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

L.o.T. part 3 video / what if

part 3 of the Layers of time project videos. 


1987, trip to N.Y., Boston and New England.

 this picture is taken in front of the apartment buidling we lived in in 1974/75, in Brookline, Massachusetts near Boston, while my Dad studied at Harvard. It had a swimming pool on the roof ... which I remember well. And while we were living there our car got stolen. That also I remember. Going to the parking with my Dad and the car not being there.

My brother, me, Mom. Boston.


_______________________________

What if ....
..... she had taken different decisions ....  would things had been different ? Would the outcome have been different? What if my Mom had decided to take action instead of enduring the situation? Would we have been unhappy (unhappier ....), would she have stayed with my Dad, would she have changed her life?
Of course things would have been different. I played and re-played that scenario a million times. What if, instead of being ill and suffering and not talking about what was really important, she had taken a very deep breath and talked. Talked openly about what was bothering her. About the betrayals she felt she had suffered. About her disappointments and her fears.
Maybe she had never learned to do so and honestly didn´t know how. Maybe it´s a problem the entire WW2 children generation has. But maybe she also lacked the courage to do sth. which would have upset the image she wanted to project to the outside. Maybe talking about things that were obviously wong meant failure for her.

Maybe in some other universe she did take different decisions .... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_many-worlds_interpretation

old. and empty.

music today: R.E.M
http://youtu.be/b8H0xopW3wk
http://youtu.be/8FNfB6WfwM4

and Depeche Mode …http://youtu.be/QrtydD2u1N0

oh, how I miss R.E.M…. and maybe I also miss the Nineties … before everything in this world turned sour in 2001. …

Yes, I am „old“ and I feel like feeling young again.
Today I realized that I consider things that happened 9 or 10 years ago, as recent. Scary. Considering that I will be 52 in 10 years …. and following the same logic, 10 years from now is not that far away.

Every thing is ok right now, but somehow everything feels slightly wrong. Maybe because I have been battling a serious cold for the last days or maybe I have a cold because I don´t feel like taking on the world right now.
Since we´ve been back I have done one thing that felt good, and that was going to my weekly meditation last Friday. The only moment of mental quiet I have had and the only time I felt ok. And drinks later with Nicole was also good. and liberating.
Why is it that I feel „restrained“ all the time, never free, always to slow, to heavy, to fearful, to anxious, too …. and not enough … not enough money, not enough health, not enough …..

And now I feel like running from my art. As if all my inspiration is gone, all my enthusiasm for the project vanished. I know, somehow, that it will come back, and that it is a typical thing for me to flee when things come to close …. But feeling is exactly what I feel like, getting away from this, from family memories, from anything that has anything to do with „that“ past …
Maybe I am only simply Sad.

family tree ... the women

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality

How difficult it is to make a family tree by following the female line ! ....  To me those family trees that only follow male ancestors never made sense.
It was a woman who gave me life to me after all.

Here is what I have ... the women leading up to me, starting in 1739 ...we all have different names, names a man gave us. What would I be called if we all had gotten our mothers´names? I´ll never know.


Catherine Bingen born 1739 -  died 9.7.1809 in Bech-Kleinmacher
Susanna Thomes  born 16.4.1760 in Kleinmacher- died 17.3.1817 in Bech-Kleinmacher
Susanna Perdang born 18.11.1780 in Bech-Kleinmacher - died 2.3. 1842 n Bech-Kleinmacher
Susanna Gales born in Bech-Kleinmacher 23.2.1809 - died 15.9.1849 in Remich
Maria Bomb born in Remich 2.1.1841 - died 1913 in Trier
Marie Rhein born in Remich 12.8.1862 - died 27.5.1938 in Luxembourg
Marie Germaine Mathilde Berg born in Eich 24.09.1892 - died in 1977
Mathilde „Tilly“ Biwer born in Eich 17.6.1914 - died 1.4.2001
Marie Paulette Germaine Bernadette Nicole Neys born in Eich15.8.1938 - died in Luxembourg 3.4.1991
Anne Michele Marguerite Michaux born in Ettelbruck 13.10.1971 -


It´s ridiculous, but i don´t even know whether my grandmother had any siblings ....

ghost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost

no corner cutting here

This project is not allowing me to cut corners.
I wanted to finish a new video this week, but instead while working on it made I realized that I was missing something and after a week of editing and re-doing and deleting and and and … I finally admitted defeat and only then I found out what this new episode was really going to about and I understood what was bothering me all the time.
And it´s not only the lack of expression of feelings  in the letters I was reading, but it´s all about denial and keeping up appearances long after everything has fallen apart.
Funny also how I always rationnaly knew this was the case and was bothering me then and now, but somehow to really know something you need to feel it and realize it in a profounder way.
So, a fresh start in two weeks … but first, a holiday. Well deserved, even if I say so myself. 

unrelated picture. 1981. USA trip. happier times. not perfect though. and some signs of what was going to come.

1987

I have been working on a new part of the project for days now ... but somehow I feel stuck. I had been reading letters my mother had written to me in 1987 while I was a youth holiday camp in England. The idea was to make a video based on those letters.
But suddenly I got lost in the process, not liking my voice reading was one issue, not feeling the letters, another. There is a sense of loneliness in them, and I tried going with that, but mainly they lack something I cannot put my finger on. Feelings. They lack feelings.
My mother wrote a lot of letters to a lot of people and she was a good writer, but there is nothing in them that tells me how she was doing. She is describing her day, where she went, what she did. Preparing a family trip to the US, a visit from my uncle with his family from the Netherlands, whom she called and where they went for Sunday lunch .... but I am not getting anywhere near her, I cannot feel her in those words. She sounds normal and distant. 
And then she wrote to me in English. Why? Because I was in England? It puts even more distance between her and myself.
I was miserable at that camp (everybody else seemed to be having a great time though) and I was probably looking forward to hearing from her, but I don´t really remember much about that ...
I was 15 at the time. She was 49.
49. That´s not really old, is it. But she looked old then. The illnesses had taken their toll. I cannot imagine how she felt. She had already been through so much. Endured so much. And what I always wonder, why didn´t she try to change everything. Or was it too late already?
Was she protecting me and my brother?

Mom in 1987. The jacket she is wearing was actually mine.

letter writer.
Mom.
the scar. 
I suddenly remember your scar on the arm. I remember it visceraly. I remember your physicality. That you were once a real live person. I now miss more then the idea of you, I miss you.
Strnge that I had forgotten how it felt to miss the physical presence of you. It´s a different kind of pain.

later.

how come that it is often only in retrospect that we realize that a period of our life was actually rather good? or are we simply erasing from our memory the unpleasant parts and are embellishing that which was?
on the other hand some periods of my life have been so painful that i see only now how much of my feelings i had to repress in order to remain at least half functioning. funny how one can sometimes feel the real pain and despair only decades later. when my mother died i didn´t feel anything. well, yes, go course i must have felt something, but i completely totally repressed all feelings immediately. it did help me cope and survive the immediate aftermath of this event. but then gradually my inability to feel what had happened and this half-grief started poisoning my life. every relationship i had was ruled by fear of loss and a huge gaping sadness. and every parting of a partner, even for a couple of hours, gave me panic attacks. even though i was rationally aware that my feelings were hugely exagerated and totally misplaced, i couldn`t help having them.
It is only now, 23 years later (!) that i am beginning to couple the right feelings with the right events and persons …. and that i realize what a terrible sadness i must have had inside of me that i just could´t allow to let out, or it would have killed me.

and here is video number two of the "Layers of time (finding Mom) " project

it took me a while to decide that my videos do not necessarily have to be chronologically, or otherwise, ordered ...
It is ok to just make what I feel is right at that moment, a thing that is difficult enough to realize.
Two idea are at the origin of this short segment: the paralyzing request my Mom made hours before she died: "don´t be sad, Anne" ... and a letter my uncle gave me, a letter my mother wrote to her parents from Paris in 1959, during her first year at university.

Paris has always been a really important place to my mom, and we went there quite often, I always thought that I would live there one day as well, something that never happened. Apart from having studied there, we often visited "tante Jeanne", Jeanne Lemaire, who lived in a buburb, easily accessible with the RER. "Tante Jeanne" was of course neither mine, nor my mothers aunt, but somehow related to us nevertheless .... around three corners... or four.
I admired Jeanne for her travelling around the world ... she went "everywhere" and we got great slide shows everytime we went to visit ... and she often brought me nice and interesting presents.

Jeanne Lemaire

Mom in Paris, 1959

here is the first intro video for the project "Finding Mom"

and this is the picture I inserted. Taken in in 1974 (or 1975) in Boston, Massachusetts. We lived there for nearly a year while my Dad was doing post graduate studies at Harvard. My Mom stayed at home and, I think, was really lonely. She made friends though with a Belgian family that lived in the same building. I became friends with one of their daughters, Bénédicte. They were from Louvain la neuve and were very catholic, but modern at the same time. A combination that always puzzeled me ...
With Bénédicte I went to the MIT kindergarden. She didn´t speak a word of English.
I was lucky that my Mom hab made sure that I understood and spoke the language ... A lot of Richard Scarry books helped ...

dome "Still"

 

first try out picture of the "stills"
playing around a bit. the "stills" are metaphorical, the symbolic part of the project.
from the "A" will move into the real world. hence the necessity of the figures that look like me. I want to have a pretty flawless "layering" and moving from "fanatsay" to "real".

mom and me

mom and me, 1971

beginning this project now. working title "looking for mom", i have no idea how it will be called later on. i might switch languages in the middle of this project, I might stop suddenly and feel insecure about it, i might fill it with nonsense, i have no idea where this is taking me.
anyway, mom, this is you, Paulette Michaux-Neys, or shall I say Marie Paulette Germaine Bernadette Nicole Neys?  As multiple and confusing your names were, so was your personlaity, at least, that is what i felt and still do. elusive. until the end.

there is no way i can ever make sense of you in the past, so i will try to do in the present .... you will never come back in the "real" world, so i will try to re-create you in the virtual world ....

mom, me, dad 1971