[Description: Two-panel line drawing of a rainstorm. In the first panel, text on top reads "Other people see rain..."; the accompanying illustration shows a happy person wearing a raincoat and saying "Good thing I have my raincoat!" The second panel has top text as well, which reads "I see rain...", and this panel's illustration shows the cartoonist standing in the same rainstorm, with knives of varying sizes replacing raindrops. The cartoonist's speech bubble reads "SHIT" as straight lines on both of her shoulders signify intense pain.]
ham blog
hi.
Tag Archives: pain
Everything’s better with (Francis) Bacon
I had the opportunity to view Francis Bacon’s 1954 painting Figure With Meat at the Art Institute of Chicago recently, and the experience made me realize that I’ve never done a post about the artist on this blog (among other things)! Below are some of my favorite Bacon works; what I love most about Bacon’s work is the willingness to show aspects of the human body–and certain facets of human experience, such as physical pain–that most people would rather not see. Like Frida Kahlo’s art, Bacon’s paintings can be hard to view because they so vividly portray bodies that don’t work the way they “should,” and many of his rather grotesque art speaks to me for that reason. And what other artist consistently portrays the body as simultaneously beautiful, painful…and sort of (I don’t know how else to put this) meat-like. Sometimes, I am reminded of the Body Worlds traveling exhibit when I look at these; other times, I am reminded of NIN’s (in)famous (and very, very NSFW) video for 1994′s “Closer” (check out 1:34 in, where Trent Reznor stands in front of a cleaved beef carcass, and then refer to “Figure With Meat” below).
From the biographical material I have read about Bacon, I know that he probably did not have chronic pain issues, but looking at some of these paintings as a person with a body in pain (thanks, Elaine Scarry) remains a powerful experience.
Figure With Meat, 1954 (depicts a person sitting in a chair in front of a split beef carcass, screaming)
Head ii, 1947 (depicts a seated figure with a globular head and mouth with fangs)
Detail from second painting of Crucifixion triptych, 1965 (depicts a hanging carcass in side-view against an orange wall)
Two Figures, 1953 (depicts two figures doing something on a bed)
Self-Perception vs. Reality
[Description: Four-panel cartoon; first panel is labeled "Self-Perception and features a line drawing of Annaham happily gobbling pills while excitedly saying "PILLS!"; the other three panels come under a heading that reads "Reality." The second panel features Annaham grasping a bottle of pills in one hand and a single pill in the other; a thought bubble reads, "If I take this for pain, does that mean I'm an addict?" The third panel depicts Annaham with a worried/pained look on her face, plus a thought bubble that reads "OH FUCK." The fourth panel pictures Annaham lying on the ground in obvious pain as tears flow from her eyes. A thought bubble reads, "If I take pills, I will become addicted. WILLPOWER." The text at the bottom right of this image reads "5 minutes later."]
Variation on a theme. Click for a higher-quality version; I’m not sure why WordPress shows the image as horribly pixelated and I can’t seem to fix it.
Makeup post: Urban Decay 24/7 Eyeshadow Pencils
[Description: Photo of four eyeshadow pencils of various colors.]
I need to take a moment to rave about Urban Decay’s 24/7 Shadow Pencils ($20 US) and how fantastic they are. These are basically eyeshadows in pencil form, and I’ve found them extremely useful, but perhaps not for the reasons you’d imagine.
As most readers of this blog know, I have moderate to severe chronic pain and fatigue issues due to fibromyalgia. Cosmetics, for me, are usually not an “everyday” thing (save for lipgloss or lipstick, because those take about 15 seconds to apply if I’m not doing anything fancy) because of the time that it takes me to do a “nice” makeup job. More often than not, the time it takes for me to do “nice” makeup translates into lost energy and/or more pain. Pain due to repetitive motion is one of those things that is outside the realm of most abled peoples’ experience, but on my bad days, putting cosmetics on–and screwing it up, and more often than not having to start all over again–can be physically painful. And yes, some people may be thinking, “Yeah, RIGHT, putting on eyeshadow can’t be that painful!” For me, though, it can be, and I’m sure a lot of people with fibro would say something similar. Just try putting on makeup when your arm feels like it’s been weighted down with a huge piece of iron. After a certain point, it just doesn’t feel worth it anymore, particularly if you’re in a lot of pain and yet you keep making mistakes with makeup application because you are in pain. Parts of it seem very chicken/egg.
Enter the UD 24/7 pencils. One or two swipes of the pencil is all it takes, and the actual shadow component of the pencil is large enough that it’ll cover your entire lid (downside: can lead to some imprecision). Granted, these aren’t going to completely prevent pain from repetitive motion, but the one or two swipes and you’re done thing is a huge improvement over having to apply eyeshadow primer, then apply shadow with a brush, then do it again if you screw up, then clean the brush(es) after you use them, et cetera. I haven’t tried blending these yet (and once I do, I’ll write about the results), but I will probably end up getting a few of these because they are awesome. I have the one in Sin (a very shimmery pink champagne/beige shade), and would like to try Barracuda (black with silver shimmer), Delinquent (shimmery eggplant purple), and Mercury (gunmetal gray). If you have chemical sensitivity issues, I am not sure if these would be appropriate given the list of ingredients (scroll down the page for ingredient lists; each pencil may contain different pigments and such).
In short, these things are awesome, and I highly recommend that you give them a go, if you’re so inclined.
[A slightly different version of this post appeared on my Tumblr.]
Conundrum
[Image description: Line drawing of Annaham holding a hot heating pad in her hands and looking confused as question marks surround her. Text: "Chronic pain conundrum: Everything hurts -- where to put the heating pad first?"]
Quick Signal Boost: BADD 2011
I haven’t been able to put together a post for Blogging Against Disablism Day (BADD) this year due to other commitments, but be sure to go check out the list of this year’s posts, compiled by Goldfish at Diary of a Goldfish. As with other years, I am sure that there will be many excellent and thought-provoking posts!
I’ve contributed to BADD in the past, so now may be as good a time as any to drop some links: a poem, a bingo card, the first bingo card (cross-posted at FWD; not for BADD, but perhaps necessary for context of card #2).
x’ed
[Description: Line drawing of a nude young woman with shoulder-length dark hair and hairy legs; she stands with arms extended. She has a pained expression on her face, and arrows of varying sizes pierce her body. Both her chest and crotch areas are covered with large "X" marks.]
Music review: Charlotte Martin’s “Dancing on Needles” (2011)
[Description: Cover of Charlotte Martin's album Dancing on Needles, which depicts Martin, shown in profile, in some sort of woodsy outdoor environment. She appears to be looking up at something out-of-frame.]
Charlotte Martin: Dancing on Needles (1 Feb 2011); Test-Drive Records (available via iTunes, Amazon, and through the artist’s website)
When I first started hearing about Charlotte Martin’s album Dancing on Needles in some preliminary press coverage last year, I was both excited to hear the album and more than a bit skeptical when it came to the tone of some of the coverage. Some of this coverage focused on the fact that Martin’s new record had been inspired by her battle with severe chronic nerve pain, and the apparent “happy ending” to her story; as someone with chronic pain, it seems to me that this type of narrative is often trotted out in order to reassure the audience that the subject is “better now”–even though that’s not the way it works out for most folks with chronic pain. For many of us who deal with chronic pain issues, there is no “ending,” happy or not; chronic pain is, by its very definition, unending. Oddly, many narratives of disability in popular culture propose an end or accord some sort of “inspirational” power to a disabling health condition, often meant to reassure many nondisabled folks’ existing attitudes about disability.
Popular culture, at least in the United States, tends to engage with disability in ways that are both extremely limited and highly specific. There are a number of well-worn tropes about disability and ability that popular culture drags out time and time again, namely: Disability is always tragic and awful. Illness and/or disability can be turned into a 100% positive “opportunity” to discover what’s really important in life, or to teach the person with the disability or illness–and the nondisabled people around them–a crucial life lesson that they never would have learned if not for their illness/disability. Disabled people are freakish, abnormal, scary, and are thus not deserving of basic human treatment; they deserve only pity, charity, or to be gawked at. They are constantly angry about their lot in life (think of House, for example–even with all of the complexities that make him such an interesting character). They are just jealous of people who are normal because they themselves are not normal. People with disabilities can “overcome” their limitations, but only by doing amazing things that, above all, serve to inspire nondisabled people (what’s up, Supercrip)!
Dancing on Needles, thankfully, does none of the above. If you’re looking for a completely inspirational record, or one with easy answers, you may want to look elsewhere.
Charlotte Martin has made quite a few albums. I have heard almost all of them (exception: Piano Trees, which apparently was a tour-exclusive album and one that I haven’t been able to track down). They are all spectacular in their own ways, but this one might be my favorite, and not just because many of the songs are about dealing with chronic pain and the uncertainties that it poses. The entire album is a complex, layered work about dealing with chronic pain and its uncertainties. We have all seen works of art about disability that rely on one or more of the tropes and narratives listed above. To which I say, YAWN, because most of the aforementioned tropes and themes get excruciatingly boring after a while (not to mention overused), and then you have a lot of people thinking that those tropes are the only ways to engage with disability/ability in creative work, simply because those are the stories that have been used so often. Dancing on Needles does not fit into any of those narratives quite so easily, at least not with lyrics such as:
My reflection is a woman I do not know/Thunderclouding ’cause she hasn’t got far to go/I haven’t got far to go (from “Any Minute Now”)
Or:
Great ideas/God, we had great ideas/Didn’t know this could happen to me/Struggling/To see the meaning in all of the meaningless/I wasted when I had you here (from “Life Vest”)
Of course, there are multiple ways to interpret the album’s lyrics, including those excerpted above, but since the album has been described repeatedly in articles and press materials as being inspired, in part, by Charlotte’s recent experiences with chronic pain, I’d be pretty surprised if at least some of the lyrics did not refer to it at all. Even if the lyrics are not straightforwardly about chronic pain throughout, all of the songs on this album add up to an incredibly interesting, rewarding record that seems, more generally, to be about life changes and the uncertainties that they pose. I’d argue (mostly from personal experience!) that chronic pain, and living with pain, can be and often is a major life change. Learning to live with pain entails some sort of change, usually; Dancing on Needles is a stunning example of how great art, and great music, can spring from tremendous life changes.
Musically, it is also a great pop album. I hope that this will not be the only pop record that features a first-person experience of disabling chronic pain as one of its main themes. Of course, it’s probably not going to completely revolutionize pop music and that genre’s treatment of disability, because it is one album. The important thing is that this album is a starting point, and one that has set the bar pretty high at that.
Problem toes
What I imagine my toes might say, if they could talk. As usual, click for large.
[Description: Black and white line drawing of two feet; all of the toes have gleeful facial expressions, and a few of them have dialogue lines. Third left toe: "My nail grows at a weird angle"; Big left toe: "My large calluses will never go away, Ped Egg or no"; Big right toe: "The joint just below me will hurt in cold weather, and you will have no idea why!"; Smallest left toe: "My nail grows at a 45-degree angle!"]
Splotch
The reddish reflection here is from the sweatshirt I was wearing when I photographed this piece, and for some ungodly reason, I liked the effect enough to post the photo. As usual, click for a larger version.
[Description: Black and white painting of a bunch of random splotches, in the midst of which is a woman who stands uncomfortably while holding her right arm out to the side. Her arms and hands are composed of large, random shapes, her legs are thick black lines, and her feet are rectangles. She stares directly at the viewer, and does not appear to have a mouth.]
