Angry Artist: Mothers of Invention

It’s Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. and I am going to work. This means lugging my laptop to the coffee shop to meet a friend and peck away at one of several freelance jobs I currently have going. There’s plenty to do, but instead I sit down and begin telling Deirdre about every annoyance, frustration, and disappointment I currently harbor. So much venom spills out that there are little demons dancing on our table, knocking the froth from her latte.

We are an angry people, so we’re told. I heard on the radio last week that the people of Bhutan, believed to be among the happiest in the world, are growing cranky as the country becomes more industrialized. And that bastion of all things liberal, Utne Reader, currently asks, “Why Are We So Angry?” I have no clue as to why the grown men described in the article would kill themselves knocking over vending machines to try to get their change back. Personally, I find such times to be good moments for practicing deep breathing and shrugging my shoulders at the vagaries of life. Like last month when I lost two sheets of super hero postage stamps. A little anger came gurgling up, but all I could do was sigh and hope that a really dedicated letter writer found them.

I get a major case of the screaming meanies when I don’t get to write. The foremost impediments to my writing are my kids. I’ll get to them in a moment, but first I must comment on the fact that artists—whether we’re freelancers or Dickinsonian purists—have the cards stacked against us. Work that can be done at home or in a place whimsically called “a studio” can’t be real work. People who aren’t earning health insurance and paid vacation aren’t doing real work. And, as mothers, women who are doing such work in lieu of something more pressing, such as laundry, are the most indulgent of all. So, talent and passion be damned, get thee to a cubicle!

Unlike this ambiguous web of cultural baggage that impedes my work, my children are clear as rain. Brush teeth, comb hair, fill lunch bags, read books, practice violin, feed dinner, brush teeth, ease worries, go to sleep. Again and again and again.