I've been told that I have a very diverse taste in music. I believe that to a certain extent, but it's really more that I go through phases with what kinds of music I listen to. I am always in a phase with Julian Casablancas and The Strokes, but you can't listen to only that all the time, and so recently I've been listening to a lot of Eartha Kitt. She has become one of the biggest influences for my artistic thought process recently, and I really admire her as a person, and think she is probably one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen. Even as she got older, I still see the beauty in her. I've drawn her three times now, all from different points in her life.
The first was a young Eartha, during the time where she travel Europe singing cabaret. One of the biggest reasons why I admire Eartha is because she is so worldly. I read in an interview with her that she has sung in I think 13 languages. She didn't speak that many, but she could get around in quiet a few languages. I study French and Spanish, and I don't find many artists that connect language to art in the way that Eartha did. When Eartha was a child, she went through a lot of physical and mental hardships, which really impact the way that one can approach her music. She never sings sad, and the feeling I get when I hear her voice is more of a commanding and powerful woman. There's this song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" that she sings. Even though she didn't write it, if you put it in the context of her life, her biological father was a white man who raped Eartha's mother, and who Eartha never met. The song is about how boys try to flirt and get with this girl, but she doesn't ever do anything with them because her "heart belongs to daddy." That's pretty powerful stuff when you know her background.
The second drawing of Eartha that I made was really a quick sketch of Eartha during her middle aged years. Eartha played with sex in a way that feels classy and even more sexy than what pop stars do today. She sounded seductive when she talked, and that flowed into her physical appearance. She was this awesome bridge between worlds that don't really meet. She sings with class, but the undertones are of something much more human and risqué. Eartha was a huge supporter of gay rights and even though she wasn't a lesbian, having support from someone like Eartha gave the movement more legitimacy. This is the music that your conservative grandparents listen to, but the singer is a women who openly opposed the Vietnam War when she was invited to the White House and supported the radical idea at the time of being okay with gay people. Her song "Santa Baby" is played millions of times ever Christmas season, and it's seen as this classic Christmas tune and is definitely not considered political, but the singer was very much involved and that's the bridge I was talking about. Eartha was able to bridge between worlds in a way I've never seen an artist do before.
The third drawing of Eartha I drew today, and it was her during her older years. Really, Eartha is beautiful in every way. I have changed my definition of beauty ever since I started drawing faces regularly. There are faces that I like to draw, and ones that I don't. Eartha Kitt has a face I love, especially older Eartha. Towards the end of her life, Eartha played Yzma in the movie "The Emperor's New Groove". That movie has a huge connect with me personally for a myriad of reasons, one of which is that it was the only Disney movie and the only kids movie that I've ever seen that explore Latino culture. Ancient Inca had some of the most beautiful stories and even though The Emperor's New Groove didn't explore the mythology, but just seeing the architecture in the building and the names of ancient emperors makes the whole experience feel more special since I had always been surrounded with that art in my house and during my trips to Ecuador and Peru. And then there's Yzma. The villain of the movie, but also a lovable character. As a child I always connected her directly to my late grandmother who raised me for the first seven years of my life. Their voices where extremely similar, and the most vivid images of my grandmother are during her later life when she had begun to get extremely skinny because of her cancer, and Yzma was also very thin. It wasn't until recently that I started to make the connection between Yzma and Eartha. The reason Yzma was so important to my childhood was because of the voice. If it weren't for Eartha, Yzma wouldn't have meant as much. My sister used to reenact the scene from the movie where Yzma and Kronk go into their secret lab. We'd jump into our hammock in our patio and Viviana would scream Yzma's line "Pull the lever, Kronk!" and I'd pull on a stick next to the tree that held the cloth sack up. Then Viviana'd scream "WRONG LEVER" and I'd shake the hammock and we'd laugh. We'd do that dozens of times in a row on summer afternoons and those times where the best memories of my childhood. Eartha was directly responsible for the happiest moments of my childhood, and if she didn't mean something special then I'd not understand what an influence really is.
