CW: Discussion of Celebrity Bad Behaviors including SA and Coercion

My various social media apps and sites and things have been blowing up because of N3il G4iman and Am4nda P4lmer. (NG and AP following). I was a fan* of them both, not a huge fan but enough that I’ve read a bunch of his books and graphic novels. I’ve downloaded her music and read her book.

I found AP through NG who I discovered through Tori and a friend who loved his graphic novels.** I had a few of his first big series but never collected them. As a fan I was very much, if it’s there I’ll read it/listen but never went out of my way. For AP, I discovered her post her first band and before her first book.

Her messy bare it all existence was fascinating and also off putting. I couldn’t look away but I also didn’t like a lot of what I saw.

In the early days of Twitter I created a project for myself to draw as many hands as I could. I asked my friends on Twitter to send me pictures of their hand, well lit please, for me to draw. And I drew them. I have a sketchbook filled with black and white hand drawings and portraits of Twitter friends.

The sketchbook is 8×10 and made up of old signs that I stitched together and then gessoed the pages I planned to draw on. I left the edges rough and broken so the old signs broke through the gesso.generalizations are bad when made about people but it’s okay to generalize an area in an image

That sketchbook is important to my development as an artist. On the left side of the spreads are notes to myself. Thoughts about art and painting and art making that when I flipped through it today I was reminded of this fervent period of my life where I was growing as an artist on a daily basis and I was making notes about it and sharing that art and those notes on twitter.it’s okay to use tools to make your job easier, like a B+W print. Easier to pick out lights, mid values, and darks

I miss old twitter and this is why. How many of you did I meet via old twitter while I fervently and honestly shared my art, process, and learning? How many of you did I draw? How many of your hands did I draw?

Back to the hands.In art it’s okay to make stuff up especially if it’s to fix mundane reality.

This is my major brush with AP. During the hand project, someone suggested I reach out to celebrities via twitter to see who would send me pictures of their hands to draw. I don’t remember who I tweeted at but AP was one of them.

She was the only one to send me a pic, poorly lit, of her hands in front of a vending machine with Mary of Guadalupe behind her overlapped fingers. Beaded bracelets on her right hand. As hand pictures go it was a tough one to draw. The overlapped fingers and bad lighting weren’t the best, but the composition was great.

Every picture of hands (and the portraits) that I drew, I took the highest res photo I could and tweeted it back to the person. Everyone responded.

Except AP.

Not long after this a friend who was/is a local musician had been approached to play in one of the kickstarter shows. The friend declined because in the professional circle she ran with it was already well known, as relayed to me, “AP doesn’t pay.”

Then more of that came out.

(IF you want to end this post here, this is the end of the art link)

I had believed the story AP wove about AP. More and more info came out around the kickstarter shows regarding lack of pay and people feeling used and general bad behavior. I chose to unsubscribe from her mailing list.

Then she married and was subsequently divorced from NG.

I rejoined her mailing list because well, that was always a place where she shared messy details. I was curious what would drive them apart. I admit I’m not immune to the call of celebrity gossip.

There wasn’t a lot there, and again, I found myself not enjoying the mailing list, so I opted out deciding I didn’t care enough about the divorce to continue to read the rest of the mess.

I had hoped that was going to be the last I heard about either of them. I have always waivered between interest and disinterest when it comes to celebrity gossip. I for most of my life haven’t really cared about celebrities. When I worked at the rich person’s grocery store I had regular run ins with major celebrities and mostly I had no idea who they were.*** Generally speaking, my coworkers would ask me if I knew who a person was and when I invariably said no, they’d tell me who they were. And I’d ask, “Who’s that?”

I tried to read the vulture article about the allegations against NG and loosely AP, and I could not read the whole thing. I read some of the first article about NG and it haunts me. As a therapist, I’ve read some charts and taken first hand accounts of assaults that would make most people gag and lose their lunch. I’ve spent time in therapy discussing vicarious trauma. I could not finish the second article.

Discussing the article with my partner, friends, and therapist, I’ve been asked, and wondered, “Why does this haunt me so much?” It’s the power differential. The use of that power and coercion to do things to people that they didn’t want to happen in ways they really didn’t want to happen. It’s taking advantage of friends and others because they are vulnerable.

It’s the vulnerability of the people they abused that haunts me.

As a human being, my first instinct, when I meet a person who is in a vulnerable state, is to protect them, to help them. That’s furthered by my being a therapist. I’m in a position to assist others.

My god if I had the kind of money AP and NG have at their disposal, I could do so much good. Imagine the work I could do with art therapy and reinventing AJ Ning if I had THAT MUCH MONEY.

That is what haunts me, the power and privilege of THAT MUCH MONEY.

That much money.

And they use it to abuse others.

I just can’t.

*Had to rewrite that, initially I wrote I’m a fan. It’s now past tense.

**As much as this blog could use the SEO help of mentioning their work by name, I won’t promote them.

***I have met Shaq, he’s nice but also, recognizable. He’s actually as huge IRL as he looks on screen. Apparently I have also met a large number of the Boston Celtics from that time period. I was told afterward that I assisted Ray Allen in finding the Odwalla Juice display. I had no idea. He was just the really nice tall dude who wanted some juice.