Why you keep doing something even though it threatens to drive you mad...

Last night was like most, its late enough to start drawing, so I sit down and begin the task of trying to make something that isnt too wretched to live. But alas it was looking like one of THOSE nights where everything I touch turns to watery shit. See below...

I couldn't really find my way in to THE ZONE, and I wasn't really interested in arguing my way in. I have resigned myself to the fact that sometimes you have to make a few ugly ones before you get something thats worthwhile. The hardest part is pressing through the crushing defeat to keep working. But on this particular night everything I made was making me feel lonley and washed up, so as a final fuck you to the whole affair, I grabbed a canvas (something I rarely do) and with a camel light dangling from my lips, I half heartedly sketched a figure. I tend to shy away from painting, as I always thought it unwieldy. I could never figure out the proper use of color, everything always seemed to turn in to a primary color nightmare. So I stuck to my strengths, drawing with pen and ink. But if Im in the mood to fuck things up good and proper, and I was, paint is the order of the day. BUT THEN...I dont know what happend! It was good, and VERY GOOD!! Im not sure if having my expectations in the toilet freed my from my usually limited range, but I then proceeded to make one of the best paintings of my whole life. It was like it was painting itself through my hand, and mostly I am watching kind of bemused and amazed. It has a little more subtlety and nuance than I could formerly acheive with paint. Not that its a master piece by any stretch...more of a personal best. I have no idea how I did it or if I could ever repeat last nights magic, but its nights like that that keep you chasing the dragon.

Into the evenings

I have resumed my previously forgotten schedual of staying up into the early morning hours and working on things. Its a good time for the creative process, when everyone else is sleeping. I know I am least likely to be caught in the act, which is something I hate. I like to begin just as the footsteps of my roommates over head die down, and end when the morning birds start their pre dawn routine. There is a freedom to this time, I know nothing else wants for my attention. The downside is I then sleep for most of the day...I like to think I am sleeping through the boring parts of life. But its the habit that feels good, even when the work is shit. Its good to have a steady flow after months of nothingness. Thats why I always refer to drawing (insert any long suffering creative endeavour) as "the lover that never leaves." I can neglect it, fight against it, promise to never do it again. But when I submit, it is always there just as I left it and ready to embrace me again.

Back from the almost dead

I haven't made a single motion to update this shit since I got home from Europe. It didnt really seem right. Traveling was the whole raison de etre...and I felt like after that what could I possibly have left to say? Europe has become one of those major lines of demarcation in my life, along with the death of my mother and sundry ex boyfriends. Everything is figured into a before or after kind of time line. So basically the plane landed in LA, I balled my eyes out to be home in California...and then I flatlined. Its hard to be skipping from lecture to cafe to bar to bed ad nauseum in a half dozen amazing cities, and then come home and go back to normal life. I mean, I was warned the come down would be tough but jesus christ. I lost all intrest in drawing, writing, all the things I THOUGHT gave my life meaning. All I could do was sit on the couch and knit and try and make sense of what the fuck just happend to me, question every single thing I had been doing with my life pre-Europe. I havent even come close to figuring any of it out but I have shaken off enough of my slump to start drawing again...if only after a few warm up glasses of wine and the aide of some mopey bullshit on my headphones. I made a big commitment and bought myself a few new pens, sharp nibs, and a fresh pot of ink. Not sure to what avail. But its something. Its funny, when I quiet down and get as serious as Im going to about drawing, I start to remember things. Little things I forgot about, or thought too inconsequential to put somewhere more easily accesable. Like tonight I remembered that every night in the Czech Republic (deep in the mid trip depression) I would stand in this courtyard outside the apartments and smoke one final cigarette before going in for the night. I would be for just that brief time, totally alone and quiet. And it felt good to be that far away from home and familiarity, but still find comfort in some small ritual. I miss that feeling. I like when they come back like that, to let me know its not all gone. Everything that happend that whole four months is stuffed in this brain somewhere and it will float back to me at will. Probably when I need it most.