Jono
When I was living in Australia one of the boys I dated was Jono. Jono was an artist and Jono was Australian. In this case, the latter is relevant because it seems to intensify the characteristics of the former. I studied Art in Australia and have spent many years with artists. Australian artists, young ones anyway, make sure to let you know that an artist is what they are. They have the stereotypes down to perfection. The attempt of compensating for being so removed from Art-epicentre Europe maybe.
Anyway, Jono.
Jono was a musician and a filmmaker, still is I guess, and the person who encouraged me to study what I studied. He was incredibly insecure and projected that onto me. At least that’s what I make out of it now. Back then I had no clue. All I knew was he made me feel stupid, average and boring, even more stupid, average and boring I was already feeling anyway. There was always an undercurrent of shame in our being together. Like he was ashamed to be with me because I was so normal and of what that might say about him. And maybe it was true. Compared to his bohemian art crowd I must have seemed pretty dull. I was young, 18, not quite an adult yet, and had just moved to Sydney straight from my teenage room in a happy family household in the German suburban countryside. Normal hobbies, normal friends, a little stint in my school’s irrelevant theatre group as arty as it got. Jono was exotic to me and I was probably the opposite to him.
“Where is your television?”, I asked him when I came over to his house for the first time, which he shared with a guy named Josh, who had lots of hair and who was also a musician or maybe he was an experimental video artist. I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter.
“We don’t have a TV”, Jono said. “Josh and I don’t watch TV, we prefer to play music or read.” That was the first time he made me feel stupid. I loved watching TV. It was one of the ways my mum and I connected and I had always cherished that. Now I felt shame.
Jono was also a surfer. Not the tall, buff, muscly kind, he was way too tiny and petite to fit that cliché, but Jono surfed and was alright at it. I surfed too. I wasn’t yet alright at it but I was already obsessed and so I walked down to the ocean every morning and every evening to be thrown around for hours on end in waves way too big for me. I loved it!
Jono and I both lived near the beach and close to each other but surfing together was never an option. He went with pals, DJ friends he admired and looked up to and I went by myself. I think he was embarrassed to be seen with a tourist like me carrying a big Malibu down to the beach - the classic clunky beginner board popular with foreigners such as myself- flip-flopping to the surf, a little too sunburned and a little too jolly, oblivious to the surfer law of barefooted blasé cool.
Back then Jono intimidated the hell out of me. He made me feel so small and insecure. So when he invited me to add something to the mural in the living room - a wall-of-guests he had opened for his friends to leave their artistic marks on- I never did. I was too nervous whatever I would come up with would suck, and that Jono would let me know.
Now, years later, I feel sorry for him and hope he is more confident and self-loving now. He became quite successful so he should be.
But are artists ever truly confident and self-loving? And can a lack thereof ever not be toxic and destructive? Either to yourself or those around you?
These days I smile about that episode in my life and about the fact I could ever believe I was dumb or boring! I am also relieved that my passion for television has persevered. Fuck, I love television. I am an artist too, and a bohemian I guess. But I am also pretty basic a lot of the time and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Entitlement is never chic, not this way nor the other, and narrow-minded judgment is no characteristic of a creative soul.
I have always been a fairly confident person growing up, on the outside anyway. But it was right after Jono that a deeper, more intrinsic self-assuredness began to emerge.
Sometimes it takes a fool to question your worth to realise your riches.
- S.
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