Parenting: An Artistic Life

Today, I am super-pleased to share with you a guest post from Charity Kahn of Charity and the JAMBand. This is the first in a series of guest posts for this summer - from children's artists and others. Enjoy!


It was probably more my children’s childhood than my own that drove me to finally and irrevocably accept my fate as an artist.

Simply put, my kids drove me over the edge.

When you invite children into your life, you open the doors to chaos. The two extremes of living with and responding (or reacting) to this chaos, in my experience, are as follows.

Some days, you choose to dive into the chaos and embrace its gorgeous and horrible fervor. You attempt to exist on your child’s level, in her or his brain and heart and soul and belief in The Now. You remember how to play, remember to love mud and mess, remember to cry when you’re sad and scream when you’re angry and laugh so hard you fall to the ground when you’re happy. You remember to wonder and be awe-struck, and even sometimes omniscient. You remember to ask “why?” and “how?” and “what is that?” even when you think you already know. You remember to notice the little things, like the counterintuitive spellings of seemingly most of the words in the English language: “Mommy, why isn’t ‘potty’ spelled ‘p-o-t-e’?”

The other extreme reaction to this entry into the netherworlds of the human psyche becoming a parent brings on is to run screaming from that place, as fast as you can. Run screaming from the lack of control you learn you apparently have over anything at all. Run screaming from the collapse of the illusion of “grown-up-hood” in the face of these heathen balls of fire and randomness in our spaces and faces. Run screaming from your own emotions, those that are so cunningly and repeatedly and adroitly brought to the surface the minute conflict with one of your children arises. Run away, shut it down, cut it off, nip it in the bud, bury it, demand order.

Neither of these realities is sustainable 100% of the time. In truth, most of us inhabit both of these extremes, plus everything in the middle, on a daily basis. And we’re painfully aware of this roller coaster. But with the roller coaster and with the awareness of it begins the magic, and the art. Sometimes art is a mirror of life’s happenings, beautiful or tragic. Sometimes it’s an attempt at healing, handling, and integrating deep and intense and broken feelings, experiences, and memories. Sometimes it's simply a desire to bring something fabulous, amazing, and spectacular from the world of imaginings into the material world. But the desire and need to create it can emanate from both these extremes, from the places where parenting brings us.

I suppose leading "an artistic life" is a semantic distinction. After all, life is art, and we are all on our life paths, so we are all artists. But there’s a particularly magical place where our children can lead us. It’s the place where art is made. It’s a place something like the border of the Mandelbrot set, exactly where chaos and order intersect. Where control and intention meet inspiration and fantasy. It’s the place we inhabit when we are being the most real and authentic as humans and as parents. It’s the ultimate meditation. It’s ours to embrace. It’s a gift. And it’s a place to which only our children can draw the map.

So if this whole crazy parenting life has got you alternately confused, in deep touch, morose, elated, terrified, grounded, and ultimately feeling like your nerves are alive and singing, sometimes in painfully beautiful harmony, sometimes in ear-shattering dissonance, then you must be doing it right. And that is the art of it. So take it and run with it. Bring the energy into your soul and set it free, set yourself free. Allow your kids to bring you a second life. As humans, that may be all we’re entitled too.

Thanks, kids. I owe ya one.

- Charity

copyright 2006 Charity Kahn