A Blessed Unrest

Another one from J.

Another one that speaks to my soul.

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.  If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium.  It will be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.  You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motive you.  Keep the channel open.  There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.  There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive."

-Martha Graham to Agnes de Mille

Thoughts on Process

flow

loss of awareness and time
loss of self-consciousness
challenging, requiring concentration
requiring high level of skill
immediate feedback
lack of emotion

I produced a drawing, the final drawing of about 6 of 7, that gave me that fluttery, in love feeling.  The feeling that I used to get pretty frequently in art school, when I was drawing a lot.  The drawings preceding this one were apprehensive, careful, too self-aware.  It took making a number of those kinds of drawings to be able to let go and draw how I know how to draw, be how I know how to be, make something beautiful, effortlessly and gracefully and without regard for my own feelings, like I've done a hundred times before.

It takes making something lackluster, then thinking Well, I'll just try something else... and continuing on.  Ho-hum drawings can feel like wasted time and paper, but if that's what it takes to create a masterpiece, then so be it.

...

It's a process of following a thought rolling around in my head.  I try to express the thought, either successfully or unsuccessfully, then once complete I either try to express the same thought again or it has lead to another thought that requires expressing.  This can go on for hours, attempting to make visual a thought that is both image and deep emotion, intertwined inextricably.

The New Happy: Crepes & Collage

This morning I went to breakfast at Chez Machin for my friend Nelle’s birthday.  She’s the prettiest little thing and has the most gorgeous olive skin I’ve ever seen.  We used to work together at a stock brokerage firm downtown, which we’ve since dubbed “Hell.”

Oh, so you and Nelle used to work together?

Yeah, the three of us here used to work in Hell.

You’re not there anymore?

Nah.  We all got out of there . . . For obvious reasons.

They sat our party at the back of the tiny restaurant in an added room with a latticed roof and old metal things nailed to the wood paneled walls.  One of the ladies brought her son, I forgot his name, but he had big blue eyes and ate only the jam off of the crispy toast his mom gave him.  Hmmm, I thought.  He does the thing I always think of doing but fear licking the jam off the toast in public wouldn’t go over very well.

I made this fun card for her.

This is the outside, then the inside

I’ve been doing more collage stuff lately and it’s really exciting me.  I’ve been fascinated with collage for a long time, but couldn’t get myself to “feel” it.  I have recently, and it produces a different kind of Happy than painting or drawing.  There is something raw about it.  A gritty quality, something more edgy and rebellious about it and I like that a lot. So the front of this card is a very basic type collage, but it lights my freakin’ fire.  I’ll call it “hawt.”

I’ve done some other collage things that I’ll post later once I get the scanner back from my brother.  My camera just can’t take good enough photos.  And my hand isn’t steady enough.

Anyway, the French place was so lovely and the coffee was mellow and fantastic and I drank way too much of it.  My other friend brought her baby, a super social relaxed Libra girl, so we were fully entertained waiting for the food to arrive.  I ordered something I couldn’t pronounce but it looked like this

for only a brief moment before I devoured it rabidly.  It was filled with sausage and cheese and other creamy drizzles of Heaven and my friend Sula and I shared a sweet crepe bursting with apricot jam, chocolate, slivered almonds and powdered sugar.  Coincidentally, I had a crepe yesterday from a food cart, a cinnamon sugar butter crepe (no joke, my mouth just filled with saliva thinking about it!  Ha!), that was also excellent.  Only that one came in a piece of triangular paper stapled at the sides, and ended up all over my face and the thighs of my jeans.

I don’t know what it is, but crepes also produce a very specific kind of Happy for me.  Like I feel fancy and beautiful like I’m a fantastic cultured regal sophisticated French girl sitting at a round metal table on a slanted street somewhere in another country, instead of a goofy tall plain-looking uncultured (but has cultured friends) white girl with a foul mouth who never quite feels “cool” enough and is getting slowly and suspiciously more soggy through the mid-section.

Maybe it’s the crepes?

No.  Absolutely not.

If you get a chance to eat at Chez Machin, I do so recommend it.  Also for crepes and French-type yummies, Le Happy is super as well, and it has more of a bar situation than Chez Machin.  Crepes and alcohol?!  Sign me up.  Every day, sign me up.

On Art and the Inherent Preoccupation

Making bundles of balloons out of white price tags
colored with pink and green, inked with wandering chicken feet
and bouquets of flowers and wise words:

Live
Rinse
Repeat

What good advice I gave myself when I drank until six AM
and pieced myself together enough to get to class by eight;

I boiled the eggs and bought the milk and la-dee-dahed the day away
unable to get it off my mind, even tried a nice salty float
but had a hard time --
she's weird about things in her ears --
and my mind kept going back to that stuff;
plagues every train of thought
every avenue of existing comfortably in my skin
and comes back every time
like it did back then when I used to drink a lot
and make things --

What is different?  Have I changed?

I'm still me, pretty sure,
I have the same ailments, same mental emotional retardation
and latent anger I keep thinking is destructive a little
but GOD DAMMIT it feels good sometimes;
I drank some wine and that made it worse or maybe better
depending how you look at it,
maybe better like it used to make it,
but J. Chanandler Bing would say it's fucking awesome
'cause I think she wants to drink the wine with me too;

I feel in love and alive and level and clearer than I've been in a while
even though my dreams are nuts and grossly epic,
I still love when Bear ponders the emotions flitting across my face --
'cause there are thousands, just thousands of them --
because it lights up his and I love
when his face looks like that, so sweet and eager,
and damn that fucking charming beard.