The Narrative Within

We Are the Stories We Tell

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Art for Housewives

Domodedevo is a small town south of Moscow. Located on a large plain, it is flat and monotonous. During the winter Domodedevo is cold and snowy whereas during the summer it’s hot and humid. Although known for its large warehouse complexes and airport, it does have a museum of history and art.

It is here that Anna Sorokin, nondescript and yearning for an identity, was born and lived until the age of 16 when her family moved to Germany. There her father worked at a transport company until the company went bankrupt a few years later.

In Germany Anna struggled to learn the language. This made socializing difficult. The only joy life seemed to offer her was that found on internet. She was especially interested in fashion blogs and Vogue.

When she was 21, Anna began working for a PR agency in Berlin but then relocated to Paris where she worked for a fashion magazine. And it was in Paris when she actively began giving her life a new narrative. She started by changing her last name to Delvey. But Paris was not impressed so she moved to New York City where everything is possible. Here Anna presented herself as a wealthy German heiress who was trying to set up an exclusive art club for the elite of the elite.

Having acquired access to the upper echelons, she was now in a position to become a full-time con artist. Anna found a way to get invited to the best parties and soon she was everywhere. Most people assumed that she was another trust fund kid, bored with a bunch of money to spend. And she was able to keep up this image thanks to Instagram.

Anna started hanging out with a “futurist on the TED-Talks circuit who’d been profiled in The New Yorker” now revealed as tech entrepreneur Hunter Lee Soik. Like Anna, Soik also needed rich patrons. He’d invented an app meant to help remember dreams and create a dream database. For two years Anna and Soik were a couple working as a team until Soik realized that Anna was scamming his wealthy contacts. So the couple split and Anna had to start paying her own bills.

Cash flow problems developed and it was becoming more and more difficult to be sponsored by her rich friends. For a while she survived off bounced checks and fake wire transfers. She even used false documents to get bank loans. But Anna had made the mistake of swindling one of her friends for about $60,000. The friend, not pleased, went to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office that then organized a sting operation winding up with Anna’s arrest by the LAPD.

The story was covered by the press but not given that much attention until Jessica Pressler’s article in New York Magazine in 2018. And then BOOM! It was like a Nigerian email scam meant for the elite. Once Anna learned that people could be easily distracted by indications of wealth, they could see only money and nothing else.

Anna spent 19 months in Riker’s Island prison. She was released for good behavior by later was arrested by immigration authorities and is now a deportee in waiting.

Since her exposure as a con artist, Anna has posted photos of herself on Instagram (she has one million followers), hired a videographer to document her new life, and sold rights to her story to Netflix (earning $320,000), and is currently selling her drawings online. Anna has simply exchanged one good story with another.

Often we feel the need to give ourselves our own narration instead of leaving it up to others to give us one of their own.

Had Anna told her story as it actually was who could have been interested in her? Who would have been interested in a nondescript person from a nondescript town in Russian with a nondescript family and equally nondescript educational background.

We are the stories we tell.

Sources and Related: Inventing Anna: Who is Anna Delvey’s rumoured real boyfriend behind character Chase Sikorski? + “Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track of It” by Jessica Pressler + A dream database | Hunter Lee Soik on youtube + theannadelvey Instagram + How Purple Magazine Intern-Turned-Scam Artist Anna Delvey Turned Contemporary Art Into the Perfect Tool for Fraud + Want To Change Your Life? Change Your Narrative. Here’s How +

Posted in Introspection, Lifestyle | Tagged Anna Delvey, Anna Sorokin, Domodedevo, drawings, Hunter Lee Soik, Instagram, Jessica Pressler, narratives, Netflix, storytelling, women’s art | 2 Comments

Rewriting the Self

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Art for Housewives

In 1512, Dutch philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam published a text on how to rewrite pre-existing texts. The purpose was to show that there were many ways to say the same thing. His book, De Copia, begins like this: “The speech of man is a magnificent thing when it surges along like a golden river, with thoughts and words pouring out in rich abundance.” Although he has an abundance of choices in how to express himself, complained Erasmus, man often resorts to mere glibness and word-mongering. Four hundred and thirty five years later, French novelist Raymond Queneau wrote Exercises in Style which was the same story retold in 99 different ways.

Often we don’t realize how many choices we have and how important it is to explore them.

Posted in exploring the self | Tagged choices, De Copia, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau, self-narration | Leave a comment

The Storyteller Within

Posted on October 10, 2022 by Art for Housewives

It is a chilly October morning and I’m sitting at the airport on Paros waiting for departure. I spend much time watching people and wondering what their story is. Because everyone has a story to tell and everyone is a story to be told.

Socrates was the first to acknowledge the importance of a personal narrative when he suggested that man learn to know himself. So how does one go about knowing themselves? And is it even possible?

From the minute we are born, our story is being written for us without our participation. Our condition of possibility is already determined by who our parents are, what their socio-economic status is, our place of birth, our health conditions, etc. It is only when we begin to understand what has made us who we are that we can begin to know ourselves. And that’s when the story telling begins.

So we tell stories to ourselves about ourselves and in doing so give ourselves an identity. And it is this identity that we’ve created that will influence our behaviour and explain why we act the way we do. It will also greatly influence our future.

Humans are by nature storytellers. Because stories help make sense of the world around us. They also help to form the beliefs we have about ourselves and others. But not everyone is a good storyteller.

Some storytellers stick to the facts and some do not. Some storytellers are kinder to themselves than others. Some storytellers simply do not know how to express themselves. And some storytellers let others tell their stories for them.

The only thing constant in life is change. And as we change, so does our story. And for some months now, I have felt the change within me. Therefore, my personal narrative needs to be updated, edited, and retold.

The Little Old Lady who Broke all the Rules

The Little Old Lady who Broke all the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg is “an incredibly quirky, humorous and warm-hearted story” about a group of pensioners living at the Diamond House retirement home in Stockholm. In order to cut costs and earn more profit, the owner of the home subjects the pensioners to a depressed lifestyle. They are given miserable food, kept from getting proper exercise, and heavily sedated to make managing them easier. One evening while watching TV, the pensioners come to the conclusion that they would be better taken care of in jail than at Diamond House. Martha Andersson, age 79, says “if we want our lives to change, we must do something ourselves” and suggests that they commit a crime worthy of incarceration. And with that, a group of five elderly people bond together to create the League of Pensioners. The first thing they do is to stop taking their pills. This makes them physically and mentally more animated. They are now ready for a life of crime and begin robbing banks, museums, hotel safes, etc. And they begin to change not just because of the money but, as once again they’ve become protagonists in their lives. Organizing and actualizing their heists, they have something to look forward to as that is the real secret to a happy life. As one pensioner said “It is more beautiful to hear a string that snaps, than never to draw a bow.”

Related: Rita and Jerry Alter, retired art thieves + Why Would Two Ordinary People Steal a $160 Million Willem de Kooning Painting? A new documentary tells the tale of a suburban New Mexico couple who allegedly stole the artwork just to hang it behind their bedroom door + The Science Behind Storytelling

Posted in Books, Introspection, Lifestyle | Tagged Books, Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg, Condition of possibility, elderly, Know Thy Self, personal narrative, Socrates, storytelling, The Little Old Lady who Broke all the Rules | 2 Comments

A New Mythology

Posted on October 2, 2022 by Art for Housewives

Before my mom’s death, we used to talk together every Sunday. Talking with her was like talking to Pythia, the oracle of Delphi. My mom had experience that she was willing to share and all I had to do was listen and learn.

When I lost my mom, I lost my oracle and felt forced to search for a new mythology. While searching, I read Stephen Larsen’s The Mythic Imagination. The title intrigued me but the prose did not. I didn’t need to hear any more about Freud or Jung or Joseph Campbell or other people’s dreams. That’s when I asked myself: why not become a myth of my own?

What is a myth if not a narrative meant to explain thus help us better understand the world around us? What is a myth if not the story of a protagonist with a conflict to resolve? What is a myth if not learning to make the irrational rational?

All myths are personal in that we interpret them in our own way according to our own experiences, our own comprehension, our own perception.

The other morning I was sitting on the terrace with our cat. My eyes, as usual, travelled around the plants. The hibiscus up against a cloudless sky had me mesmerized. The pink flower on a cobalt blue background was so magnificent that it made me sigh. And sigh and sigh and sigh until there was this huge echo. A strange feeling came over me and, as if pulled by a magnet, I looked up and saw my mom’s face in the form of a cloud. There she was, center staged looking down on me smiling. I could feel her voice inside of me saying that there was no need for me to create a new mythology for the oracle lives within us all. And although I mourned her passing, I must remember that grief is a point of passage, not a place of arrival. That said, the cloud, my mom cloud, slowly drifted away.

For the new few days I reflected on this unique experience. I finally decided that my mom, my personal Pythia, was visiting me in the form of pareidolia and that maybe this was her new way of communicating with me. So I began carefully observing the clouds looking for messages. But, like a foreign language, you must first study the language before you can understand it.

In researching the language of clouds, I learned about Cloud Scrying aka nephelomancy. That is, the idea that clouds are oracles.

Although all clouds are made of the same thing (ice crystals or water droplets that float in the sky), no two clouds are the same. They are different in many ways such as shape, color, position, and direction. Some are thick, some are thin, some are wispy and some are bloated with rain. Some clouds have contours that are frayed and blurry while others have contours that are well-defined. And often clouds take on the shape of things that exist down on the ground and not in the sky.

Obviously if you want an answer from the clouds you must first have a question. But before asking it, it’s best to lay down while looking directly up at the sky, close your eyes, clear your thoughts, then open your eyes and start scanning the sky for an answer.

Here are a few of the answers I’ve been given:

Like my mom said, the oracle is within us all.

Posted in Books, Introspection, Toni O | Tagged Cloud Scrying, clouds, mythology, Nephelomancy, oracle, pareidolia, Pythia, Stephen Larsen, The Mythic Imagination, Toni O. | 5 Comments

The Southern Cross

Posted on September 25, 2022 by Art for Housewives

Soon we will be leaving our little Greek island. Looking at the horizon from our neighbourhood beach, I already feel nostalgia. I already miss the vastness of the blue sea just as I already miss the night time sky. Often we spend evenings on the terrace where the Big Dipper can be seen. Sometimes we go on the roof to see other constellations, as well. But even then, not all the constellations are visible.

Once upon a time the Crux was visible to the Greeks. But the Earth’s axial precession began to migrate and by 400 A.D. the Crux became invisible to most of Europe. The Crux is now visible only in the Southern Sky, that is, south of the celestial equator. For this reason it’s known as the Southern Cross.

I’d first heard of the Southern Cross from the Stephen Stills song. Well, it wasn’t totally his song. It was first sung by the Curtis Brothers. Stills had expressed an interest in recording it but was busy with so many other projects that he never did. Then his girlfriend, French singer Vèronique Sanson, broke up with him. The break-up left him feeling wilted and worn. Friends suggested he distract himself by sailing to Papeete. It was here that Stills saw the Southern Cross for the first time. Inspired, he modified the original lyrics:

When you see the Southern Cross for the first time

You understand now why you came this way

‘Cause the truth you might be running from is so small

But it’s as big as the promise of a coming day.

The Southern Cross also inspired the Greek poet Nikos Kavadias. Born in 1910 in Manchuria of Greek parents, in 1921 his family moved back to Greece. When his father died in 1929, Kavadias was forced to work in his uncle’s shipping office in Pireaus where he trained as a wireless officer. But Kavadias already had two main desires: to write poetry and to be a sailor.

In 1922, the Turks marched into the Greek zone of Smyrna and began burning it down. Thousands upon thousands of Greeks were killed and those remaining were left homeless. So in masses these Greeks escaped to Piraeus bringing with them the sorrowful sound of rebetika. It was the music of the poor, the displaced, the victims of social injustice and love gone sour. It was the music of exiled souls. Rebetika could be heard in ouzeri, hashish dens, coffee shops, and any other place frequented by the marginalized. They were places that Kavadias no doubt frequented so it’s easy to assume that his poetry was influenced by the lyrics of these heartbreaking songs.

Kavadias was a loner, an observer, and a collector of stories. His home, the sea, provided him with stories of irreclaimable people and faraway ports, stories of loneliness and longing. Like that of the wealthy young woman he’d fallen in love with but couldn’t be with. Many years later, quite by accident, he saw her again on the streets working as a prostitute.

To redeem one’s suffering you must turn it into a poem.

In the late 1970s, Greek composer Thanos Mikroutsikos discovered that Kavadias’ poems would provide the perfect lyrics for his compositions. His first album using Kavadias’ poems was Σταυρός του Νότου (Southern Cross).

To be honest with you, maybe I like the idea of poetry more than poetry itself. Often the meaning of a poem seems to be so hermetically sealed within the poet that reading the poem is like being in a foreign city without a map to guide me. And I feel lost. But, determined to get something out of Kavadias’ “Southern Cross”, I’ve read it and reread it several times and this is what I’ve understood:

The winds are blowing and the waves are hot. One man narrates the other. Bent over a map, the other says that he is heading to another latitude. A declaration of love is tattooed on his chest. But although the love is gone, the burned skin remains.

The Southern Cross behind them indicates where they are. The other rubs his worry beads and chews bitter coffee beans.

The narrator lets himself be guided by an azimuth compass whereas the other warns of the stars of the southern skies.

The other had learned to navigate that same sky thanks to the captain’s mulatto girl. The other had also bought a knife on an island near Madagascar. The knife glittered like a lighthouse beam.

But now, says the narrator, the other has been sleeping for years on an African shore far away from the lighthouse, far away from Sunday sweets.

The Southern Cross has a special meaning for Australians and New Zealanders. So much so that the constellation’s four bright stars are shown on their flags. Because the Southern Cross acts as a compass for night time navigators. And, as we all know, without a compass it’s easy to get lost.