Pam Bustin
creator, editor, story tender
brave enough…
Today’s post features a picture of me from the way-back. The photo was taken by my friend Rick and used in the promotion of my one woman show barefoot.
The play is… well… it’s sort of a journey though one woman’s healing from Child Sexual Abuse. Fun, right? It was actually … in parts. I could always tell who the survivors were in the crowd, because they were the ones laughing. Somethings are only funny from the other side.
Today at the Oasis, one of the writing prompts was…
What I am brave enough to feel these days…
And here’s what I wrote….
~~o~~
I am brave enough to feel the helplessness, the hopelessness that waves over me. Knowing that it shall pass.
I am brave enough to feel this call towards creating art — even though I feel like I never actually DO, that these notebooks are not art, not ART at least.
I am brave enough to feel the challenge from artists like Patti Smith and Georgia O’Keefe to… “Do the work. Do the work. Do your work.”
Yes. I do I do I do hear you, and I will, I do, I will, I am—doing it.
I am brave enough to feel that I am an artist and that I have something to offer.
I am brave enough to feel that I will find my form, my expression. That the flailing about has been part of it. Part of finding my way. Towards the writing of love letters to the world. To the drawing of maps.
Oh yes please….
Let us do our drawings.
~ our collages.
~ our photography
~ our writing
Let us do it ~ do it ~ do it.
~~o~~
And I am brave enough to post it here because…?
Because I know that you are out there reading this and that you, whoever you are, need to see my flailings and…take heart.
You need to know that you are brave enough to do your work, and to get your work out there, no matter what.
Work on, my loves.
go easy~p
PS: here’s a lil inspiration from Patti Smith (who I am insanely in love with these days). It’s a video of her speaking about Robert Mapplethorpe at the Grand Palais in Paris.
At 2:36 she sings the most beautiful little song…. get ready to weep.
2 Comments on “brave enough…”
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Pam Bustin 
Annalise and I just saw the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition at Montreal’s Musee des Beaux Arts. Wow. Lots of info about Patti in the exhibit, too.
Oooooooh colour me jealous!
I would love to have been with ya.