Changing my tune on forced fun

The weekend I learned to lighten up

Hi friends,

Anyone else have this constant feeling like they are looking for something, but don’t quite remember what it is, and really can’t tell if it’s a physical item, a memory, or a bit of reassuring news?

Everyday I seem to wake up and I’m like, “Wait, what is it again?” So I grab my phone. Will that tell me? Nah…. So I go to my computer. Wait, this is just like my phone! Hmmmm….What is it? And where did it go?

Oh, how I hate this feeling.

I suppose it has been this way since 2016, then made worse in 2020 and well, now, here we are. Am I waking up and instantly rubbernecking? It seems like it. I look at the news or social media because I am looking for something terrible. I open new tabs, click on links, searching and searching, for that one thing that’ll.. what? Put me over the edge? Soothe my nervousness? Show me that all of my fears have come true?

It’s so easy to get swept away.

Instead, let me tell you about the weekend I had in Louisiana, where I allowed myself to get swept in a different direction. Where perhaps I didn’t even look at the news, but probably did.

Who knew the drive from Texas to Louisiana would include snow!?

The last weekend in January I attended the Surreal Soiree at Baton Rouge Gallery. It was a big old costume party at the end of the run of the Surreal Salon, in which I had a painting. I am usually not a costume person. Halloween makes me nervous. I have a memory, which may or may not be true, where I showed up at elementary school in costume on the wrong day. Again, this may not be true, but the sentiment of it is deeply ingrained in me. Also, it feels like forced fun.

But guess what happened when costume making was for a surreal art party instead of Halloween!? Yep, I was like, “OH! I GET WHY PEOPLE LIKE COSTUMES!”

Huge breakthrough for old Sal. I didn’t have to be a slutty Smurf, I could be an iteration of one of my drawings! What kind of creative freedom was just bestowed upon me!? I ended up making two masks for others and a mask for myself.

The mask I made for myself was in part inspired by going to the Surreal show that was just up at the Blanton Art Museum. When I was accepted to the Surreal Salon, I equally thought that I belonged in a Surreal show and my stomach turned at being labeled Surrealist. What struck me at the Blanton show was less the art and more the context of what Surrealists were out to achieve, and then, even more so, the Dadaists, who had their own gallery room.

Dadaism according to Google:

• Anti-establishment: Dadaism was a rebellion against the conventions of art and society

• Anti-war: Dadaism was a protest against the senseless violence of World War I

• Irreverent: Dadaist art was meant to shock, confuse, or outrage people

• Nonsensical: Dadaism emphasized the illogical, irrational, and absurd

• Whimsical: Dadaist art was colorful, witty, and sometimes silly

When I was in art school I identified, in a way, with the Dadaists. I didn’t have a formed sense of outward identity so I would never have declared that I was one. And like all art movements, it felt exclusive, and I suppose outdated. Weren’t artists always supposed to be reinventing the wheel? How could an art movement from the early 1900’s still be relevant? Also, Hannah Hoch aside, where were the women!?

I think I was always so busy not feeling included that it never crossed my mind that I might fit in under my own terms. Reading about Dadaism on the wall in the Blanton I was reminded that there are like minded individuals out there. Even if the originators are dead, the idea lives on and clearly we still need it.

I took this idea, along with my love for collaging, and made a mask. And I will say, it was so much fun to make. I just let myself make it, one step at a time. I took a photo of my profile yelling and played with the size it printed out. Each time I printed out a new photo I had to cut it somewhere and paste it on. There was no actual planning, I just worked with what was in front of me. This is really no different from how I usually work, but what was different was my palpable belief that it would work out. That I would end up with the mask I was supposed to wear and that I was working in some realm of creativity that just exists across time.

I did not go to the Soiree alone. I was joined by 9 friends; 7 from Austin, 2 from New England. My Austin friends are the writing group I belong to. We call ourselves the SYNTs because we meet on Tuesday and I once joked C U Next Tuesday but it was lost in translation. A very prudish name for a very unprudish group of ladies. My New England friends can be counted as two of my oldest friends. We met in 1996, our freshman year at Emerson College in Boston (and only one of us graduated from there).

SYNTs in Baton Rogue ogling the trees

As we discovered above, I have a difficult time feeling like I belong in a group and feeling included. I am always convinced that I am last in the ranking of who is actually needed to make an experience fun and worthwhile. I feel myself clam up and put on my listening face, letting the loquacious ones do their thing. This isn’t across the board true, but if I imagine myself in a group setting, then this is what I imagine.

So, imagine my discomfort in being the reason that all of these people took time off from work, left their families,and spent money on travelling! Egad!

“Yay, Sara!”

“Aren’t you so excited!?”

“It’s your big weekend!”

“Ummmm, I just wish I knew how to be excited for myself.” I heard myself say, while standing in the kitchen of an airbnb that housed all ten of us, my energy spiralling inward, trying to wrap me in a protective cloak.

Someone said, “Let us celebrate you!” Echoing the advice that my husband, Kris, gave me before I left on the trip. “Just let yourself be celebrated.”

And what happened next? I got bored with my usual self. Why was I not listening to what everyone was saying? Why could I not see what was before me? Why was I taking it all so seriously!? Lighten the fuck up Hannon!

I don’t know if anyone there noticed a shift in my behavior (did you?) but I decided to just let myself be present. I scrapped the imaginary list that I was at the bottom of, I allowed my energy to soften it’s tentacles, and I just let myself exist with my nine friends

Party time!

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The Soiree was fun. The gallery was beautiful. I got whisked away by the photographer to get my picture taken in front of my painting and was interviewed by a local journalist. Both of which were made much easier from behind a mask, and neither of which I have seen.

My friend from Boston, Melissa, made sure to get Evan Pricco, the juror and editor-in-chief of Juxtapoz magazine, in her grasp and texted me to get in there asap so I could talk to him. Again, much easier behind a mask

My old friends, Jana and Melissa (wearing one of the masks I made).

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I talked to other artists and ogled costumes from behind my eyeholes. Of note, I was not wearing the 21+ wristband, and it didn’t even cross my mind to get one. As of February 14th, I will have gone a year without drinking. I gave myself permission to have a drink at the Soiree, but I didn’t want to. (I will admit that I drank a Louie Louie thc/cbd seltzer, so I had my help.) People often ask me how I feel and I think the biggest thing is the amount of mental space it opened up. I never had a healthy relationship with alcohol, starting with drinking whatever liquor I could get my hands, on alone in my room as a teenager. I learned/taught myself that alcohol was the answer. I knew in the last several years that it was not, but the urge was still very strong. I’d open the fridge in the morning to see a beer and think, “Yeah, just chug it. Why the fuck not?” It was just ingrained in me to want to self-destruct. I wouldn’t end up chugging the beer, so it’s not like this year has saved me from that, it’s more the impulse.

I would like to say that not drinking is made much easier by surrounding myself with people who are supportive of not drinking. So thank you, friends and Kris.

I have so much more to say, including a lovely yet brief trip down to New Orleans, where I saw my friends Ali and Chris, then heading back to Baton Rouge to catch Evan Pricco’s talk at LSU, where I checked out the studio of a very sweet and talented painter, Amber Hart, who won Best in Show at the Surreal Salon. And then I binged The Telepathy Tapes podcast on my drive back to Austin.

Listening to that was the perfect cap to the weekend. Let us all live in a world where telepathy is real. If you’ve listened to it and want to talk about it, sign me up! It’s definitely problematic, but also expansive.

Thanks for reading.

I have two paintings up at the San Marcos Art League. The show is called Healing Hearts and is for artists whose lives have been affected by substance use. To which I would like to shout out my brother Josh for THREE years of sobriety. A very big deal for him and our family, let our hearts be healed

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