Mixy's Art Blog

on story telling

My last post, the lovely comments it received, and the reaction to the project I described has got me thinking much more about a few things.

Y’know, little inconsequential things – The nature of reality, the fabric of time….

I’m not even sure if I’m being facetious here (so ingrained in my character as that is, but also cos these things fall into part of the much bigger uncertainty). I mean to say – I’m content enough to use and benefit from so many things the mechanics of which are so beyond me as to be inconsequential – just the reality/time thing particularly fascinate me.

Cos it’s quite possible – quite popular – to progress through a life and not give such matters a moment’s thought.

Just daily survival can occupy so much energy, and when that isn’t so taxing we’re almost all blessed with more external distractions than we could possibly exhaust in just one lifetime. Failing that, there are usually other folks willing to make demands on our attention.

And then it’s time for sleep again.

All of which could suggest to spend time on such thinkings is a luxury, a silly trifling frippery, even a waste of ‘time’.

It’s a rare and peculiarly privileged spot in history and geography where I’ve appeared in this world, whereby simple survival has (so far, so good) been so simple, granting me enough resources for interest in any of these esoteric and abstruse mind wanderings.

I can mooch around the internet extensively, listen to opinion and mull over whether or not it makes sense to me; Twenty-first century living is an absolute breeze in comparison to just a few generations ago.

I’m living in utter luxury compared to many millions around the world right now, and I thank the universe for such blessings.

I got to think about the truth in the comment “…it takes time to get to that point of being able to write your story – and our story always changes” this got me thinking as our story develops it can be reviewed, re-examined, reinterpreted – even re-written.

Conventional wisdom previously led me to understand that as soon as something is done it becomes fixed; concreted in a newly formed part of ‘the past’. But we all know that recall is swayed by emotion, it’s fogged by time, influenced by perspective, mood, the passing of more ‘time’. Differently skewed versions of history abound, inaccuracy of memory twist and turn.

And when it comes to our own personal stories, we are our only witness – nobody else was living those days, in the company of so-and-so, in all those same places, seen from just that one point of view, encountering such-a-thing provoking that exact reaction, in that exact same way.

We’re each a compilation of uniquely assorted traits, experiences and influences. Connected and divided by the overlaps, in search of the universal, pondering the unquantifiable.

In the words of Bashar:

“…you create the past from the present, and not the other way around; the present is the only experiential time in which you ever exist. Any time you look at yourselves, it is always now; and it always will be now. It may be a different manifestation of now, but it will always be now. Therefore, you are creating from now any idea of the so-called past; you are creating from now any idea of the so-called future. It can be anything you desire it to be.

When you change the you you are now, you will then focus on the particular ideas of the past that will represent the you you are being now. Because the so-called idea of the past has many probable ways of manifesting, just as many as there are of the future. So whatever idea you are being now will determine the way you relate, and what it is you perceive to be real about your past-and about your future.” – Bashar

So as I shared last time, I took the plunge recently and took a long cool look at the years that I’ve clocked up, their contents and the influence of some of the leading characters in ‘my story’.

The reason I hadn’t done this before were multi-fold.

There was a good measure of ‘leave it behind you, it’s gone now’ with a sense that digging over ‘unchangeable truths’ could cause upset, upheaval, insoluble regret. Another voice in my head was busy preaching that such an exercise was just way too self-indulgent. So between the ‘nobody’s interested’ and the ‘hey don’t mess with it’, my story (to date) remained in a complicated tangle of misunderstood, mismanaged memory.

Turned out, the actual process of unraveling through writing was cathartic. The act of sharing was a bravery (although shared within a safe circle, it’s still raw soul offered up on a plate to be dissected by further opinion and judgment), and the results were met with warmth and kindness.

From other side of that metaphorical mountain my view has changed. I’ve dropped some degree of old habitual grouch. My light shines on.

It’s all a mirror…. 41/52

The year winds on, the weeks flip by, the book of weeks fills up.

I’m finding out stuff I didn’t even know was there.

You remember back to January? I set my word for the year, after much deliberation, to Focus.

It took some fathoming, and even then I wasn’t positive I’d picked the right word… or the right word had picked me.

But as I let it settle we found our connection with each other. And time and again I’ve been surprised at what has become my focus of attention.

As the year bumps along my focus shifts.

More than a few times I’ve felt myself careering down a route I didn’t plan.

(with practice this gets easier: stop trying to steer at high speed – see where you land up – it’s all part of the wild ride of life)

Racing headlong toward something I’ve avoided in the past.
For fear. For fear of…? Fear of what’s behind it all?

This sentence appeared in my world – loud and timely enough for it to become what this page is based around. Loud, Bold Lettering – which some weeks gets covered up – not this week. The organising committee in my mind had other plans, and only allowed the doodles to skirt the edges. To enhance not to obliterate. Ok….I thought….Ok. You trying to tell me something here?

Back in the real world, this particular week the final project was almost due part of an online course I’ve been taking. I was in a state of suspended procrastinatory blur: the deadline was 5 days off when I emailed the course leader to confess I was beaten, I couldn’t pull it together in time. I had to quit.

This left me with just two problems.

Problem #1 – quitting wasn’t followed by the enormous wave of relief I’d expected. Instead a slightly sorrowful shame that nearly a year’s worth of work hadn’t reached it’s completion, it had just damply fizzled out.

Problem #2 – no amount of saying ‘I just don’t know what to do’ would quieten these big bold words I was mindlessly doodling around in this weeks page. I did know what to do, I also knew I didn’t want to do it. But I did: It needed doing. It was going to be difficult, emotional, raw. I was a bit scared.

Ok. I’ll do it. This idea had been drifting around in the margins for some months now. Trying to creep into focus I nudged it away. Repeatedly. But ideas can be stubborn and this one finally flew out before I could stop it, unraveling in front of me.

I had 3 days to go and I faced my demons, I did what I know needed doing: I sat and wrote my story.

My story is my art and my art is my story. As is this book, I’m the sum of my days. Until I face up and focus for real I won’t ever see who I am behind the mirrors.

As time settles the rawness in my mind, I’ll bring bits of it over here to show you. X

with tiny sketchy folk (40/52)

There’s likely something telling about the inclusion of these tiny sketchy folks in this week

(this character looks like he’s sustained a cartoon style head injury – a dropped anvil or grand piano I expect)

as usual I can’t offer any explanation, this is just what falls out of my unconscious mind via my pen holding hand.

In her TED talk, Elizabeth Gilbert recalls how the poet Ruth Stone described her creative process:

“…she told me that when she was growing up in rural Virginia,she would be out working in the fields, and she said she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. And she said it was like a thunderous train of air. And it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And she felt it coming, because it would shake the earth under her feet. She knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, “run like hell.” And she would run like hell to the house and she would be getting chased by this poem, and the whole deal was that she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times she wouldn’t be fast enough, so she’d be running and running, and she wouldn’t get to the house and the poem would barrel through her and she would miss it and she said it would continue on across the landscape, looking, as she put it “for another poet.””

She talks at length about how ideas are entities that search out a person through which to be made manifest in her book Big Magic.

I love this for so many reasons…

These are concepts that fit my ideologies

Removing the responsibility of being the creator: we are just the catcher.
It’s more fun.

Way more fun

It was this thinking that encouraged these tiny sketch folks out through my pens this week.
To be witnessed by this week’s ubiquitous big eye

Time Hole (39/52)

I fell down another hole in time but it’s All OK Now.

I jumped. I was down there from some time, lurking
(it happens from time to time. Do you do this too?)

I’ve learned to TRUST I’ll fumble my way out eventually.
I follow my instincts and they lead me back to where I left off.

It’s a case of just ALLOWing. Letting go.
(Which reminds me – I’ve been reading this.)

There’s a lot about perspective…
Seeing the same thing from a different angle, a different approach.

What matters most…

Since I started this project back in January,
every week has entailed some sort of variation on the same theme:

There’s been doodles and scribble, lists and lyrics,
Notes to me-in-the-future, that’s to say,
to me-in-the-now from a-previous-me-in-the-past

There’s been a whole lot of mess and color.

(In that sense, no different from any other of my years, I guess)

This is the first time I’ve been disciplined to do the
same/similar thing consistently every week, for
39 consecutive weeks at this point, and still going strong

I’m just behind on showing you, so there will be a
flurry of catching up over the next short little while.

So this was that week then, the next week then will
follow in a blink of a thing. Hold onto your hats.

38 in 52

I’ll let the pictures tell the story for this week.

Sanctuary in Now 37/52

It’s been all this time since I posted. Cos I’ve been away.
But I’ve kept the book of weekly pages running, and so here we are with the page from the week before last.

Somewhere nice? Nah, it wasn’t that sort of away.

I didn’t leave the place, I just left the usual. I left the ordinary responsibilities of being me.
Time away to recombobulate.

I’ve been hiding out here in a sanctuary of colors.
Lost in time and lost in patterns.

And between you and me, I still haven’t gone back.
And between you and me, I’m not sure if I will.

Thing is, I’m just realising now as I explain my days to you, I’m making sense of it as I go along.
The reason I find so much warm comfort in these simple scribbles, blocks and lumps of colour…

As a kid I loved – more than almost anything – the simple pleasure of colouring in. It was as a meditative process then as it is now.

The only time I’ve had an out of body experience was sitting cross legged on my bed, aged about 9 or so, colouring in. I remember it like it was yesterday. My train of thoughts had wandered away from me and as I tried to back-track a mantra began to form in my head “what was it I was just thinking about – what was it I was just thinking about – what was it….’ then WHOOOSH I was somewhere up above looking down at this little girl sitting cross legged on my bed, colouring in.

In the moment I recognised that as me and had time to think Wow! and then How do I get back down? I was back.

I wanted to do it again. And I didn’t. But I did. Not for the first time I was utterly freaked.

So the part of my consciousness that heard How do I get back down? and set me back in my body, prevented me from trying (properly) again.

I carried on colouring.

So I’ve rediscovered this simple joy again as I’ve found myself still wanting to escape the real world in the way I did then as a little girl. I think the magic of getting lost in these colours is amplified by the knowledge that if I wanted to I could probably re-conjure that state again.

I’m soothed by the process, but I’m not looking to disappear now. I spent way to much life in escapism, I inherited traits and tricks that I see now didn’t serve me so well. I’m unpicking that past one bit at a time. Facing up to some ghosts.

Circumstances have set themselves out in front of me in a way I can’t ignore any more. This time I’m stepping up instead.

Fueled by Doubt 36/52

I look at them in their lives and their worlds, they do their things and they live their days.

I can do that. Look – watch me – I’m doing my things and living my days.

And then I turn sideways, and vanish.

Where did I go? All the fear folded in on me.

It all looked too big, I left. It’s all too familiar, so I run. .I hide from being me.

How am I not like the other people? Reasons crumple under their own weight and all the ideas dissolve into dust

Who thought the simple act of being me would become such a challenge, such a confusion, so fueled by doubt.

When this happens a lot I wonder if I should stop pretending.

Pretending the other people are real, or pretending I am.

I wonder at these words and fragments, at what will come next.

Most people will understand,

But most people aren’t real. Most people don’t exist.

Parallelity 35/52

Have you used these pens? Pilot Parallel Pens. I love them.
They aren’t only beautiful to write and draw with, but there’s magic you can do if you have more than one and different colored ink. I got these years ago and they’d drifted to the back of my repertoire for a long while. It was a strong sense of no idea what to do that made me remember them again this week.

I’m not a calligrapher in the real sense, but I love to play.
Have you seen Denise Lach’s art? This is my kind of calligr-drawing-joy

…………….And so the doodling commenced.

If there was one overriding theme of this week it was sleep. I’ve never been so tired. The culmination of some health stuff, some worry-based stuff, and some ongoing insomnia-based stuff all collided and my body made the unilateral decision that the only thing it was going to properly do was sleep.

Long heavy nights of it and small naps of it in the intervening day times when circumstance permitted. The bits of the week that weren’t spent sleeping were spent in blinky incoherence.

(tbh, this week hasn’t been so different.)

So much time in sleep means more crossover than usual between the waking and the dreaming realities.

Episodes of dream can manifest the mundane, and the awake-world does something crazy and surreal.

And the two places overlap and get muddled.

It’s a big jambled thing, and although there wasn’t an intent, this illustrates it pretty much as it was.

Worlds in Parallel.

Imaginary Friends

I’ve got a bunch of stuff like this….

No I mean, really…. I have acres.

Clothing that’s not quite wearable any more, fabric scraps and snippets, material I’ve dyed, painted, embroidered, cut up and sewn up and all the projects and garments that haven’t quite made it, that haven’t quite played out, but they’re still lingering. Then there’s the trimmings and buttons and beads, the threads, the wools, the fibres….

Lingering, for the longest time.

For what?

Like limbo.

I just needed the nudge to know what for.

And the nudge happened recently! I’ll tell you more soon, but there’s something enormous in the making: a turning point in my days, a purpose I couldn’t see until so suddenly it showed up to me. It keeps showing up in my dreams, and I’m waking up in a full on spin of ideas.

And they are manifesting as these bizarre little creatures.

evolution in paint chaos 34/52

Week 34 into the year, and this page was a struggle. Like they always do, it started out with scraps of I don’t know what.

Some scrubby paint, some leftover unwanted collage snips. Beginning at the familiar stage of: ‘Meh… but this will get buried. It will come good. See what happens’

Color usually helps…

Hmmm… more collage? … oil pastels?

What? What’s happening? It’s getting more chaotic.
White a load of this out, more collage, regroup:

The enthusiasm from that chirpy thumbs up is misplaced, and it’s psyching me out. It has to go. Smothering with color: that’s the way forward. Just follow the shapes

Looking back this would have been an adequate stopping point, but I remember thinking It just needs turquoise: that will sort it.
And then a lot of layers later…

It went on and on.

It went on and on a bit like this:

Even now I’ve declared it done I don’t love it. This is the first one that seems to have beaten me. I guess being beaten at a rate of 1 in 34 – I’m cool with that. Another new week begins tomorrow. Time for a change of strategy.