Letter to my family from New York:
Tonight, darlings, I am homesick.
The old Moss would have a good cry about now, and indeed, some tears are lurking ominously behind my eyes. But grown up Moss dusts herself off (after all, she's almost thirty!) and will get on with being happy and taking everything in her long, purposeful stride.
I knew tonight would feel like this - which raises some question of self-fulfilling prophecy, but I also had reason to predict this feeling of fierce humiliation.
Lena is so amazingly generous and well-meaning. She gave me perfume for valentine's day, all wrapped up, and leaves food in the fridge, buys me clothes, gives me vouchers, etc., etc.
I can't repay her and I wish there was not such a great feeling of imbalance.
I wish she would stop.
I have been anticipating tonight with dread. Lena had gone to great lengths to track down a contact - a gallery director - and invited her to come and meet me - Lena's protege - and to bring her artist husband, who has been featured at the Venice Biennale and of whom, of course, I know nothing.
Oh, mortification! I knew I had very little to show. I did not come equipped for this - I'm not here for this purpose. And I see how conservative my work can seem to someone who is very active in the contemporary scene, especially when it's in reproduction and the texture and inherent energy of the process, the spirit in it, are not evident. And I well know by now that I can't talk the talk unless it's sincere.
I can't bluff.
Carla turned out to be a delightful person, beautiful and barely older than me. Her husband was equally generous and warm. They are velvety-accented Italians - both wore black. Picture him: affable, fashionably ungroomed and yet somehow faultless, and sporting a motorcycle jacket; and her: dark-eyed, in an elegant blur of shoulder-skimming black angora. Their effortless style heightened my awareness of the inexpertly-concealed shiner of a pimple on my cheek.
They regarded me with gentle openness. I suppose that is better than downright dismissal or contempt, but as the evening wore on; as they, bright-eyed, mentioned celebrated contemporary artists I ought to know, trying to establish common ground, and I, squirming, shook my head, smiled, looked fascinated and felt ashamed; as Carla looked through my masters book - which now seems so old and childish! - and asked me who my influences were (I drew a panicked blank!); as she smiled so graciously and offered advice and I felt too-tall and frightfully naiive; as Lena, in a vintage chiffon apron and totteringly high heels, offered around expensive sashimi on a tray; as, at Lena's prompting, I opened my cherished little folio of the few darling sketches I've made here, and suddenly found them shabby; as Francesco, deep in conversation with Lena's husband, absently stepped backwards onto my portrait of Joe; as I smiled and nodded and smiled and nodded and stuttered and squawked my unrehearsed explanations of my work; I thought, "I'm in excruciating pain!"
Why have I not learnt to do this? Why do I still feel worthless when confronted with such people? I thought I would be better. I am so much better at coping with so many things than I was before - all sorts of things! But not this. I kept imagining this fabulously hip couple leaving, and the things they would say to each other , "thank God that's over!" "well, she was very sweet" (I was), "poor thing", "what was Lena thinking?", etc.
I wasn't hopeless - I was charming, well-behaved, humble and open. I did the best I could. But I felt like ZERO, and it probably showed.
And It's not just embarrassment and shame, either. I feel violated. I didn't want this, I didn't ask for it. I have felt such joy and pride in my little drawings, these last days. It is horrible to see them through these eyes, now. Can I recover my pleasure in them enough to continue drawing, tomorrow?
I don't know what goes on in me. I don't understand where it comes from, why I so readily feel like a child before someone who is successful and self-possessed and 32.
Perhaps it is the contrivance of this situation. It wasn't my plan, I had no control of matters at all. I wanted to make Carla understand - via mental telepathy and urgent meaningful glances - that it was not I who contrived this meeting, it was not I who had too-high aspirations for myself, not I who did not understand that her sort of gallery is not for my sort of artist. I felt so certain I would disappoint everyone present - waste the time of the guests, and lose Lena's admiration for my work through their dismissal of it. I wasn't stubbornly negative, I just honestly feared it.
Oh, my people, I miss you. I want to scuttle home with my tail between my legs and be loved.
I have been so triumphant, here, till now!
And now, picture me: still all dressed up, but with muddled mascara (yes, I broke) on the sitting-room couch, one stockinged foot on the coffee table, next to one of Lena's Vogue magazines (this month, "Love, Sex and What To Wear").
Opposite me is my uncle's majestic drawing of swans in their rich black rectangle, dominating the wall. The warp of the perspex reflects me: distorted, tiny, and squashed in the lower left corner.
I believe I will one day find all this very funny. Some little part of me already does.
Today I had a date with a man named Jeff. The pain au chocolat man. He invited me to come along to a talk he was giving on board the USS Intrepid Aircraft Carrier, which is set up as a museum. I thought of you so much, Dad! Did you go there? I imagined you would love it. Jeff was impressive, energetic, thoroughly American, charming. He bought me lunch at his favourite Chelsea diner and showed me the amazing, snow-blurred view from his Greenwich Village apartment. My heart did not so much as flutter for a second. I artfully dodged when I saw he wanted to kiss me, but it was nice to have someone to talk to.
I am doing everything I came here to do, and more. New York has exceeded all my expectations. But the thread to home has stretched to snapping-point, and tonight I feel suddenly adrift on an island countless miles away from all that makes my life meaningful.
Most of that is you.
Love, Moss
xxx
