Saying something but not really saying anything at all. Have I lost you already? Bear with me.

A guy I went to high school with many years ago traveled through Europe and wrote a travel memoir of sorts. Even though I was still here in Australia I somehow graced its pages, albeit briefly.

John’s one of the most introspective and thoughtful people I know. He can be incredibly insightful. The flip side of this is that he’s always second-guessing himself. He also writes a lot of poetry that I rarely understand the significance of. I think his poems should include explanations, because all the imagery and motifs are usually things that a third party could never be expected to understand. And isn’t that part of why we write – to be understood?

The first time I read this I must concede I felt a little insulted. I thought my poems were so obvious. They felt dangerous to write and dangerous to share. But I have to admit that they were cryptic. Purposefully so. There was a lot boiling just beneath the surface and I needed to let it out, one way or another. So I wrote. (Well, actually, originally I scribbled. But ultimately I wrote.)

It was in effect telling something (to unburden my worried mind) without telling everything. The truth was I didn’t have a lot of friends, and I wasn’t sure who I could trust. And sometimes I was just channeling whatever music I was listening to – Tori Amos, Alanis Morissette, Sophie B. Hawkins. Sometimes certain imagery just seemed apt. Sometimes it was entirely about wordplay and alliteration and just the natural rhythms of syllables rubbing up against each other.

Someone asked me recently what my interest in their artwork was. And in unpacking my relationship to their visual artwork and photography I realised some things about my own visual arts output. And I was surprised at how little I wanted to explain things with words, even though I am first and foremost a writer. And I started to look at my paintings and drawings and saw them only as flat, meaningless snapshots. They don’t seem to have any obvious meaning or narrative. They are people generally, but who are these people? What is their relationship to me? What is my interest in them? It’s scarcely obvious from the images themselves… and I clearly don’t choose to explain it in words.

And perhaps this is only made more complicated by the way I choose to work – from photographs sourced on the Internet. Some of these people are dear friends, some are barely known to me. Sometimes the act of drawing a person is a way of initiating a conversation with them. If the likeness is at all compelling it’s almost a party trick, and it’s a better way of talking to someone on the other side of the world than say asking the time or making small talk about the weather. Sometimes my interest in them is sexual, sometimes it is romantic, sometimes it’s just aesthetic or primarily aesthetic – something about a facial feature or a particular look or stance or a curve or a line. Sometimes it’s about paying tribute to someone who has supported me, encouraged me, inspired me.

And I think increasingly it’s not so much about the artwork itself (my skills are frankly limited) but the effort, the care. The fact that I devote time and energy and attention to an individual for a period of time. And sometimes the output itself seems sorely inadequate, that when I draw a pencil likeness of my dear friend Davey it sort of fails to embody all the emotion I feel welling up inside me as I drag pencil across the page. That this act doesn’t originate from a specific desire to create art for its own sake, or for pencil practice, but from a deep desire to pay tribute to an extraordinary and unlikely friendship, to document a kind of everyday miracle.

But if you know that it is only because I have just told you as much. There’s nothing intrinsically about the drawing that embodies that information, at least nothing I can see.

So perhaps my paintings say nothing. Perhaps, like my high school poetry, they are too obscure.

And perhaps they could say more. Perhaps I could say more. Perhaps I could use all the tools in my arsenal to express the things I secretly wish to express.

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Well one of my new year’s resolutions came to past, I found my copy of The Artist’s Way. (It was hiding in a enclosed compartment on my bookshelf.) I know I talk about this book a lot but it is like a personal oracle to me. I can open to any page at random and find something that seems to help. Yesterday I came to a section on fear.

Julia Cameron writes:

Fear is the true name for what ails the blocked artist. It may be fear of failure or fear of success. Most frequently, it is fear of abandonment. This fear has roots in childhood reality. Most blocked artists tried to become artists against either their parents’ good wishes or their parents’ good judgment. For a youngster this is quite a conflict. To go squarely against your parents’ values means you’d better know what you’re doing. You’d better not just be an artist. You better be a great artist if you’re going to hurt your parents so much….

I want to hesitate for a moment to say that (as far as I am aware) my parents are mostly supportive of my various endeavours. But I have always had this sense that I am going against the grain. And that sense has often made me really driven, hopeful that if I’m brilliant in one area of life perhaps it will make up for my limitations in other parts.

But… it means I need a lot of support and feedback and encouragement. I tend to assume if I don’t get positive feedback that the work is terrible. [And there's clearly a difference between getting negative feedback and getting no feedback.] I constantly feel like the only way I can justify doing anything is to do it perfectly – which is difficult enough for seasoned artists, let alone the humble beginner I am.

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I spent the morning drawing and I really enjoyed it. Then I spent much of the rest of the day debating whether what I’d done was any good or not. To be honest I realise this preoccupation with judging the work produced stops me from actually doing the work.

At some point you have to stop obsessing over things and just make a mark.

In Drawing For The Absolute And Utter Beginner, Claire Watson Garcia writes:

Among adolescent and adult beginners who do start the process of reviving their artistic life, many are focused on the talent quest. Much as they might want to develop their artistic potential, they fear they’re destined to be a person with “no talent” who can “never learn to draw.” But it’s simply not the case that only a handful among us are equipped to pursue meaningful artistic expression. Drawing is a capacity that is developed, not something that springs fully formed one’s hands. The best way to learn how to draw is to forget about the talent quest and even any long-term drawing goal that you might have. Instead, this book asks you to focus only on the step-by-step instruction – a learning process designed to give you the understanding and skills needed to begin drawing with confidence.

The ‘talent quest’ is clearly a killer. I’m not exactly sure how one consciously stops being concerned by it, I guess you just keep showing up and keep trying. Perhaps it’s just a question of checking your expectations at the door. Recently I found myself being really disappointed with a pastel portrait I had produced. I wanted it to be a masterpiece and it wasn’t. In fairness it wasn’t a bad attempt especially if you consider it was the second picture I had done with pastels. Somehow even I overlooked that somewhat salient fact. I guess if I’m being honest there’s a part of me that thinks artistic expression is so subjective that I might never produce compelling work. Sure my five year old niece goes around telling people I’m an artist, but it is often to laughter from adults amused by my efforts. I feel this great pressure to do a sort of ‘cost-benefit’ analysis for this hobby (or whatever it is) to prove to others and myself that I’m not wasting my time.

But there are glimpses of light even in this shadowy tunnel if you stop to notice them. On October 19th 2010 I uploaded a self-portrait sketch to Dailybooth and received this comment from a complete stranger:

thats a really cool drawing.. i really envy you for being able to draw

It was rather surreal reading that because I had thought much the same thing about other people. I certainly hadn’t thought I could draw… erm, even after I produced drawings. Even after I produced drawings I really liked and were proud of (I’m sure that sketch is one of my best to date). I guess one of my central fears is that an artist is someone else, certainly not me, and certainly not something I can become. But surely this is a silly fear. Surely every time I create something I am an artist. Producing an artwork is a process, but so too is becoming an artist or continuing to be an artist. Perhaps the best way to maintain a sense of perspective on your own development is to be constantly looking back and forward, to consider your latest work in the context of your larger body of work and to critique new pieces with a reasonable knowledge and understanding of your current level of experience.

Drawing For The Absolute And Utter Beginner is one of the better drawing books that I’ve encountered, I’d highly recommend it to anyone.

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I like to keep this blog as upbeat and positive as is possible but the truth is it isn’t always fun and games when it comes to art or life more generally. Somehow actually creating art gave way to not creating art and feeling very irritable and anxious. I’m sure I quote Julia Cameron too often on this blog, but since I couldn’t have said it any better myself…

In The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes:

Making a piece of art may feel a lot like telling a family secret. Secret telling, by its very nature, involves shame and fear. It asks the question “What will they think of me once they know this?” This is a frightening question, particularly if we have ever been made to feel ashamed for our curiosities and explorations – social, sexual, spiritual.

My art practice involves too many secrets. Things I don’t want to share with anyone, things I don’t even want to admit to myself. Even bringing myself to admit that I wanted to paint in the first instance took over a year. It’s one of the greatest ironies of my existence that while anyone who knows my name can throw it into a search engine and see everything I create and share online I am incredibly guarded with people I know in (quote-unquote) ‘real life.’

There have been breakdowns and breakthroughs this weekend though. I went for a walk through the escarpment, listening to Tori Amos. Listening to the Dakota Version of Hey Jupiter and really reflecting upon what that song meant gave me a way of accessing my own unarticulated sorrow. When I returned from my walk I wrote a poem, my first poem in probably seven years. I also, somewhat mysteriously, ‘found’ some lyrics to a song I wrote back in 2000. It seemed I was able to express things that I hadn’t been able to before. But looking back at them, realising they were fundamentally what I wanted and needed to say, I wasn’t sure I was yet prepared to let those sentiments see the light of day. It’s this underlying tension in so much of what I do. I see it in my painting too – in the subjects I choose to paint, the way in which I choose to paint them – sometimes I’m sure they reveal more than I intend them to.

It’s a terrible thing to spend so much time talking about cultivating a self to ‘express’ and then being fearful when you do. But in a lot of ways I have to exist in a world that doesn’t appreciate most of what I do, that doesn’t understand who I am, that is keen to criticise my rather fragile ego. I’m not sure I want to feel so exposed and vulnerable.

Amusingly the poem I wrote this weekend was about not feeling brave enough to write a poem. When I realised this was indeed what I had done, I laughed and felt strangely accomplished. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

[Mary made the observation that it had been some weeks since I last posted a video here. I do have one which I will post this week though I can't guarantee how regularly they will appear after that. There is some stuff (cryptic enough?) happening to this website behind the scenes that will ultimately make the site more enjoyable to the people who visit it but in the meanwhile I have to play catch up and work on some special secret projects. Watch this space!]

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The last week was a bit of a bust for me. Besides a couple of articles for Somebody Think Of The Children, I didn’t really write at all. Towards the end of the week even the morning pages became difficult. I would get to the end of the first of the three pages and I couldn’t bare to look at them any longer. Somehow I knew if I really put my inner thoughts on the page a whole lot of procrastination and inaction and doubt and shame would present itself. I mean it took me this long to decide I was a writer; can I really be a writer if I am not writing?

Eventually I did manage to push through the morning pages and the thing I came to realise was I am scared. I am scared that I can’t pull off my current project. I am scared that trying and falling flat on my face would somehow validate all my creative detractors from over the years. But, actually, on closer consideration I come to realise that my creative champions throughout my lifetime greatly outnumber my creative detractors – so why do they occupy so much mental real estate?

I’m trying to figure out some sort of workflow. It’s much more difficult than I anticipated. On the one hand if I spend all my time on Twitter, I don’t get much writing done. But if I avoid it entirely my sense of community is diminished, I feel removed from the world, I can’t bounce ideas off of people or offer and accept support. We’ve always had this sense that many creative pursuits, but particularly writing, were isolated solitary activities. And in some ways, they can be. But the Internet has been instrumental in connecting people with similar passions and building communities around those passions. I want to share and learn, but I also feel vulnerable. I have moments when I feel great doubt and share this, secretly hoping for someone to step in and say, “Don’t be silly. You are very talented” or something similar. Twitter is not the place for those moments. People are just as likely to further add to such doubts or use them as the basis of ongoing jokes.

I guess it is a question of balance, as with all things in life. I keep trying to convince myself that the effort will win out. In the meanwhile I hope working with the morning pages and The Artist’s Way exercises will help silence the creative jabs of the past.

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John A. Keel, best known for penning The Mothman Prophecies, is undoubtedly my favourite author. In his first book Jadoo he spent time in the Middle East and the Orient, in search of people with odd talents. He covered all manner of tricks and oddities, from snake charmers to devil worshippers and – perhaps most disturbingly – individuals who were mummifying bodies to sell to collectors for trophies and medicine. Most of his books revolve around paranormal themes and ideas, and up until I read The Mothman Prophecies I kind of thought the whole genre was the domain of wild eyed crackpots. I was impressed by the way he presented information. I was impressed by the genuine sympathy he expressed for people. But, more than anything, I was impressed by his voice. It just made a lot of sense to me.

In Jadoo he writes:

There were no jobs to be had in Baghdad; no way to make a dinar (£1). My typewriter collected dust in my hotel room. A few times I shoved a piece of paper into it, but a blank sheet of paper is a frightening, disheartening thing to a would-be writer. I always slapped the cover shut with the paper still blank.

While the technology has changed, the ‘frightening, disheartening’ prospect has not.

I’ve barely brought pen to paper or fingers to keys in relation to my current project Heartbroken and Grieving. Admittedly I was ill for a while, and then I had this sudden need to rearrange everything in the house, but the progress (or lack thereof) is still disappointing. But the thing that really bothers me is the sense of unadulterated terror that enters my mind when I even think about sitting at the new desk in the corner of the room with a couple of blank pages and a pen.

I guess I’m a control freak, and I have really only the vaguest sense of what I am attempting to build here. I think I understand the catalyst for this project, I understand my motivations for doing it but I don’t really understand what form it will take. I just want to delve into the subject matter and explore it and see where I end up. I find myself writing paragraphs and a little voice in the back of my head goes, “I want to write poetry. Let’s write some poetry.” And I guess the takeaway is that it’s better to write something than nothing. The fear is paralysing and the only way around it is to go through it.

But while the blank page is currently my trial, I am also hoping it will be my saviour.

Because if I pause to consider my own burgeoning creativity in high school it had its genesis on blank pages. The library was my retreat and I was filled with all this emotional ‘stuff’. I used to scribble on pages in exercise books really just as a way of channeling the tension of my teenage years. But after a while those scribbles became words, first lyrics to songs I liked and ultimately my own words. I found myself expressing opinions and understandings I didn’t even know I possessed.

I want magic to happen once again. I guess, as Elizabeth Gilbert noted, for us as creative people our responsibility is to show up at the page or canvas or computer.

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