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JUST JEAN

April 27, 2022

Stepping foot back in New York today feels like a warp-speed implosion back into the girl I was, and in some ways will always be. Even though I am officially a child of the midwest, The City, and the 1980s, hold the nucleus of my deepest truths, the integration of all of the disparate pieces of who I am. And dotted throughout the grid of concrete and cobblestone are the morsels of memories, and the souls of those who still inhabit me, rent-free.

One of those souls is the cute boy with the mischievous smile and soulful eyes that danced across me on my first trip into the kaleidoscope hub of our night-world — The Mudd Club. He was an artist. I was a girl escaping the midwest, just learning and discovering Art, capital A. In that way that happens when you are young and free and open to the world, our crossing paths night after night set the stage for the start of a friendship that would last until he left this life.

“Just Jean,” he said, as we finally exchanged names one night. I introduced myself as Cyd, a moniker cemented by his idol and then friend, Andy Warhol, when he was amused by my precocious use of my favorite screen idol to explain my (then) unusual given name…“Charise, like Cyd Charisse.” He soon invited me to see his work.

Over the next few years, Just Jean would change my world, though I didn’t know that then. When I eventually went to his studio, I was mesmerized by the freedom with which he moved. His shoes kicked off, music blaring, he was there, present in a way that felt calming and exhilarating all at once — painting what his soul and mind’s eye saw, and his ears heard. On one of my visits, I noted that he used a lot of primary colors.

He looked around at the canvases leaning against the walls and asked, “What should there be? What would you add?”

“Pink,” I answered. “But just the right shade. Sort of a blue-ish pink–”

“Like a sunset!” we both said, laughing at the vibing going on over a color.

And so we mixed hues of pink, side by side. He then directed me to add it to this canvas, and then another. At first, I was nervous, afraid I’d ruin what he’d already done. But he told me that wasn’t possible.

“Just fucking paint,” he said, nodding towards the canvas.

With that, I felt freed to simply follow my own inner muse, with this loaned sense of abandon that he granted me. And then he added more of his own colors on top of and around what I’d done. When he was done, he turned to me.

“Is that better? Do you like it now? Are you finally pleased?” he asked, feigning exasperation, before cracking that same grin as when we’d first met. That same grin that melted my heart a bit each time he shined it upon me.

“Much better,” I answered, giggling.

In between travels and our love affairs with others, we were simply a boy and a girl who held deep affection for one another. There were funny stories we shared. Some sad ones, too. Our scars on our bodies, his from a missing spleen, mine from a curved spine, were our matching metaphors that bonded us by what could be seen, and what stayed encased within. For each of us, it was the parts that stayed within that served as a shorthand in bonding us and our love and understanding of one another as fellow humans.

Now, nearly four decades later, I went to see the exhibit his family curated in his honor. Upon stepping into the first room, tears filled my eyes. It was instantly clear the overflow of love that went into this show. One of the things that we often spoke about was the frustration of being “othered” usually based upon race and/or being of multi-ethnic heritage. Since he died, I have often been angered by the way the [art] world has spoken of him and his work. Primitive…only a street artist…un-learned…accidental wunderkind of the art world. Missed with these errant broad strokes was his unique brilliance, keen intelligence, and mastery as an artist and scholar. Overlooked was his all-encompassing beauty, ironic humor, sweetness, and depth as a human and as a man. But now, standing in the @BasquiatKingPleasure exhibit, all of that was smoothed away. And in its place was installed a truer and fuller version of both artist and man.

@BasquiatKingPleasure

When I stepped into the re-creation of his studio, it took my breath away. It was the place I came to know him best. The place where he first demanded I put brush to canvas, and name myself an artist. The place where he painted my body as his canvas. Where he memorialized something dear to me that I lost. And when I saw his shoes and an empty pack of cigarettes on the floor, while a celluloid version of him painted off in the corner, I wept. For just a few moments, I was back there. Everything else around me receded. And he was still within reach, firmly in this world.

“Ma’am, please don’t lean against the fencing.” — Reality was back. My friend who I loved was gone again.

He died on my birthday as I was embarking on my senior year of university studies. I didn’t ever get to say goodbye. But as my homage to him the day I heard the news, I walked to the store across the street from my apartment and bought several flavors of ice cream. Back home, I sat on my kitchen counter as he and I had once done. I brought a spoon of frozen goodness to my lips, and closed my eyes to taste the colors of each flavor, just as he’d urged me to do. The tears streaming down my cheeks were salty, as the memories of him remained forever sweet.

This time, standing amidst the crowd of art enthusiasts, it finally felt as though I could say goodbye. I’m not convinced closure ever really happens when people we love die.

I’ve often joked that the painting he made for me (destroyed by my boyfriend who didn’t appreciate being cast as the devil to my angel in its imagery—like I said, Just Jean had an ironic sense of humor), would have been worth a bit more these days than the cost of free he charged me.

“Take the money,” I said to him, holding out the wad of hundreds.

“I won’t take your money,” he said, standing firm.

I went to put it on top of the television set.

“I’ll throw it out the window,” he said, looking me in the eyes.

We stood there in an eye to eye stand-off…1…2…3… And then we both laughed. He had won.

I was a year too late on being able to take him up on his offer to paint another one for me once I had my own first grown-up apartment. Each place I’ve lived in since then has held one empty wall. Without realizing it, I’ve instinctively left a place for him in my world for all of these years. But being back in The City, surrounded by his work, some of his favorite music, and so much of his energy, has gifted me with a feeling as close to closure as I can imagine. Perhaps it is time for me to paint something myself to fill the space. The love forever remains. The gratitude only grows. Viva Just Jean. Siempre.

@BasquiatKingPleasure

(Basquiat King Pleasure exhibition, 601 W 26th St., New York, NY 10001, USA)

Category: Uncategorized  •  Tags: 1980s, art, artist, artists, basquiat, BLACK ARTISTS, black women artists, BLACK WRITERS, club kids, jean michel basquiat, king pleasure, life, love, mudd clubb, new york city, nyc, survivor, truth, truths, warhol, writers, young love  •  Have a Comment?

My Homage to a Beautiful Soul

September 12, 2018

In honor of World Suicide Prevention Day, I share this from the heart, something I wrote in 2015 out of love for an old friend…

Someone I love once told me, I am the Collector Of Broken Birds. She meant that I tend to bond with people who are in ownership of their pain, who have seen things in life that would leave others lost amidst the rubble. I knew what she meant. But I never looked at it that way. Instead, I saw it as an outgrowth of my understanding of pain, and my willingness to see it in others without shrinking away from it. Looking into the eyes of pain does not scare me, as it does so many other people. I don’t see it as contagious, or a sign of weakness. I see it for what it is, the remnant of survival. So, when some are fooled into believing that beautiful woman who is always smiling, is also the beholder of a perfect, pain and sorrow free existence, I am not so quick to be taken in by the smile worn across the battle scars. And for those of us who can see both the smile and the scars, without flinching, and also share a glimpse of our own scarring under the smile with that brave soul across from us, who also doesn’t flinch, that is a miraculous moment when it feels as though the universe, or god, is saying that it sees you, and loves you, no matter your imperfections and complications.

I met a woman who proved to be one of these rare souls, while I was in the throes of mommying my little trio of girls, and she was mommying her trio of one boy and two girls. She offered humor and irreverence and a kind welcome that doesn’t always come from a lifelong resident of a small community, towards a newbie interloper. But she never thought twice in making me feel welcomed and at home, without any of the once-over that can be used even by adult women in their leftover from middle school dynamics. After awhile of knowing one another, we chatted one day about a film I was blown away by, Searching For Angela Shelton, where 70% of the filmmaker’s namesakes she discovers in her travels across the US, share the same unfortunate background of being survivors of rape, sexual abuse, or domestic violence. But before I could get the name of the film out, she finished my sentence for me, sharing that she’d been blown away by the honesty and rawness and bravery of the film, as well. We each shared our connection to the film from our respective personal lives, and joked that we would forever be “Angela Shelton Sisters.” After that, we kept in contact with each other, and relished the honesty we could put forth with each other, facts we wouldn’t share freely with many others, not because of shame, but because not everyone could be expected to look into the eyes of broken birds, and still be able to see the bird, without only focusing upon the broken bits. This woman became my friend. And in doing so, she fortified my vision of myself as a member of an army of women who were strong enough to buck family secrets, and societal victim blaming, without crumbling under the burden of The Past, in order to build our lives with depth and love and humor and strength.

This week, she drove to a quiet spot, one she’d probably driven past a million times, on her way to take kids to activities, or running errands in surrounding communities, or even as a teenager, while looking for the perfect, secret drinking and make-out spot. But last Saturday, she navigated her way there for her own private reasons. Some of those, I know from our conversations, were most-likely the remnants of the shadows of what made her a beautiful, broken bird. She acted in the here and now, but the reasoning was put into play during those early years, when carefree, sun-dappled moments were darkened with unthinkable violation and betrayals of the highest order. When someone loses a limb, there can be excruciating moments of phantom pain, even though there is nothing there, to the naked eye. Today, as I think of my friend, I’m reminded that the scars we carry bring their own phantom pain. And, sometimes, that phantom pain is enough to move us to cut it off at its source, and life has to end in order to bring us the relief that living could not grant us. I pray that wherever she might be, she finds the laughter and love and kindness and beauty that she shared with the rest of us while she was here, along with finally reaching her own little patch of sun where what made her broken is forever vanished with the first shimmer of her ever after.

Category: Uncategorized  •  Tags: angel, Angela Shelton, AngelaSheltonSisterhood, battle scars, beauty, friendship, girls, heaven, hell, joy, LoveLikeAlicia, metoo, pain, rape culture, secrets, suicide, survivor, survivors, timesup, truth, TRUTH And The Eye Of The Beholder, truths, women, world suicide prevention day  •  Have a Comment?

Junot Díaz: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma | The New Yorker

April 10, 2018

A Personal History by Junot Díaz: I never got any help, any kind of therapy. I never told anyone.
— Read on www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/the-silence-the-legacy-of-childhood-trauma

Category: Uncategorized  •  Tags: Angela Shelton, AngelaSheltonSisterhood, hope, life, metoo, NewYorker, NYT, rape culture, suicide, survivor, survivors, truth, TRUTH And The Eye Of The Beholder, truths, VanityFair, writer, writers  •  Have a Comment?

The Separated Ones

December 17, 2017

EXOTIC ANIMAL LINE

“I’ve noticed the separated amongst us have evolved. Surprisingly they reach beyond simply wanting to belong, Turning rejection into elevated awareness…in turn, connecting them to everything else…The orphan does not wait to be seen. He doesn’t give up…Once he stopped chasing the flock, that was incapable of seeing him, an instinct emerged, like a whisper in his ear—-nourish yourself, the world will be drawn to you.”

—JOHN CHESTER

 

Category: Uncategorized  •  Tags: artist, biracial, connection, determination, doers, don't give up, filmmaker, independence, individualist, instinct, John Chester, loners, mixed, multiracial, Oprah, orphans, self preservation, separate, short film, Super Soul Sunday, survivor, survivors, tenacious, the flock, wisdom  •  Have a Comment?

#LoveLikeAlicia

November 29, 2017

Pile of old rusty disused and abandoned skeleton keys

The TRUTH Key Project

…a movement to support suicide prevention

for young women and girls.

#LoveLikeAlicia

 

While writing this book,

a beautiful and brilliant friend lost her battle with Silence-ism

when she took her own life.

My hope is that by helping others break the chains of silence

that our secrets keep us bound within,

we might help a few souls hang on

for the day when they can feel free to make the choice to live,

by becoming free

of the weight of the secrets

and the silence.

#LoveLikeAlicia

Category: Uncategorized  •  Tags: angel, Angela Shelton, AngelaSheltonSisterhood, friend, friendship, life, love, LoveLikeAlicia, metoo, suicide, survivor, truth, TRUTH And The Eye Of The Beholder, truths  •  Have a Comment?

“The Language of Lunacy”

November 7, 2017

*MELANCHOLY

Copyright © Charise M Studesville, 2018. All Rights Reserved

“To be the victim of sexual assault is to fall down a rabbit hole into a reality shaped by collective delusion: specifically, the delusion that powerful or popular or ordinary-seeming men who do good work in the world cannot also be abusers or predators. To suggest otherwise is to appear insane. You question yourself. Even before anyone calls you a liar — which they will — you’re wondering if you’ve overreacted. Surely he couldn’t be like that. Not him. Anyway, it would be insanity to go against someone with so much clout. The girls who do that are sick in the head. At least, that was what we used to think.”

—Laurie Penny (♥️ you!)

(Read the full article here.)

Category: Uncategorized  •  Tags: assault, asylum, insanity, Laurie Penny, melancholy, rape culture, survivor, truth, TRUTH And The Eye Of The Beholder, truths, victim, Weinstein  •  Have a Comment?

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