Sabrina Chapadjiev - Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction
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- Book:Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction
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- Year:2011
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Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction: summary, description and annotation
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The 21 artists, who share their stories of madness, trauma, addiction, abuse and self-destruction, and their relationship to art, leave no vulnerable detail unwritten.Shameless
A visceral look at the bizarre entanglement of destructive and creative forces, Live Through This is a collection of original stories, essays, artwork, and photography. It explores the use of art to survive abuse, incest, madness and depression, and the often deep-seated impulse toward self-destruction including cutting, eating disorders, and addiction. Here, some of our most compelling cartoonists, novelists, poets, dancers, playwrights, and burlesque performers traverse the pains and passions that can both motivate and destroy women artists, and mark a path for survival. Taken together, these artful reflections offer an honest and hopeful journey through a womans silent rage, through the power inherent in struggles with destruction, and the ensuing possibilities of transforming that burning force into the external release of art.
With contributions by Nan Goldin, bell hooks, Patricia Smith, Cristy C. Road, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, Carolyn Gage, Eileen Myles, Fly, Diane DiMassa, Bonfire Madigan Shive, Inga Muscio, Kate Bornstein, Toni Blackman, Nicole Blackman, Silas Howard, Daphne Gottleib, and Stephanie Howell.
A visceral look at the bizarre entanglement of destructive and creative forces, Live Through This is a collection of original stories, essays, artwork, and photography. It explores the use of art to survive abuse, incest, madness and depression, and the often deep-seated impulse toward self-destruction including cutting, eating disorders, and addiction. Here, some of our most compelling cartoonists, novelists, poets, dancers, playwrights, and burlesque performers traverse the pains and passions that can both motivate and destroy women artists, and mark a path for survival. Taken together, these artful reflections offer an honest and hopeful journey through a womans silent rage, through the power inherent in struggles with destruction, and the ensuing possibilities of transforming that burning force into the external release of art.
With contributions by Nan Goldin, bell hooks, Patricia Smith, Cristy C. Road, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, Carolyn Gage, Eileen Myles, Fly, Diane DiMassa, Bonfire Madigan Shive, Inga Muscio, Kate Bornstein, Toni Blackman, Nicole Blackman, Silas Howard, Daphne Gottleib, and Stephanie Howell.
Sabrina Chapadjiev: author's other books
Who wrote Live Through This: On Creativity and Self-Destruction? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Sabrina Chapadjiev
Mike Ashley
Patricia B. Santora
Mechell Medina
B. J. Hollars
Dorthea L. Hughes
Shari Botwin
Vandana Shiva
David Vincent Meconi
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Table of Contents
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR LIVE THROUGH THIS
Live Through This showcases a diverse sisterhood of outsiders who tackle their demons, confront their tormentors, and in turn create art that will inspire others to find the undeniable power of their own voice.
Lydia Lunch
This moving anthology is for any person (especially woman persons) ever addicted to drugs, madness, or self-destruction in any and all ways. Its comforting to know youre not alone, its comforting to know you were never alone.
Trina Robbins, author of GoGirl! and
Tender Murderers: Women Who Kill
Tender Murderers: Women Who Kill
This book could save your life. Twenty dangerously smart women survive and conquer in this impassioned, inspiring All Star Slam. Look to them as object lessons, role models, creative heroines, or simply proof that you are not alone.
Jenni Olson, writer-director of The Joy of Life
To the ones who think they are not going to make it.
Preface
It all began with Sarah Kane. She was young, cutting edge, and one of the fiercest voices in playwriting. I wanted to meet her. I had just worked on the American premiere of her play, Phaedras Love, and felt that there was something in the intensity of her work that I was trying to explore in my own. Rough. Cruel. Raw. Her plays cut clean and deep, and I wanted mine to do the same.
I was in rehearsals for one of my own plays when I heard of her death. I dont remember exactly where I was at the timeprobably in the theatre, making last minute additions to the text. What I do remember was the shift in me, the space slightly to the left of my heart that hurt when I heard it was suicide.
I felt betrayed, and confused. I was still in college at that point, and after years of performing assigned texts, had only begun writing my own scripts. While writing, I began to discover this strange voice at the back of my throat, which didnt sound like my old voice at all. It felt red and raw and powerful, and the more I wrote, the stronger it became. Each word seemed to chip away at my former identity and bring me closer to who I felt I really was. Writing had given me ownership over my own life. Why hadnt it done the same for Sarah?
In reality, this period of intense creation was also putting me on the brink of my own self-destruction. Instead of simply going to classes and keggers like most of my classmates, I was scribbling manic tirades into the night, losing all sense of personal responsibility, and in this reckless freedom, barely making it through each day. I had felt a kinship with Sarahthat she had reined in this new power I was just discovering. But when I heard the word suicide, I had to take pause: Would the same pull that led me towards Sarah Kane lead me down a similar path?
Throughout the years, I have found myself mysteriously drawn to women as brilliant and daring as Sarah Kane. Unfortunately, most of them were also self-destructive. It got to the point where it became logical: If a woman was fiercely intelligent, outspoken and passionate, Id look towards her arms for the scars. They were almost always there.
It seemed to me that the friends and artists I felt this magnetic resonance with all had this sort of fire inside. Like Icarus, we had this strange fascination with how far into the light one could go and still come back. But we rarely spoke of these things, because we didnt need to. We had done it. We had lost control of our lives at some point, and visible or not, it had left a mark.
Perhaps we didnt talk about these things because the actual act of self-destruction is something that repulses those who do not understand it. The topic of suicide is equally kept at arms length. Although the two can be considered different topics, both entail the act of escape from self. People whove never desired this escape often cant fathom why someone else would. Why would she do that to herself? I remember a friend of mine violently whispering to me while staring at an obviously anorexic woman. Thats disgusting.
Conversely, the topic of self-destructive women seems to be one that fascinates most once theyre at a safe enough distance. From chronicling the meltdowns of Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, to dissecting the life and works of artists whove committed suicide like Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus, the media fuels this fascination by constantly feeding us images of tragically doomed women. The glamorization of this issue, combined with the fear and shame built around it, has made understanding self-destructive behaviors almost impossible. My friend had no frame of reference when she saw the anorexic woman; she saw someone starving herself. I saw a woman of immense power who just didnt know where to put it.
Live Through This is a collection of visual and written essays by women artists who have dealt with self-destruction, and lived to tell the story. It was initially meant to focus on what I like to call rage to pagehow one can use the same energy it takes to self-destruct and convert it towards creation. However, as the submissions came in, the book also became a study in the relationship between creative and destructive impulses: the necessity and the balance of the two in the journey of discovering yourself.
Fairly early on, I had to establish what a self-destructive act was. I ended up defining it as, when a woman actively takes away from herself or her power. Eating disorders, cutting, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicidal thoughts all fit into this definition. The essays also deal with periods of life (depression, mania, grief, isolation) as well as circumstances (incest and abuse) that sometimes lead us to these actions. Finally, there is an essay on having to face the involuntary self-destruction that comes with cancer, in both the disease and treatment. A broad range of artistscartoonists, poets, journalists, musicians, dancers, rappers, even sex writersare represented in order to focus on the common act of creation. Hopefully, by presenting the stories of women whove dealt with so many forms of creation and destruction, we can look more closely at their relationship. How do they relate to each other? How do they play off each other? Can the same power fuel either creative or destructive acts?
Each woman has her own answer for this, though the main similarity has been that both acts instill a moment of self-reckoning, of facing oneself and using that moment as a platform for either action. Over and over, it is these moments of self-reckoning that have been significant in developing these womens distinctive voices. For some, they have served as an important stepping-stone to discovering their strengths. For others, they continue to form the base principals of their work. Either way, the self-destructive actions these women have dealt with have not doomed them to tragic endings, but instead have served as an important place in discovering their power as thinkers and artists.
We have been taught that self-destruction is an awful thing. It is bad, weve been told by therapists, psychologists, and those who do not understand its seduction. I would like to edit that. Instead of It is bad, I would like for it to read, It is. It is what we do naturally. We smoke too much, we drink too much, we drive sobbing in the rain. Our hearts break and we do not eat. At times we drink to forget, and at times, we forget for years.
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