That Which I Can, I Do | Heather Corinna If there is one question I get asked more than any other in the course of my work, it is simply, "Why do you do this?" Not only do I write about sex, I choose to write and publish aspects of sex that are the least marketable, often the most unpalatable, and which make me a very difficult person to like when judged solely by my work. My best work is work which often creates discord rather than comfort. It is rarely pleasing to the eye and requires a reader or viewer to stand uncomfortably close to truly see it. When I am doing it well, it is work which rather than leaving one fulfilled, sated and soothed, leaves one instead feeling as if they cannot sit still for any period of time without shifting in their chair. The truth is, part of me never really knew why this is what I do, and all of the pat answers I have for interviews ("sex is important," "sex is part of the human condition," or "art and literature should encompass all of human life and be inclusive") look great on a page, but don't answer my own questions about why I do what I do, and why I feel terrible when I do not do it. But recently, the need to answer that question for myself has put me at a crossroads. Thankfully, a crossroads -- dangerous, mysterious, and compelling -- is my favorite place to be. Sex, for me, has always been more about catharsis than about celebration. My art has always been the same way. It would even be within reason to say that my life has been that way. I am more inclined to sit amid all of the pieces that have fallen and rearrange them and play with them for a while than I am to immediately pick them up, brush off my knees and move on. I have always had a vast appreciation for beauty, but it is the beauty I find in things which make me angry, or bring me to grieve that I value most, opposed to the sort of beauty at which one sighs gently and rapturously. I have better sex and create better art when I am unhappy than when I am happy. I feel better when I am stripped to my core than I do when I am protected. Feeling tamed terrifies me. Feeling feral invigorates me. My favorite painting in all of art history is a piece by Ivan Albright (which resides at the tail end of the modern art section at the Chicago Art Institute, just before you walk into O'Keefe's Clouds), entitled That Which I Could Have Done, I Did Not Do. Colloquially, it is often called "The Door." The first time I encountered this painting, I began to simply walk past it, when an enormous wave of feeling hit me square in the gut, and I had to sit down at the bench right in front of its realistic six foot height. The longer I sat, the more all the tiny details of the thing drew me in, until I realized I had been sitting there for close to an hour, my nose nearly pressed to it; sobbing loudly. Albright's "Door" is that door which holds regret behind it, and behind which, all the things we have not done yet could have -- the things we never touched because we were afraid to or they were not pretty, the things we did not dare to do for fear we'd fail -- rot behind. Even if we could open that decrepit door, what lies behind it would be lost to us, and would reek to high heaven of bitter cowardice and of a never-had-loss which is no one's fault but our own. That Which I Could Have Done, I Did Not Do is painted brilliantly, and from a few paces back, is dark but lovely, and appears benign and harmless. Upon closer examination, one realizes it's microscopically detailed beauty is the sort you see on old women who have recently died: their skin yellowed paper, their hair smoky wisps, their hands looking like old china which if tapped too roughly would surely crack. It is that beauty which is only beautiful in our deep feeling for it; for all intents and purposes, to look at it is not comforting or lovely nor is it something which we covet or long for. Unlike a beautiful woman we see walking down the street who captivates our eyes, and whom we strain to see when she moves out of our field of vision, this sort of beauty holds our eyes but we long to look elsewhere. We must make ourselves look more deeply, though it is painful to do so. Once taken in by this sort of beauty, though it feels less wonderful, we are apt to stare at it far longer than at that pretty woman who passed us, and it will stay with us when she has been long forgotten. Ivan Albright clearly felt similarly. His twin was also a painter, but the sort who did beautiful and tranquil pastoral landscapes. Ivan, on the other hand, looked at young models and saw aging women, and looked at young men and saw Dorian Gray. Albright was fascinated with decay, not with birth or the glowing ebullience of beauty and youth many other artists have been compelled to portray. Ivan Albright did not only see doors as those things which allow us passage through, but as those things which, once locked, cannot again be opened, and if they were, would likely destroy our comfort. You cannot truly see an Albright painting in all it's minutiae without standing uncomfortably close to it, and yet it is the last thing you want to do. I have come to define beauty in my life not as that which is lovely, lofty or pleasing, but simply as that which is compelling, and often uncomfortably so. As an artist, I crave beauty, yet this is the sort I crave, that which tears me to my bones and makes me look at them, unfettered and unadorned. It is the sort of beauty which keeps me awake at night, rather than lulling me into a restful sleep. Sex often does the same thing to us when we take it apart, look at it deeply, and experience it with our shutters open and our guard down. If it did not do that, it would not be so beautiful, because if it did not do that, it would not be compelling. If it did not do that, it would not move us, shape us, change us, make us feel so strongly about it. Perhaps it is why so much of the sexual material we see is without these visceral elements: it is in soft-focus, or presented as one-dimensional. It's easier that way, simpler to create, easy to sell, and a piece of cake to swallow. Mine is not. This is why, ultimately, I do what I do in the way that I do it. It is why most of my best work is rarely published (I don't usually even submit it for publication), and why I care less about making people feel better and care far more about simply making people feel. I grew up preferring the Brothers Grimm to Hans Christian Andersen. There is that moment in every Grimm's tale when, as an outsider removed, you see the fatal error which the tale's hero or heroine has made, and you know something big is about to happen. In that moment, my hands would tremble, my breath would quicken, and I would be thankful it was only a story, and then feel disappointed when that moment had passed. In the same vein, I am never so thrilled as I am, not in a kiss, but just before a kiss, with someone's breath on my lip, their nose tickling mine. Suspense is by nature compelling, regardless of the outcome. Knowing what we are about to do will change the canvas on which we paint our lives is very exciting: it is active rather than passive. It has become clear to me that I do what I do -- create and dissect things which make other people uncomfortable -- because I revel in either creation or decay, and sometimes both at the same time when I'm really lucky. Comfort is passive; it is a state of limbo between action or incitement. While we all need times of peace, quiet, and solace, comfort has rarely done anything. Comfort does not incite change, it does not shake us to our core, it does not -- as may be obvious -- make us uncomfortable. I grew up grappling a myriad of serious tragedies and difficult issues, and I don't think I'd trade them for a world of comfort. They made me vulnerable, they made me think, and they made me feel so much at times that I longed to feel absolutely nothing, yet in those rare moments when I did feel nothing I was terrified, for an absence of feeling is for the dead, not the living. My tragedies made me brave because I knew very early on that nothing was really safe at all, so if I were to be afraid when I wasn't safe, I'd be nothing but afraid. My lack of comfort made me -- odd as it sounds -- comfortable being uncomfortable. It made me fearless. I knew there were wolves in the woods and that even if I DID go straight to grandmother's house, I'd probably find a wolf or two along the way regardless, so I may as well go where I liked. The work I do, and the way in which I present it, makes for an uncomfortable life. I'll never make a stable living doing it, especially if I present it in the way it pours naturally from me. I'll never get a lot of recognition. I am no one's poster girl, and my work often makes my interpersonal relationships very difficult. I am rarely well-liked on the whole by many. By it's very nature, my best work isn't anything most people will rush out to ingest, and I often feel that my physical appearance stands in stark contrast to who I am, what makes me tick, and what I create. I sometimes feel I am that shiny apple of children's tales which holds a poison beneath it's brilliant red surface. Albright did a self portrait shortly after his seventieth birthday. As may not be surprising, this lover of decay was thrilled to represent himself in old age. Tiny white lines showed a myriad of wrinkles and puckers, his hair barely existed, his mouth puckered in on itself like a balloon tied tightly. However, Albright looked little like that in outward appearance, he was instead an apparently sunny-looking old man with an easy smile and a shining pate. But that is not what he saw, and this is not what I see. Coming to realize and accept what I find beautiful, what I find compelling, and what I have often tried to avoid in order to create work which is palatable and pleasing to others is a difficult thing to do. I can look at any of my work and see the subtle spots of what truly drives me nestled in neatly so as to make a bitter pill far simpler to swallow. However, what I can also see is that that work -- the work in which I try and deliver gently those things which are not gentle -- is a lesser thing than the work I am capable of doing and the work which I cannot fully live without doing. I can see that my outward appearance means very little compared to what I truly see. Seeing these things is challenging, has brought me in and out of depression, and is very confusing and a little overpowering. Beginning to see these things is also one of the most freeing feelings I have ever experienced. I am, as I said earlier, at a crossroads, and a few new projects have landed in my lap with which it seems I can begin to walk further down a path I have been avoiding. I am Little Red as the Wolf pops out of the trees and she is deciding whether or not to allow him to join her on her journey or not. Of course, we know that she will. And we may well know what will happen if she does. But if Red didn't allow the wolf to join her, we'd have no sort of story at all, and if she did not open that door, she'd likely find one later that, like Albright's, she could no longer open at all. It is only our limited perspective which tells us that beneath our smooth skin and coifed hair, underneath the muscle and the marrow, our bones are not beautiful. Another viewpoint entirely allows us to see that they are, in fact, what holds everything else up upon them. If we do not strip ourselves down to our very foundations at times -- unappealing as they may be -- we cannot possibly appreciate them, nor understand them. Without them, we are nothing but a gelatinous mass. We are not whole without them. So, the answer I have arrived at is that I do what I do because I am compelled to do so, and because it is beauty -- even in its seeming ugliness -- which compels me. I do what I do because I feel it is important in living to touch all of the things that surround us, even if they burn our fingers when we touch them. I do what I do because it is very much a part of who I am, and because I cannot imagine living, in the fullest sense, without doing what I do in the way that I do it. I do what I do because the sight of that painting made me more scared than I have ever been in my life and shook me deeply. I do what I do because without catharsis, without fear, or without looking so deeply at myself and the things around me to the point of trembling and panting and weeping, I feel I may as well be dead, which is something I would rather not be while I am still alive. I do what I do because I can do it, and because if I can, making the choice not to lies behind a door which I'd prefer never to have to lock. Copyright 2000, Heather Corinna. All rights reserved. talk about it at the forums | wenches of yesteryear | home