Question.... replies sincerely desired.
OK, I have a good friend who saw an art show featuring a piece by a breast cancer survivor that got me thinking. Lots of art and stuff out there about/by breast cancer survivors, so, no biggie. But in that particular piece, she wrote a biography of the breast she lost. And I pieced that idea together with some other bits swimming in my head. And I have this idea. And it's not necessarily a commercial venture, more an artistic one. So I am thinking about documenting this experience in an epistolary /paper-engineering format. Letters, journal entries, cards and emails of support, even some of my medical stuff.
The hook is that it will be weird. I will be including comic strips by me and my daughter, off-color humor, subversive musings about dreams, macrobiotics, reiki, and breastfeeding., mixed in with the prayer-chain stuff and the get well soon cards.
I was also thinking about that whole biography of my breast I will be losing. Then I thought, wait, I am an extrovert: every memory or phase of my life or rite of passage has been one about connection to other people. So I was considering writing some of the biography in the voice of the other people involved in the memory (like what he thought/felt seeing me in my prom dress, the one with the corset bodice). But it's about my body, so that seems a little presumptuous.
But then I thought, hey! My friends are weird and subversive and creative and dangerous types (or play one on tv), what if they actually write parts of it?
So how absolutely mortifyingly inappropriate would it be for me to ask folks to write a letter to my breast(s) or a memory or a story about my breast(s)?
I just want this to be as outside-the-box as I can, but I don't want to alienate anyone. Should I come up with an artful pitch? Should I filter all responses through a designated anonymizer (yeah, i know it's not a word, but it struck me as funny!)?
So would I lose friends if I ask? Will anyone actually participate? Have I completely lost my mind, and not in a witty-Augustan-Burrows way but in a scary-you-can't-play-with-my-kids-alone-anymore way?
The hook is that it will be weird. I will be including comic strips by me and my daughter, off-color humor, subversive musings about dreams, macrobiotics, reiki, and breastfeeding., mixed in with the prayer-chain stuff and the get well soon cards.
I was also thinking about that whole biography of my breast I will be losing. Then I thought, wait, I am an extrovert: every memory or phase of my life or rite of passage has been one about connection to other people. So I was considering writing some of the biography in the voice of the other people involved in the memory (like what he thought/felt seeing me in my prom dress, the one with the corset bodice). But it's about my body, so that seems a little presumptuous.
But then I thought, hey! My friends are weird and subversive and creative and dangerous types (or play one on tv), what if they actually write parts of it?
So how absolutely mortifyingly inappropriate would it be for me to ask folks to write a letter to my breast(s) or a memory or a story about my breast(s)?
I just want this to be as outside-the-box as I can, but I don't want to alienate anyone. Should I come up with an artful pitch? Should I filter all responses through a designated anonymizer (yeah, i know it's not a word, but it struck me as funny!)?
So would I lose friends if I ask? Will anyone actually participate? Have I completely lost my mind, and not in a witty-Augustan-Burrows way but in a scary-you-can't-play-with-my-kids-alone-anymore way?