Some Kind of Not so Wonderful

Made it through Thanksgiving okay, no lows. Mostly on autopilot. Not doing so well today, slow crash. Others are suffering fresh losses this holiday season. Trying to make myself work but heart isn't in it. Just a sketch or two, anything. Force myself. Won't be my bess, nothing inspires, but anything.

(a week ago, Thursday)

It's not difficult to do the work once it's flowing, but it's getting harder to make myself sit and begin. Tonight would be a prime example. It's half past midnight, it's raining...I ought to go for a walk. Nowhere to go, nothing is open. Honestly, mood I'm in I'd like to not come back. But since I'm not going to walk...b'oof. I'd rather just sit here and type out what I'm feeling. Well, hell, I'll hold that at bay. Dana used to call my letters books, and to me they were still short. She guessed that I was holding something back, which I was and thought it uncannily observant pf her...but I had no idea at the time that she had guessed wrong about just what it was I wasn't saying. What I'd just been through, mostly. And that I was in love with her. In hindsight, I realize she was expecting it was something very different but I had no way of knowing that when I was writing her.

I did that, though – copiously spilled my heart onto the net, I mean. I've had two prior blogs, both long gone now, into which I tried to work out my lows. One was anonymous, using no real names (not even my own) so that I was free to be open. A few people read it, no one who had ever met me personally. One person expressed astonishment...I'm not sure if he thought I was brave to be so candid or just reckless. The other blog I put my name to as I hoped someone would someday plug my name into a search engine and find me there...but that meant I had to rein in what I could say. It would help to relieve my heart in the short run, one post at a time, but it never helped me any in the long term.

I wonder, when abstract artists express intangibles like love and pain in a work, does that help them through it? I wonder. Maybe it doesn't matter that I don't do expressive work, maybe I wouldn't find respite there anyway. What about photographers, does their work serve to soothe their broken hearts?Sorry, I've got nothing right now per art or blocks other than “hard to overcome”. Not exactly news. I'm trying to make myself get to some work tonight. I should have stuck with acting.

I'm proud of Dana. I'm pretty sure she'd be baffled as to why, were she to ever learn that. And ya know what? She never will know, ever, because she hasn't the courage to ask. In many ways she's a strong woman, and I look up to her for it...but she's not strong in all ways. Facing the people who care about her is not among her strengths. Telling them that their concern for her, their love and hopes for her, their determination to stand by her side means anything to her...if any of this is anything she values, she keeps it to herself. I wish she would tell me, one way or the other. The not knowing is the thing that does all the damage. I'm afraid she's okay with that.

I have heard that she has a rep for being protective toward those around her. She is admired for it by those she allows into her life, and by me on the outside of it. It's one of the things I'm proud of her for. It's something I hold onto when depression sinks in and I wonder whether she has any feelings left at all for anyone. That's where I am right now. Anyone who acts on a protective instinct can't be completely unfeeling. Can they?

There was a lesson I learned once, with the second girl I ever fell in love with. The first, Kristina, I always knew I would never hook up with, but Diane...she was the first person who ever spoke to me as if it mattered to her that I was the one listening. She disappeared from my life without ever knowing that she mattered to me. That jaw-dropping moment when I suddenly realized I was in love with her, and determined to tell her...I wasn't aware that I had already seen her for the last time hours earlier. If someone means something to you, don't let the chance to tell them slip through your fingers.

(suddenly wound)

Huh.  Okay.  Wow.

I haven't had that happen in a long time.  I was just watching Pretty in Pink, kinda half-watching, and I think I just saw Dana as an extra.

Then again, I was called for jury duty last year and there was a woman in the reserves room who looked like her too.  Many years ago, I kept seeing her everywhere.

You've always been beautiful, Dana.  

Still

On one occasion in first grade we were instructed to write a short paragraph that began with the premise that we were ideating on our porches. The we were to commandeer the crayons and draw what we had written. When we were done, people marveled over my drawing for the usual reason – they thought I could draw well. There was another marvel for them in my work, which I have always felt mortified by, and that's my singular lack of imagination. Oh, they didn't see it that way, but...well, how could anyone not? They drew their dreams. I had drawn myself sitting on a porch thinking. That's some bloody literal-mindedness for ya right there.

I was told once by a teacher at Franklin that I fall naturally into the category of illustrator. I don't know how I feel about that, as I know intellectually it's not a bad thing. Most of the works that have spoken to me have been the work of illustrators whose voices I aspired to. Still, the comment brought up that shame over the grade-school assignment: I wish I was more creative, more imaginative.

When I read books, sometimes I try to keep that illustrator comment in mind. Does anything stand out as something I would draw were I to land that gig? I think I'm taking the wrong approach, as an illustration does not necessarily mean scenery. I could easily do objects, characters...but I always think scenery.

Actually, what I think is turning a book into a movie – literal scenery. I've been seeing them that way since high school...I edit them in my mind, direct the performances, decide which dialog to cut or change, what to do with the staging and cameras, the lighting, the score and sound terrain...I've been reading A Wrinkle in Time one chapter every few days to linger over it. In this book, characters “tesser”, that is they travel via tesseract. When I read Madeleine L'Engle's description of the first leg of the journey, I knew just how to direct that sequence to convey the physical experience of it to my audience. Shame I'm an not a director with the backing and standing to actually do it, that movie will remain locked in my head forever. No one will see it. Not that I've figured out how to convincingly put the major character of Charles Wallace on film...

But that gets to one of my major frustrations. I don't visualize in images, I see in movement. If I could animate with the same full detail and shading with which I do a single drawing, that's what I'd be doing. .Oh, how I would love to make my drawings come alive! I love drawing women, but if I could do a portrait with eyes that blink, or hair that subtly shifts – or wildly dances! A portrait where, if you look closely, you can see her breathing.

Where is the magic of Harry Potter when I need it?

Years ago I was entranced by Nadja Salerno-Sonenberg. She was regarded by her peers (the stuffy world of classical music) with some consternation and dismay, and I've heard some scorn, because she was not content to remain staid by her art. When NS-S played, she played to feel. She stomped and swayed, grimaced and wept, she let the music move her and those raw emotions were naked on her face. For the audience, that's powerful to behold. It's entrancing, exhilarating. She was often likened to a rock star of the orchestra.

I've always wanted to draw her playing, except...no single image does justice her raptures. It would take a whole series to convey just one brief moment of one of her performances. Her face...that's what entrances me most. She's like a woman having sex when she plays. It's astonishingly beautiful to behold her visceral responses set free, fully felt.

That's what I see when you lay out a blank sheet before me. I see a sequence of beauty that I cannot reduce to a still image.

************************

Jesseca has pointed me to a light-table that is easily accessible and large enough not to risk folding a page over its edges. It's my front window. As long as I remove the tape that held it up slowly, and not let the tape eat the paper, it works great! So, I'm taking my commissioned piece back to the point of a completed trace. That's not a real setback, and it gets me a clean drawing I can really be happy with. 

This doesn't the need for doing grids, I still need that process for enlarging, but it does mean the final piece will be free of  lines I couldn't entirely erase.  As much as I like the idea of letting some of the work show,  I'm not at all happy charging money for a drawing that has visible gridlines.

About tracing...I used to think that in order for a piece to be "honest", it had to be entirely by eye. Tracing was a cheat, I  thought. That led to any number of attempts abandined because something didn't line up as I needed it to, some detail out of proportion, etc.  Still, the mistaken prejudice persisted and that added to to the block that was building.   

 That's a  hangup and a misconception others aspiring artists may hold, so I want to say clearly to you: "it's bullshit".   Plenty of artists do this.  For my own particular work, trace lines are just placeholders anyway, to make sure everything is where it should be.  They get erased as I get around to each detail, and replaced with more nuanced shading.  I'm alwasy happiest with a detail when I can convey oit through tonal field with no contour line remaining at all.  But saying that sounds like I;m trying to excuse the use of  contour lines...and that re-enforces the misconception.  Your own art, your style or voice, may well incorporate contour lines.  There's nothing wrong with tracing!  What matter is what you do with it from that point.  

Let me be clear, though, doing the work by eye is indispensible when you're still learning - and you should always be "still learning", if that process ever ends you might as well retire. The point is to train your mind to process the visual information, to learn how to translate what you're seeing to the page.  However, once you reach a certain point it's okay to take shortcuts.  You''ll know where the real work is. I can't map out every thread of Jesseca's hat, but I can make it look like I did.  Place the drawing over the photo and you'll see discrepancies.  What matters is getting the feel of it right, and conveying the essence.

You do what the image demands.  Nothing is a cheat if it gets you there.