This Is What I Thought I Could Do

Hold on to your hats! "Creative" punctuation ahead - and a lot of gobbledygook. But then this is a blog.

One big thing that happened this year is that Pete and I entertained the idea of selling our place in Vermont and moving to Durham, North Carolina.

This was traumatic for me. It forced me to face the fact that I'd been undervaluing the things that weren't working in the way we'd been living our lives. It showed me that my dreams had turned out to be just that: unrealistic and impractical. I wanted to do too much with too little time and no help. Nuts!

In Vermont I have an artist's dream studio: plenty of square footage, a sink, a deck (! What artist even dreams of having a deck off their studio? For many artists even a sink is a dream) near but not in my house, safely accessible at all hours, very few distractions, surrounded by wildlife and incredible views. It's probably the best studio I'll ever have. How could I think of giving that up?

Because it's frigging lonely up there! We're too far from our friends and family. We keep having to travel so we can fulfill our family duties and charge our social batteries.

Every time I leave it upsets my creative rhythm which takes days to re-establish - a problem I couldn't figure out how to get around. Thanks to list-making I have been able to keep producing work I'm proud of. My dreams were rosier though. I thought that if I had a great studio and dedicated my time to my work that my productivity would take off. Maybe it would have but in all the years we've been there I have rarely been able to devote the unbroken stretches of time to my work that I thought I would.

Ultimately that's life. Nobody can just be an artist. Everybody has family and needs to eat lunch and gets interrupted by the details of life. Everybody knows that life is where art comes from.

But it wasn't just my art-making that got interrupted. I wasn't around enough for my garden either. I had dreams of turning our property into a verdant paradise of multiple garden rooms, fruit trees and a potager.

I also thought I was going to decorate the house beautifully and cook gourmet meals made with vegetables we'd grown ourselves.

What an insane fantasy! Look out - here we go... I'll whip up some pear and ginger scones to have with home made yogurt first thing in the morning for breakfast! After an hour's walk in the woods with Fay, it's off to my studio to paint and sew and sculpt and create installations that are in demand the world over! With Pete's help I'll spend a couple of hours tending to the weeding, pruning dead-heading and other garden maintenance. Then it's back to the sparklingly clean and tidy house with the flowers I've picked for an arrangement to decorate the entry room table (we don't have an entry room table) I'll make us a lovely cucumber and green bean salad with fresh dill from the garden and poached fish for lunch! Then back to the studio for more brilliant creations! Then I'll work out for an hour (gotta keep in shape!) then go to the mailbox to pick up the multi-thousand-dollar checks that arrive there daily and then play with Fay in the yard for another hour. Then it's back to the house to create a delicious gourmet dinner with fresh baked pie for dessert! Satisfied, Pete and I will share a nightcap on the patio by the fire pit, under the stars and I'll knit while we discuss the arts, culture and the latest issue of the "New Yorker." Then we'll retire and spend an hour or so before sleep catching up on reading those "New Yorker"s and about physics, philosophy, history, movements in art and technology etc. Then off  to a peaceful night's sleep full of fascinating, revelatory dreams (G-rated version)

Uhhhh... Smoke much?

In fact, no, that ridiculousness was the product of my own, unaltered mind. I did that all by myself! That's like a month-and-a-half's worth of activity I imagined I could pack into every day, not to mention my plans for Pete's assistance that I didn't consult him about. Not to mention expecting Fay to remain young and healthy. I mean, it took about a week to just read that paragraph, didn't it?

So yeah, that wasn't working out at all and I was FRUSTRATED about it. I was a FAILURE for FAILING to accomplish the IMPOSSIBLE. But I kept trying! It was like I was trying to live in a Thomas Kinkade painting or something - a literal, two-dimensional painting. I clawed into that dream for everything I was worth. It took me traumatic months to begin to release my grip on that baroque tableau.

You know, when I look at it that way I see that I actually accomplished a lot, all things considered. I just was never able to complete even one aspect of that fantasy. We're so backed up on the "New Yorker." I mean I could chip away at things. I did bake and grow things and make art and learn (A LOT) I just don't live in my own wet-dream of aesthetic/intellectual/domestic productivity. I don't have Hermione's time turner. If I did I'd probably use it to nap anyway.

So we may still move down to Durham somewhere down the line. I've been trying to spend more time in one place. I've been in Cambridge for the last couple of weeks trying to catch up with friends and figure out a rational plan for moving forward. That's hard for me. I still don't want to give up any of my activities and I want to get a full time job. Clearly something still has to give. I do think my expectations have changed though.

The number one thing I've come to terms with is that I can't provide myself with enough mental stimulation all on my own. I'll need to be around more people which means I should be based in the city. I'll have to trade the company of the critters for my sanity. I love the critters. And the beauty and the solitude. Something has to give.

So please wish me luck!

Working The Nose

You can learn a lot of useful things in art school if you pay attention. You can learn the same things elsewhere but I learned them in art school.

One thing you learn if you take painting is that it's generally best to work the whole surface of the painting at once rather than concentrate on one area then move to another area.

You're painting a portrait and you really like the model's nose. You want to get that nose just right. DON'T START WITH THE NOSE. If you start with the nose you won't leave room for the chin or the top of the head or something. You're supposed to sketch in the whole composition first so you know from the beginning that everything you want to include will fit in the picture.

Then you put in the large areas of color, work with the large masses of the form. Don't forget the background - that counts too. Now you can work on the nose. BUT DON'T JUST WORK ON THE NOSE. Because while you're working on the nose it will become disconnected from the cheeks and the chin will float off to Hawaii. What are those two small blobs up there? Those are supposed to be eyes? Nuh-uh.

But the nose is really good. But I'm out of nose color so I have to mix more for the forehead. Wait, that color isn't working at all. And I just noticed that the eyes are in slightly the wrong place and I should move them both over a little to the left and shift the angle of their axis a little down. But then the nose will be where the lips are supposed to go! Maybe if I can use the nose as a pivot point I can move the chin a tiny bit over here... But now the temples are all messed up. Fuck! Now what do I do? I'll have to start over!

Yes, you'll have to start over. And that, my friend, is painting.

But the nose was perfect! Are you painting a nose or a face? Do you want a painting of a beautiful nose floating in a sea of mushy chaos? Because if you want that that's fine.

In the olden days popular painters had ateliers full of apprentices who specialized in noses or lace or backgrounds or helmets or whatever. They probably got some kind of room and board for their labors. Maybe. Those days are over. Being the finest painter of noses in the world is a wonderful personal accomplishment but you probably won't be able to eat because of it.

If you want to paint a portrait that looks like a whole human head (or dog head or fish head or whatever your subject is) you're more likely to be successful if you do a dab on the nose, then the cheekbones, then the forehead, then the hair, then the chin, then maybe back to the cheeks for a stroke or two then the light in the background then the chin again... See what I mean? Bring the whole thing along little by little so you know where everything is and they're all developing in relation to each other and you don't get lost.

You're still going to have to start all over again a few times because that's just how it goes. Something will inevitably stand out and look great but it will be too soon so you'll have to get rid of it. If you find an area you want to preserve that's a danger zone. Mess it up - unless you're almost done and the other areas are almost there too.

Paintings go through a lot of stages before they're finished. You don't just start with nothing and then it gets better and better. Sometimes you start and it looks very promising. Then you realize it's not going to get where you need it to go that way and you have to mess it up to make it better. It looks great then it looks like unsalvageable crap then it looks kinda better then it looks pathetic then you figure out what it needs and it's done. Except for that one little part over there...

Screw that part. It's done. If you work on it any more you'll be working on it forever and you'll never finish it. Sometimes you just have to call it done. Let it go. That's a very freeing feeling.

Of course when someone says "you're supposed to..." that means that someone else's opinion of what you're doing matters. The truth is you can do whatever you want. Particularly in art. If you get the result you wanted then you went about it the right way. The ends justify the means in art as long as you're happy.

You don't really have to sketch out the whole composition in the beginning if you don't want to. Messed-up, out of whack portraits can be kind of cool. Sounds like a profitable exhibition if you ask me. Messed-up is very popular in the art world these days. It "reflects the chaotic nature of the times and the artist's disassociation from society" or some shit or other. If you can explain it to somebody you can make it work.

I suppose knowing how to do it "right" is a tool to have in your kit to be used if you need it. You never have to use your tools if you don't want to.

I'm calling this done. Later!

Karaoke

Nine days of blogging and I don't know what to say. Sorry, but this is going to be a filler post. I'll keep it brief.

Pete and I did karaoke tonight with our friends, Spencer and Lisa. Thankfully we had a private room. I think karaoke is a very good thing. Especially when there are lasers.

Every year Pete's band, The Weisstronauts, does a Christmas show and I get up and sing a number. I usually stress about it somewhat. Not enough to practice for the whole week before the gig though. I usually just sing along to my iPod for a couple of hours that day. The words are no problem because I've chosen a song that was on the "Holiday" tape when I worked at The Gap back in the early 90's. I worked three "Holiday"s so I could sing this song in my sleep.

Anyhoo, I'd consider doing some karaoke in the days before the show just to warm up and try and smooth out my performance moves. I usually don't have any performance moves and I feel stilted and awkward.

Oh Practice, will I ever learn to fully appreciate you?

More Normalcy

Speaking of normal, we have officially entered the time of year in New England that I like to call "normal," as illustrated below.

Good of the camera to focus on the window screen, huh? I'm too lazy to take another photo. Sorry. You can still see the light coating of snow on the hood of the white pickup near the pink door in the upper right corner of the photo. You can kinda see the slush in the empty parking space to the pickup's left. Also the tiny dusting of snow on the porch roofs and dormers of the houses in the back. The darkness and puddles are pretty clear. This photo was taken today at around 1:00 PM. Windy, 37 degrees Fahrenheit*, drizzly and slushy. Normal conditions.

Some might be inclined to say "How disgusting! How can you endure the dreariness?" I find it comforting because it's normal.

Now is the time of year that most people have to wear clothes if they're going to spend time outdoors. Due to my dearth of melanin and deliciousness to insects I always have to wear clothes when I spend time outdoors, particularly in nice weather. This is the time of year when it's actually comfortable to do so! I love that!

Okay, so as Normal season progresses it will get darker and colder and there will be snow and ice. I'm not in love with the ice. It hurts my be-hind when I wipe out on it. The snow's kind of fun though. As for the cold, whatever. Add another layer. All of this makes indoors cozier and hanging with friends more necessary and fun. Not bad for "normal."

*If you need a mnemonic device to remember how to spell "Fahrenheit," just think, "Oh no! I Fahted!" in your best Boston accent.

Not 100% Yawn

So I've been thinking about yesterday's post. I still believe it's true that I'm not a good trouble maker. But I can be good at quietly undermining normal. Sometimes the unsettling element is all it takes to set off a surprise and encourage the unexpected, right?  I don't need to be the tornado of terror, upsetting everyone's plans and turning everything upside-down.

Okay, so I'm not a full-on source of anarchy. I can at least be a gentle reminder that normal isn't everything.

Not Making Trouble

I understand that life is chaotic and that that's a good thing. I just can't bring myself to purposely help the chaos along. I might have mischief in mind but I can never seem to pull the trigger.

Maybe I'll think about this some more later...

Adios, Literally

One of the really hard things that happened recently (a little over a month ago) was that we had to say goodbye to Fay. My girl. I miss her so much.

The week after her fourteenth birthday she developed a problem with her lungs that wouldn't respond to treatment. She felt fine if she was in an oxygen crate at the hospital but she could only breathe for about a minute and a half if she was removed from the crate. She wasn't going to get better.

She gave me thirteen years and nine months of joy. She lifted my heart every time I interacted with her. Every difficult thing I ever did for her was so worth it.

Of course having a pet counts as saying yes to love. Some people say that your pet doesn't really love you, that they're ingratiating themselves to you so you'll give them food and shelter. I don't know if that's true. It doesn't matter if it is. The opportunity to feel and give love is so important, whether or not your love is returned. The love you give is the love you get to keep. 

Love is more than worth its cost in pain.

Crap Drawing

A not 100% shitty drawing

One of the things I need to do for this vast project I'm working on is think up a good name for it. Okay, also I have to do a lot of the kind of drawing that I suck at.

I am a shit cartoonist. I'm pretty good at drawing the things I see. Particularly portraits. I love faces. That's neither here nor there. We're talking about what I suck at.

I suck at trying to draw faces and bodies from my head. But I want to put out a comic.

At first I thought I could take photos of myself in costumes and sets doing the things I want my characters to do and then make drawing from those. That might be cool. I could still do that. I've been thinking about doing that for over a year and still haven't taken one photograph.

I have also been completely unsuccessful at getting myself to buckle the hell down and just do sheaves and sheaves of shitty drawings until I get better at it. Is practice the easy way? I mean, wouldn't it be easier to just draw until I came up with something I could live with?

But is making art about easy? No. Duh. It's about learning, exploring, trying something new. It's about being willing to fail and keep going until you get something you can use.

Failure is so much easier to stomach when you're in good company and maybe over a couple of beers. So I'm thinking I should get a few friends together and have a shitty drawing party. Or maybe meet at a pub and have an informal shitty drawing event.

Brilliant! Problem solved! I wonder if I could get anyone to go?

Painfully horrid and embarrassing

Stiff and awkward but I don't completely hate it 

Inspi-stinkin-ration

I hate inspirational posters that boss me the hell around. Do this, do that... "Enjoy life to the fullest!" "Believe in your dreams!" "Breathe!" "Say yes to love!" (oh, wait...) So annoying.

But this one is good:

It's the Holstee manifesto and you can get a copy for yourself here.

Okay, at times it's a little much for me. I get overwhelmed by all that advice. I'm never going to just walk up to someone and demand to know their passion. Also, the "All emotions are beautiful" lettering should be bigger for more impact. Most people don't understand that all emotions are beautiful - or why. 

Whatever my quibbles may be, this poster makes a lot of good points. But I'm on a love jag right now so I'm just going to focus on that part.

It took me forever to realize that "do what you love" really means do everything you love as much as you can. It's a good idea to fill as many moments as possible with as much of the stuff you love as possible.

Eat the food you love, wear the shoes you love, be with the people you love, surround yourself with the colors you love, listen to the music you love, go to the places you love, do the things you love to do no matter what their value seems to be. Don't be ashamed if the things you love seem stupid. You love them. If they bring you joy then that's enough and screw what anybody else thinks. 

It seems to me that this is how you build a life that has value for you. So that's what I'm going to do. 

Say No And Be Doomed (Say Yes And Be Good Doomed)

You should never say no to love.

Reason 1: Love doesn't take no for an answer. Love doesn't go away because you think it would be more convenient for you if it did.

Reason 2: You're an idiot if you allow (or push!) someone you love out of your life just because you're scared.

Reason 3: Love is always good. Even if you can't figure out how to work it, even if it's inconvenient and uncomfortable. Be patient and you'll figure something out.

Reason 4: The more you experience love the bigger you find it to be. More facets and permutations are revealed to you. You recognize it better, sooner, when you encounter it elsewhere in your life. More love is better than less.

Reason 5: Would you say no to fifty bucks? A cookie? A beer? Love is SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT AND BETTER THAN MONEY OR FOOD OR ANY OF THE OTHER THINGS WE DISTRACT OURSELVES WITH. SAY YES!

Say no to love and you will just suffer the pain of realizing that you made a huge mistake. You've probably done damage to someone you care a great deal about, you've missed out on some amazing opportunities and there's nothing you can do to fix it.

Love is scary. Love is the best thing in our lives. Love is the only thing in this life that we can keep. Love will mess you up and hurt you and heal you and keep you going. It will save you.

You're going to suffer either way. Life isn't about convenience and security. Life is suffering. You can choose beautiful, meaningful, life enhancing suffering or you can choose stupid, useless suffering that helps no one.

I'm talking about love, not attraction. Big tidal wave love. I'm not saying you should hop into bed with whoever appeals.

What I'm saying is don't run away. Let love happen even if you don't know what it's going to do or where it will take you. It will take you somewhere good. The ride will be worth it. Be brave.

SAY YES!

You don't really have a choice after all. Love will find you and overcome you.

Yeah, There Are Cuss Words In Here

Photo by Pete

Good morning everyone!

Isn't life confusing? So much to do, so much to think about. So much shit raining down on you, so many beautiful experiences to have at the same time. I pity the three pounds of mush that has to try to sort through it all for each one of us. What an experience!

Then there's all the stuff we don't take in because we aren't physically capable of it. Puny human mind boggling.

How am I supposed to pick a topic to blog about with all of these amazing, confusing things going on? The answer is, "Just fucking pick something."

Have I changed at all since June? Can you tell? Eh, whatevs. According to my meditation books (and a whole lot of science books) we're all changing all the time. Any perception of personal consistency we have is an illusion created by our brain. Brains are so cool. They make order for us where there is none. I wonder why we need it (order) so much?

So here's my topic for today: aging, mine specifically. I need to come to terms with it.

Yesterday I read that most cells in your body have short life spans. They die and are replenished regularly. Neurons are different. The neurons in your brain are the same ones you were born with. This is why I can be forty-six years old and still think I'm twenty-three or feel (or act) like an eight-year-old.

When I'm walking around doing stuff I have no idea how old I am and I don't care. That's as it should be. It doesn't matter. So it shouldn't bother me that I don't look like I think I do. Right? It doesn't really matter.

I was not careful to take good photos of my costume last night. Pete took a few though.

This is the best one of my costume but I don't like it because I look wider than I'd like to and because you can clearly see my saggy old lady neck. Gah! I would like to think that my neck doesn't look like that all the time. I can't see it so what do I know? 

But it doesn't fucking matter, does it? Why spend a moment's  energy on it? 

Moving on, that was a pretty good costume. I don't think the hair is quite right for the character but it'll do for Halloween.

This photo is more like what I was going for:

Of course that's blurry so I can believe what I want to about my neck. You can't see the leggings or the shoes though. The woman behind me in the picture had been in front of me earlier. She had the worst posture. Her head was disappearing into her shoulders. It gave me a backache to look at her.

So where was I going? Something like I need to get over any feelings of concern about my aging appearance. There's nothing I can do to change it. There are far more important (and interesting) things I could be spending my time doing. Although coming to terms with and accepting reality is a valuable pursuit. One more miracle of life to encounter and appreciate. A gift of impermanence: another challenge to tackle and subdue. 

By the way, I'm wearing a mini hat:

Happy Halloween!

Long time no blog. Mea culpa. Life ate my life (again) and I've just been tweeting and Facebooking. Effing Facebooking. What a waste of time! Oh yeah, and Pintrest too.

Enough about that. I'll try to remedy the situation by doing NaBloPoMo next month (which is tomorrow) There's lots to catch you up on but I won't do it chronologically. Disorder is how I roll. That's one area in which life and I are in agreement.

To start on a positive note and in keeping with this blog's theme, here are some shots of something I finished making this summer: my first lace shawl.

I loved making this thing. The lace looks pretty intricate but it was in fact an easy pattern to keep track of. The yarn was so beautiful: lovely colors and a delicious texture. It's the Jambo Shawl made with Curious Creek Meru yarn. Such a pleasure to handle and look at for hours. It gave me something with which to occupy my hands and eyes while traveling too. This is also the first knitting project I've ever blocked. Wait, that's not true, I blocked a tam o' shanter. If you don't block them they just look like blobs. But this shawl was really rewarding to block. I used lace blocking wires and pins from KnitPicks. It came out looking really pro. Do I wear shawls? So far no. I am hopeful though. I'm really proud of this one.

Now I'm working on a cowl made out of Noro Ayatori which I'm not sure I'm going to love (I love the yarn, I'm not sure I love what I've done with it) and another cowl in a fishnet lace pattern made with Madeline Tosh Merino.

In the last few months I've made countless salads, cookies, bread, brownies, tarte tatins, a pot pie, some installations and a whole bunch of other junk, some of which may appear in later posts.

As far as new art goes, I'm working on a mythology of my own. But there'll be plenty of time to talk about that in later posts. Hopefully it will be more interesting than knitting and salads. If everything goes well I will have photos of myself dressed as one of my characters for Halloween tonight.

In re-reading this I see that this is not the most lucid writing I've done. I had a couple of migraines last week and it appears my brain isn't one-hundred percent back to normal. Maybe we can watch this improve over the next month.

Now I'm starting to remember how frigging long it takes to blog. No wonder I like tweeting so much.