Shift in Perspective - What Nerve Damage Has Taught Me About Art
Alternate title: Step away from the mirror/ screen/ art, Bro.
It’s 6.52 am.
I’m not running late this morning so I decide to put on some makeup:
concealer
blush
mascara
concealer
lips
more concealer (Just in case.)
I look into the mirror and see the face that I’ve seen for a relatively short amount of time. After my jaw replacement / facial reconstruction surgery two and a half years ago, I’ve developed a new relationship with my face. It’s me but it’s not, and most days I don’t have the mental fortitude to really delve into who or what that says about me.
The thing I do focus on is the nerve damage in my eye.
My surgeon told me that was a potential side effect of the procedure. But before the surgery, when I was dealing with debilitating jaw pain and unable to get an adequate level of oxygen at night due to my facial structure, eyebrows that had the potential to be less expressive were at the bottom list of my concerns.
Now, in front of this mirror, it’s all that I see.
“I’m so sad about my eye.
Facial symmetry is the number one condition which defines beauty1.
Look! See! I’m not making this up!!
My eyelashes on the left side go out and on the right side they go up.
Not to mention the weird eyelid droop situation… or is that just me getting older?
’Welcome to 40 - you get to re-learn how to properly apply makeup.’
So weird.”
But then I step back.
“Oh. You really can’t tell from here.”
It’s 2 feet ya’ll. Not two miles.
But it matters.
Yes, The nerve damage is there but no one will ever notice unless I point it out to them (as she types it all out online, in essence telling the entire world).
The same is true with visual art that I’ve made.
Things that I toiled over and felt, at best, blasé about when first finished: they sparkle when seen at a month’s, season’s, year’s distance.
It becomes an, “Oh that’s really fun. I love that,” to a piece (or ten) which was at the time, just a box to be checked.
Just something else to be done.
Finished.
Off to the next.
I wonder, about all the things (paintings, sketches, fabric, words) I’ve scrapped because I was just too close to it.
Recently, I decided to go through my Notes app and dump out a single file I had titled “Shit to Poetry” when I first created it years ago.
(The name? It’s a trick I use. If I demean something, downplay it, that thing becomes less intimidating. It’s a playground not a museum.
“Around here I can yell and laugh and not worry what sound my shoes make when I’m acting like a T-Rex.”)
According to the counter on my fancy new software (update link, coming soon) it contains 6741 words, which is the equivalent of 18 pages.
18 pages of vaguely fleshed out ideas.
18 pages of stuff that I didn’t immediately think was worth more time or energy.
AND ALSO: 18 pages of thoughts that now come packed with some very valuable perspective.
My takeaway:
Write “it” down. Whatever your “it” is: The funny thing the toddler in your life said or that memory of time spent with your grandmother.
Capture it in whatever way you find easiest: digitally, audio, or written.
And then give yourself permission to sit on it and see what magic perspective might add down the road.
Have an example of how perspective has helped you (makeup or otherwise)?
I’d love it if you shared it below.
I have no way to verify the truth of this statement. But someone once said it to me and it’s stuck there as all weird “maybe-truths”, get stuck.
Thank you for this. I've found there's nothing like a change in location or the (rather obvious) passage of time to change my perspective on almost anything.