I had this whole post lined up for today, glamor shots of various projects on my desk at the moment, each swirling with color and intent. They’re not the for-fun pages I’ve created for the past five years, those explorations in the studio that lead me to where I am now; instead, each is being created for a specific purpose, a plan in place up in the air somewhere that I’m clinging to like a child tethered to a kite in a thunderstorm.
And saying all this, I’ve been in incredibly high spirits lately.
But yes, intent. I feel as though I have something to say. Instead of letting emotion spill onto the page and hoping others can pick it up, I have thoughts and words and meanings and lessons I want to convey, except now I’m having some sort of speech problem, much like when I try, after being out of college for five years, to construct a sentence in Japanese.
すみませんわたしはまいご…
Befitting, as I received a letter today that says, on a collage:
Dear Samie,
Your art is awesome and so are you!
Love, Erica
A beautiful piece of art, with a letter attached, and I had tears in my eyes as I read it. Who would have thought I’d ever receive anything like this 5 years ago when I began teaching myself to draw?
I want to tell stories. I always have. Ever since I was ten years old and wrote the saga of a girl on the Oregon Trail for class, I’ve been addicted to telling stories. Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I have a perchance for little fan stories (and if not, there’s nothing to see here, move along *innocent whistle*). And lately, each painting I work on tells me a story about myself, and seems to be transforming me, a bit at a time, into something new.
Shiny, but worn on the edges.
A couple weeks ago, I was lamenting about how I didn’t have much money. Which is true, and a naturally reoccurring pity-fest in my life, except this time, I realized what the problem was.
Me.
I’d become my own roadblock. I couldn’t blame the world or the internet or anything but myself. I’d been doing things without really producing anything, creating without making a single thing. And my stories were getting angry, being all bottled up inside, words craving to get out. So I began writing. I’d write in the morning or late at night. I wrote, a few days ago, well past midnight, having shot up out of bed with words floating across my sight.
And these pages. These paintings and journal pages, they’re beginning to take on the same effect. I’ll work late at night or early or instead of watching favorite shows on TV (which is almost unheard of). They’re telling me stories and I have no control over what the endings are. They simply are.
This one, though, has me befuddled. I feel not disappointed in it, but that, after what’s been said about the two before it, that I’m the disappointing one. Except I see this story in there, this beauty no one may ever see because they weren’t there. And I wish my grammar was better or something, because now I have another canvas, another journal and bits of me, and I’m getting lost in translation.
Or am I?
Wild, random thoughts can be dangerous. I think the perfect remedy for this is to go create more pages for my new class and hope I can string words together better on the page. Because I have all this love and desire to share and help others unlock, and if I can’t, if I’m not saying it right, well, wouldn’t that just suck?
I'm not down, just reflective. Sitting on the edge of a hill, not knowing what's past the next one, just that it's gonna rock.