar so you could imagine walking in to the scene and find a talking forest creature offering you a warm cup of mushroom cap tea or perhaps your long deceased Grandma, in her prime. The few city scenes made you think of old Christmas movies, where everyone winds up together, gathered around the fire, singing carols. And there is a lot to be said for being an artist who can deliver comfort to their audience.
McLuhan, in his landmark theory, also presented that the character of the medium as another message that is often overlooked. This could mean the ways in which we interpret physical mediums such as vinyl vs tape, 35mm vs digital, oil vs watercolor and there is truth in that. The way digital films read to an audience compared to those on film stock are now startling- one is so high definition you can see Julia Robert’s pores and the other is at a remove so you can watch Julia Robert’s acting in a story and not even pause to think about her pores. Another perspective of character is the deliverer of the art – the artist themselves, the writer, the singer, the actor. We bring with us the collected experiences of our lives to put out into the world this new thing, which would have a different flavor to someone with a different perspective.
I recently re-watched a film I’d told a fellow film lover to watch – and the take away he had verse my own was surprising. If it had only been a film, and not a film based on a novel, he very well could be correct that the message was what we were explicitly being shown, and not the underlying motivations of the character. To me the character was the message, to him the story was the message. I was reading the character in ways that embedded my own thoughts and psychological understandings onto her. Both are correct interpretations.
I bring this all up to say, that it is you, the reader, who is the interpreter of the content I create. It may have been my intention to share so one felt less alone, but it also may have been some unresolved trauma for me to share so I myself felt less alone. While I may be the medium, it is you who are the message.
too fat to be italian 