Losing Rhythms, Creating Meaning
For the last few months, I've been banging my head against the wall that is visual art. My drawings are stilted, lifeless marvels that do little to offer any sense of creative expansion on my part. Expansion, in this personal sense, is akin to freedom.
I've realized that there are very few things in my life that mimic what birds must feel when they take flight. I'm really trapped down here in the mud lately, the muck of social media, the miasma of facebook, the cacophony of twitter. I put earbuds in to drown out the angry people on the bus, the lecherous dudes on the street, the mewling pangs of screaming children in close quarters. I bend into myself. I blend in with the trees. I try to disappear.
And then I remember writing. It was that little "write a poem about the ink you blew through a straw onto a white piece of paper and what it looks like" sort of exercise in third grade where it all began. I'd never heard of poetry until that day. I was really nervous about screwing it up, but the teacher's assistant assured me that all you had to do was write about what you feel and make a picture out of it. And my haiku about a desolate wind-swept tree was considered above average for that day, my first day of trying to use words as a picture.
Writing, which has been an abandoned platform of expression of mine for three years since I moved across the country.
I'm rusty at it, if you couldn't tell immediately from reading above. But it sets me free.
***
A dear friend of mine sent me a link to some Iyanla Vanzant videos last night. She is enthralling, a natural performer, a therapist, a ball of fury and wisdom. I was swept away. Why had I missed her all of my life? But of course the friend sent it to me because I needed to hear what she had to say. Ultimately, her biggest truth bomb, number one on her spiritual code of conduct "You must know yourself" was accepted by my resigned heart as gospel. I've been wandering around in a funk for a year now, doing the motions of the job and the household and STRUGGLING with all of my might to do the art in between the rest of the struggle, but it's not enough. I want that fulfillment, I want that meat and potatoes and that GLOW. Where is my glow-up? The answer: it's probably hiding behind where I keep my sense of self.
Writing uncovers myself for me. Writing digs deep into the bones and grizzle and pulls out the haggard truth I've been pushing down into the corners of my life. Writing makes "me" have a story, and I stop being a half-invisible faded shadow.
When you practice visual art or technical drawings non-stop as I have, you lose verbal dexterity. Why? Because you're usually isolated in order to do all of this purely visual work. Without being forced to communicate with others, you lose your words. You only regain them through vigorous reading and by practicing talking to people again. I've been losing my words over the last ten years, but I'm ready to take them back.
But pictures are worth a thousand words, you say. However, if you're someone like me, who enjoys the opportunity to use each and every one of those thousand words, isn't it still a loss to resort to minimalism? I consolidate and enhance and optimize every other corner of my life. Can't I use this one corner to be grandiose, to collect, to store away as much as as many words as possible? My muteness has compromised my sense of self, my ideas are hanging by threads in the attic of my mind ready to be cut down and examined. I have to let them out.
I've realized that there are very few things in my life that mimic what birds must feel when they take flight. I'm really trapped down here in the mud lately, the muck of social media, the miasma of facebook, the cacophony of twitter. I put earbuds in to drown out the angry people on the bus, the lecherous dudes on the street, the mewling pangs of screaming children in close quarters. I bend into myself. I blend in with the trees. I try to disappear.
And then I remember writing. It was that little "write a poem about the ink you blew through a straw onto a white piece of paper and what it looks like" sort of exercise in third grade where it all began. I'd never heard of poetry until that day. I was really nervous about screwing it up, but the teacher's assistant assured me that all you had to do was write about what you feel and make a picture out of it. And my haiku about a desolate wind-swept tree was considered above average for that day, my first day of trying to use words as a picture.
Writing, which has been an abandoned platform of expression of mine for three years since I moved across the country.
I'm rusty at it, if you couldn't tell immediately from reading above. But it sets me free.
***
A dear friend of mine sent me a link to some Iyanla Vanzant videos last night. She is enthralling, a natural performer, a therapist, a ball of fury and wisdom. I was swept away. Why had I missed her all of my life? But of course the friend sent it to me because I needed to hear what she had to say. Ultimately, her biggest truth bomb, number one on her spiritual code of conduct "You must know yourself" was accepted by my resigned heart as gospel. I've been wandering around in a funk for a year now, doing the motions of the job and the household and STRUGGLING with all of my might to do the art in between the rest of the struggle, but it's not enough. I want that fulfillment, I want that meat and potatoes and that GLOW. Where is my glow-up? The answer: it's probably hiding behind where I keep my sense of self.
Writing uncovers myself for me. Writing digs deep into the bones and grizzle and pulls out the haggard truth I've been pushing down into the corners of my life. Writing makes "me" have a story, and I stop being a half-invisible faded shadow.
When you practice visual art or technical drawings non-stop as I have, you lose verbal dexterity. Why? Because you're usually isolated in order to do all of this purely visual work. Without being forced to communicate with others, you lose your words. You only regain them through vigorous reading and by practicing talking to people again. I've been losing my words over the last ten years, but I'm ready to take them back.
But pictures are worth a thousand words, you say. However, if you're someone like me, who enjoys the opportunity to use each and every one of those thousand words, isn't it still a loss to resort to minimalism? I consolidate and enhance and optimize every other corner of my life. Can't I use this one corner to be grandiose, to collect, to store away as much as as many words as possible? My muteness has compromised my sense of self, my ideas are hanging by threads in the attic of my mind ready to be cut down and examined. I have to let them out.
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