Ibiza ... honeymoon ... 1964

My parents spent their honeymoon in 1964 in Ibiza .... so did I in 2005 with D..

Event though I always tried to escape being the same as my mother, I ended up doing many things exactly the same way she did .... the honeymoon in Ibiza was one thing, another one was that D. and I bought a house near Berlin in a place that belonged to a village called Gielsdorf  .... the place I grew up in in Luxembourg is called .... Gilsdorf ....
There was much, much more of this .... I wonder how it was possible that while trying to be different I tried at the ame time to be the same.
As if trying to get in contact with her that way, maybe also in order to understand, or to avoid betraying her ....
Up to the point where it became unbearable and I had to admit that I was really different after all .... Or not. Or only to the point where I broke out of something she should have broken out of as well. I will never know.
I can look at a million pictures and read all the letters I have from her, I have no idea who she was. Never really had. There is this blur. No definite identity. When I think of her, the words disappointment, anger, illness, cancer, death, lost opportunity, confusion, frustration come to my mind. Nothing really positive ....
She was angry all right. But at what and at whom?

And who was this woman I can see in these Ibiza pictures? Was she happy then? Happy to be married? I know they drove all the way from Luxembourg through France and Spain and then with a ferry to Ibiza with their 2CV ... and that my father was totally exhausted afterwards. And that they brought chairs back with them. On the roof of the car. I know facts, but I know nothing.

new collection on Glossom ... "A Jouney Inside"

discoveries and confrontations - desires and illusions

on shame and obligation

I had no idea when I started this project, how much it would involve myself, and what emotions i would experience. I had counted on some mild sadness and maybe a bit of anger … and I was kind of surprised at the reactions of some friends who said: oh wow, once you´re through that you and your art will have changed … you will be liberated ….
I wondered what they meant … now I am beginning to get an idea ….

I found a second hand book on shame a couple of weeks ago (for free ….) („Healing the Shame that binds you“ by John Bradshaw)and I have been reading parts of it event since … it´s a bit too „heavy“ for fast reading and i only manage a couple of pages at a time … it´rather revealing on how „toxic shame“ works and I am finally getting some explanations on why I feel the way I feel …. why I am always slightly ashamed of what I am doing … why I am ashamed of my art. ashamed of being an artist, or feeling I am not good enough to be called an artists (or to call myself an artist …)
And I even used to be ashamed when someone else was proud of what I did …..

Well, I am still reading and wondering how it took me so long to see these mechanisms and who I was repeating old stuff I had „endured“ in my childhood and teenage years over and over again ….

And i am allowing myself to feel anger and not only sadness when it comes to my parents ….

Yes, all this may sound like ego-centric psycho babble to you …. but for me it´s rather mid blowing ….
So, instead of posting hundreds of pictures of my mother…. I am talking about myself …. It´s all part of understanding who my mother was  … and the consequences this had / has on people connected to her.

I constantly have this bad conscience though that this project is not evolving the way I had anticipated … but then I have been reading Twyla Tharp´s book on creativity ( The Creative Habit) in which she explains how „obligation“ is a killer of creativity … and that nothing mind blowing will ever come from a creative mind that creates out of a sense of obligation … in my case: I wrote a project proposal and now thins are evolving in a different way …. what am I to do … force myself to make what I have „promised“ of go with the creative flow and see what the results are when I allow myself to create exactly that what I wish to make … ?

39 years ago. june 1975.

scanning old slides again. with a slightly better scanner.
i am not so eager on seeing those old pictures again, it all feels stale.
when i see pictures of my mother i wonder hwo she felt about me. about my brother. about being a mother without a job in a foreign country. i have my first memories from there, Brookline, Massachussetts, and the Kindergarden at MIT ...
Sometimes I wish we could simply have stayed there. I think I have written all this before. The past makes me want to run away very fast right now.

just a thought: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_parent
and a quote from the same page:
"Children of narcissists
....
The sensitive, guilt-ridden children in the family learn to meet the parent’s needs for gratification and try to get love by accommodating the whims and wishes of the parent. The child’s normal feelings are ignored, denied and eventually repressed in attempts to gain the parent’s “love.” Guilt and shame keep the child locked into this developmental arrest. Their aggressive impulses and rage become split off and are not integrated with normal development. These children develop a false self as defense mechanism and become codependent in relationships. The child's unconscious denial of their true self perpetuates a cycle of self-hatred, fearing any reminder of their authentic self."

some stills from the videos

part 4 of L.o.T. : DREAMING