Between Release and Reality - there is Cecily

Cultures embroider themselves using pictures, metaphors and phrases that hit a chord. Within this embroidery the smart and savvy cultures make room for their own contradictions. Some creative people and traditions give voice or form to representations of those contradictions. For instance the ‘sacred clown’ of some Amerindian tribes, the court jester or the architectural follies of some European circles (Cline, 1998). Weapons of mass distraction.

Cartoonists historically have had this role, of exploring loudly the contradictions to dominant, polite culture. As Cecily does. Cecily explores what “goes without saying”, what is left unspoken - the tacit rules of culture. You are not supposed to think about your favourite TV show starting in five when your beau or belle is taking off your coat with reverent romance. But Cecily does. Having made the humble gesture of telling people not to bring gifts you are not supposed to regret that gesture. But Cecily does. Cecily does.

We speak of genius rather than perversity or eccentricity, says Cline, where a person’s private obsession hits a target which others have use for, where there is the “coincidence of a private obsession with a public need” (Rorty, 1989, cited in Cline, 1998, pg 115). And Celia’s private obsession, now uncannily public in Cecily, has hit a chord in New Zealand a chord that is now resounding across the Tasman. Cecily has landed.

“The satisfactions of this make-believe world may not turn the world around but they can radically alter our own position in the world.” (Cline, 1998, pg 96).

We know ‘somehow’ what it is cool to show and what to hide. In response to the cultural milieu we find ourselves soaking in, we hide personal intensities and uncool sentiments- modern indecencies really. The cultural have-to’s can be quite heavily scripted and programmed. Yet remarkably we don’t always notice them. Until, that is, we hear the siren’s call of Cecily. Cecily is the voice and face of and arch and humorous dissent, asking “Might there not be another way??????”

…Sipping martini’s in the bath and chatting avidly on the phone Cecily was not entirely sure that children would improve her lot...

She has all the virtues. Charity – she listens at the dentist’s, humility – she asks you not to bring presents, discretion (here, aka) practiced social lying – the assumed face of delight at getting a… horse model [!], decorum - in taking off [at least] some of the face furniture. But she also embodies the unsung virtues of a personal intensity: spontaneity, excess, the rampant pleasures of solitude; as in the dance of the patchwork quilt where Cecily transcends space and time; or the excess of a personal pleasurable absorption a kind of alone-while-in-the-world…the abandon of Cecily dancing to imagined encores, and in the face of the encouragement of receptive audiences, she dances herself into a frenzy.

She chimes the small alterations in being that come from giving ourselves over to a moment’s intensity. You may think that it makes no difference just to hold back, or diminish felt intensity. That is potentially to miss the transformation of one’s position in the world, to miss perhaps the private smile while alone that carries you through.

Celia creates a model in her cartoons of a larger than life way of being other. She supports our desire to embrace the uniqueness and idiosyncrasy in ourselves and in others by making us laugh at the rigours of polite conformity. And she supports such desires by reassuring us that by becoming more intensely ourselves we will also find greater shared connection with others.

That is quite a series of promises of a rich interiority of pleasure that nonetheless spirals out into a warmer communality with others. Quite a needed series of promises is made by Cecily, in these times of [somewhat paranoid] hypercompetition - where success masquerades as completely required even for survival, where notoriety is as good as fame, where those around us seem to flout that one can win through bluff, pretense and lies.

Yet Cecily thinks even backing the favourite in a horse race is unfair and goes for the outsiders. Unable to start her computer, she dusts it. Her bluffs so thin they invite discovery, and a shared sense that for many of us, this is how it is. We just omit the laughter until she invites it.

In an uncertain, insecure world of shifting, seismic complexities, we try to pare away what is given, apparent, taken for granted…to find something else to satisfy our (face it) desire for frivolity…for the odd carefree release from the grind of reality. Or to face reality with enough verve and laughter so that it releases its manic hold on us. And this is an endless balancing act between release and reality. We search beneath the customary for fresher strata of our mental lives.

Celia’s images have such freshness they make us feel that we could start anew after dipping into them – in a minor or a major way. Find a new life, a “life that would be [more] our very own, that would belong to us in our very depths” (Cline, 1998 pg 112). That’s a good thing to have springing at you from the leaves of your calendar or from your tea towel.

Cecily’s blind attachments and innocent fervour chime against a certain cut-through sophistication that is also her…her innocence is also her revolutionary edge…she is not compelled to see the world our way.

Cecily is uncanny…that which should have remained hidden is now meeting the light of day. The homely seen in a strange new light. Your fleeting thoughts beam back at you from the newspaper. Cecily has been the darling of New Zealand. She’s been in the Listener, a regular in NEXT magazine, The Christchurch Press the Waikato Times. Being a modern girl she has also splashed out into fabrics and cards, diaries and linen. My excitement is in seeing how she takes to her new cultural playground. Given that there are things in general and things specific to any culture, I’m keen to see what Cecily makes of Oz. My faith that she will make the Tasman crossing with panache – with aplomb and without seasickness comes from my faith in and admiration for her creator Celia - a robust and light-hearted genius. I’m sure Cecily will make a feast (for us all to share) of the least pangs of culture shock. I’d like to welcome her to Oz.