Holly Northrop Blog

The show in Hudson for the ArtsWalk 2007 was a pretty big hit. Of course I obsessed about my placement, (there was unusual window glare and you could hardly see my stuff) but once the sun went down things looked much better. But you know, the curator in me would never have hung the photography in that space. Almost all of the work was framed in glass and there were too many windows in the area. I would have put paintings or other non-reflective work in there and hung all the glass-covered stuff in the makeshift darkened spaces. I cannot help myself this is just the way I think. It wasn't just my work that was having a bad glare day.

Martha and I loitered near my stuff, watching folks check out the work. Martha had work hanging too but because I'm am a selfish bitch we stayed near my stuff. It's an odd feeling watching someone stare at something I made. Probably something I'll never get used to. All that time that I used to gallery sit when we would have the summer shows at the 220 Gallery in Chelsea, I would sit there for hours on end watching folks walk around the room with their pocketbook dogs in tow, sometimes pausing at a photo of mine; it is a weird sensation. You almost want to hear what they are thinking but then they might open their mouths and want to know where the subway was or which street was better to grab a cab, 7th or 8th? Any illusion of appreciation vanishing as each word is released from their lips.

But that's how they roll in Chelsea, up here in Hudson I heard the most delightful remark about my work. "Now, these are quite wonderful, aren't they? They have a ghost quality to them." Perfect.

Anyway, it is fantastic to be showing again and I am so very proud of Martha's work. She got a great spot and her pieces worked well with the other artists around her. In more showy news, I've thrown my hat in the ring for some added nervous punishment by participating in a group show at TSL. It is a Black & White show of Hudson somewhere around the last week in October. I've also started work on the 2008 calendar that I would like to have ready to go and for sale within the next two weeks.

With all this fun stuff comes the realization that next week I will be back at work. Fucking hell. Back to the worst, time sucking, emotionally draining and vapid relationship of my life. What more can I say?

I will be trying something new this week in regards to the pain management assault on my back spasms. Two things actually, Acupuncture and Psychiatry. Sounds like a term paper doesn't it? Tuesday, for the first time in my life (that I am aware of) I'll have needles shoved into various pressure points on my body. Then a big, big day on Thursday, I have a meet and great with a Psychiatrist. Exciting stuff there. He's going to evaluate me. I guess I better hold off on the general use of profanity and suicide jokes. I could spend the whole time talking about how the ring that Martha and I had resized in a brand new setting is just like the one Jenna Bush has on her little finger, except hers is three times the size of mine. Would it be wrong to take a Xanax before I go see him or should I just let him see the show all raw and end of day jumpy? Something to ponder. I guess it depends on what kind of soul sucking day I've had.

Martha and I actually went out to a movie. Hard to believe I know, but we did it. Saturday night (date night), we went to see 3:10 to Yuma. I love a good western and Christian Bale and Russell Crow, please; I will pretty much watch anything that has Christian Bale in it. He totally won me over with The Machinist and his super disturbing portrayal of Patrick Bateman that carried American Psycho. Russell Crow, well sometimes, I just can't seem to get on board with the grandness of his choices but 3:10 to Yuma was fun. At one point during the movie the owner of the theater came over to us to see what the little orange light was that was resting between Martha and I in the drink holder. I had to explain that it was a TENS unit and not a Handycam® Camcorder.

I have just one week left on my fantastic month off and just what have I accomplished? Well, in-between getting the shit beat out of me at physical therapy and Novocain injections in my mouth, (I wish someone would just stick a big needle of Novocain in my back) I have managed to get a great deal of personal work done. The biggest part of the battle with submitting work to galleries, grants and what ever else I stumble upon is sitting down and pulling the work. Depression and self-doubt lurk around every corner and if I'm not in the right headspace, or more likely, something or someone has gotten into my head, well then forget it. Pulling work becomes nightmarish.

I think I'm going to go spend a day at ICP. I've only been there once for a special exhibit but I've never had the time to loiter around the permanent collections. Now is the time to go look at stuff that no one who actually lives here can get near. All those places are usually jammed packed with tourists and strollers but if I go early enough it might not be as soul crushing. I've noticed that Monday-Thursday before 12:30 pm things in Manhattan are a little easier to do. Friday, forget it the whole day is fucked.

Congratulations are in order to someone who I used to work with at the Voice and now has managed to snag a really sweet job at NPR. Impressive and great timing. NPR has always been in DC, (fucking kill me, no.) but they have sent a small group over the Mason-Dixon Line into good old Yankee town, Manhattan.

I had two dental appointments last week, one on Monday that cost $350 dollars and then one on Friday that cost $300 dollars. Kind of like bookends. The week before I had one dental visit that cost $2200 so within that span of ten days I have spent $2800 dollars on my teeth. Martha is not amused, although she did say that the one tooth (my right fang) looked a lot better.

The colossal Sharp TV is to be delivered this week and honestly, I am a little afraid of it. Our living room is not that big and this thing is going to be a monster. My concern is that I will not be able to get far enough away from it to enjoy anything. That sitting on my couch will be like sitting to close in a movie theater and to be able to enjoy anything I'll have to stand in the driveway and look in through the window.

There was a murder in Hudson! Just down the street from our house back in the woods by the train tracks. It made the news, well the local news up here. Super weird seeing how there has been like one (1) murder in Hudson in past seven years. Channel 10 said that it happened between 6-9 Sunday morning. Martha saw all the police cars while walking back from yoga. Creepy.

Jasmine came home for a short three-day visit this past weekend. She can do things like that now that she has the Jeep. Just decide to drive on over to New York without much advanced warning. It was good to see her and really great to have her home to drive my ass around. Friday, we went out shooting, to lunch and to the store. She's a lot of fun to hang out with, she makes me laugh and I don't think I get on her nerves too much. I can only imagine what it must be like from Jasmine's point of view when she comes here. Friday night we made her go to the local Democratic debate for Mayor here in Hudson. Martha and I had wanted to go, and if she wanted sushi she had to go with us. Now, I didn't know it was going to be two hours long, (I was thinking maybe an hour) but we made it through, and hightailed it out of there once it was over.

Lately every time she comes home, she makes out like a bandit. This time, she left with the big 150 lb TV that had been in our living room, a batch of newly burned CDs of Gogol Bordello and Balkan Beat Box and a Tupperware container of homemade chocolate chip cookies. She got the TV because Martha bought an insanely large 42-inch Sharp AQUOS^® from work that is supposed to be delivered this week. The better to watch golf on I suppose. All I know is that we are one of those crazy households that have, (check this out) four (4) televisions. (Jasmine alone now has as two.) And considering that we only have seven rooms, (not counting the two bathrooms), it does seem a bit excessive. The rooms that are TV-less are the kitchen, the darkroom and my photo room. Pretty nutty, right? It looks like we are obsessed with television.

Lately Martha and I have been chalk full of family visiting. Last weekend we were in North Carolina with Martha's mother, Gen, where for three solid days I had the same conversations repeatedly. It was as if I were in rehearsals for a play. Every time we drove by Wake Forest University Gen would mention that they own all the land on both sides of the street. Or when we would drive by a particularly woodsy part on Silas Creek Parkway, she would point out the window and say, "Look at the bamboo. It stays green all year long. Rain, snow, sleet, doesn't matter." She must have said these two things alone six times in three days. Once going by on the way to somewhere and then once again coming back. Those were just little things but the bigger bits of banter were not only repeated but repeated in the same exact way. The stuff that is in her brain is a gossipy mixture of things about where she lives involving staff and neighbors.

Every day Gen told me that she loves Valium and asked me where she can get some. Now, the last time Martha was there she took Gen to her doctor to see if he would give her a script for some Valium but he refused. She's 87 and recently widowed, give her some fucking valium, were my thoughts but instead he gave her a sample packet of Lexapro. Now some of the known side effects of Lexapro are; agitation, confusion, sweating and a fast heartbeat, along with; insomnia, nausea, diarrhea and heartburn. Let's break this down a minute. Gen already has this list covered. She starts her day slightly agitated, confused and with high blood pressure. Mostly because she has insomnia, stomach upset and Irritable Bowel Syndrome, each day is a tad rough. Tack on a little bit of dementia and short-term memory loss and well, she sounds like a perfect candidate for this new drug, right?

What happened is no real surprise. She took the drug for about a week, it made her sick and then she quit taking it. She won't go back to the doctor and she doesn't want to find a new one no matter what we say.

The whole trip was like a twisted version of Groundhog Day. Finally, on the last night there we thought we would take her to an early dinner at The Olive Garden. From the minute we left the building, the stress of it all became apparent.

"Wake Forest owns all this land. Dear, Where are we going?" Gen asked.
"Mom, we are going to The Olive Garden"
"Oh, lets' not go there. Your father and I don't like it there."
"Yes, you do mom. You like it there. It will be nice."
Gen, now raising her voice and her hands in the air burst out with, "Look at all this traffic; we must be crazy to be out in this!"
"I'm beginning to see that." Martha laughed.

After a few minutes of silence, "Will you look at all this traffic." and she would start up again. "Where on earth are we going?" or "I just don't understand where we are going."

Once we get to The Olive Garden she asked me five times if she brought her purse, which she did not. She didn't need a purse we were paying but for some reason this would not stick in her head.

I can't believe how fucking stressful it is to have the same day over and over again. Not for Gen, she can't remember that she said the same thing the same way yesterday. Her stresses come from having to face the same nervous frustrations over and over again. She can't remember that there is nothing to worry about which is maddening in a whole other way.

What was frustrating for Martha and I, was watching this show unfold in front of us. Martha pointed out to me that it takes her all day to read the tiny Winston-Salem paper and that makes complete sense. She can't remember an article twenty minutes after she's read it, so she reads it again. And what's even more freaky is that she'll make the same comment that she might have made out loud the first time she read it. The same comment, same tone, same pacing, everything. It's super freaky. The mind is amazing and I do find it all very interesting. Distressing to watch, wearisome to be in the middle of but fascinating, nonetheless.

Wow, I have a whole month off and aside from physical therapy two or three times a week, what will I do with myself? I'm so excited at the possibilities. It's always good in the beginning, isn't it? But when I look at the calendar the month is peppered with doctor visits and one long weekend down to North Carolina to visit Martha's mom, Gen. I have to get my new crown, (my tiara broke) and then there are more spots of interest in my mouth that will cause me emotional, physical and monetary pain. The reality of it all is that I'm going to be very, very busy and before I know it, October will be here.

It will be good to get out of town for a few days. Gen is down there all alone in some nice red state assisted living home and after a few weeks, she gets lonely. I cannot imagine what it must be like to live there. Oh sure, on some levels it would be easy but the whole nosiness of the neighbors would drive me batshit. I've seen those other women at the home, they are rich old southern women, so there's not too much common ground for Gen to work with, and besides, after too long they start to ask her too many questions about things that she doesn't want to talk about. Thinks like me. The subject of who I am is of midlevel concern to these biddies and she doesn't want to offer anything other then; "She's my daughter." This usually confuses them because they already know that Gen only has two daughters and since these women have nothing else to focus on, I become the subject of little whispers when I walk around the common areas. Except, these women are hard of hearing and have short term memory problems so the little whispers are more like normal loud gossipy conversation, over and over again. It's great.

Aside from my back doctors, dentists and whom ever else wants to poke me, I have a long list of things I want to do. I've been working on a redesign of my site for a few weeks now and I'd like to finish it and launch that. There are several call for entries that I need to pull work for and cover letters to write. I'm in a show at the end of the month and the work is framed, I just need to wire it. The there is the whole, update the resume and add to my online portfolio thing. There are a few house projects that I should to take care of. One is the sunroom and the other is the floor in Martha's office. That certainly is a lot of dreaming considering that I will be seeing two different doctors about my back four days a week.

I've been developing film at home and boy, basic math skills are nonexistent in my brain. That whole 5 liters divided into a 1-200 ratio thing had me standing stumped in the middle of the darkroom staring up at the ceiling like the answer was hidden up there. I hate it when I realize just how stupid I am.

Remedial math aside, I have mixed up some chemistry and have been processing film at home. Woo Hoo! I'm only developing black and white, so I'll still have to take the color stuff in but hey, just processing black and white at home should save us fifty bucks a month right there.

Here's one of the many differences between Martha and I. She was bored at work last week and began looking for old friends on LinkedIn. She found her old college roommate and sent her an email. The woman wrote back, she lives in Philly and, by all appearances, is a normal corporate person, living the straight life with a husband two kids and a really great job making a shitload of money.

I on the other hand, have been searching the Lebanon Correctional Institution Offender Search Database for anybody that I might have grown up with. Seriously. I was bored at work the other day too and thought I would do a little database drilling. Kind of like Classmates or even LinkedIn but very, very different. I didn't find anyone that I could recognize, we are all getting older after all and decades of hard living and smoking speed does change the facial features, but I did find a few probable felons.

Ah well, yes, I'll have to circle back around on that; one day over the next few weeks. Like I said, lots to do. There are cupcakes to bake, old cameras to clean and weird movies to watch.