THE VOID (A USER'S GUIDE)
If you've followed my work or internet brain for any period of time at all, you've no doubt learned that I call that hellish interregnum between the conclusion of a project and the start of another The Void (and yes, The The, as in The Morkie, is capitalized); this, The Void, being where I happen to be at the moment. So, thanks to a chat with the inimitable Kay Sohini (follow her work with abandon; it's brilliant) about our respective navigations of The Void, I found a way to cook a creature I scribbled into this little zine about what, exactly, The Void is. You can read it here (or by clicking through the cover above); if you'd like a physical copy, hit me up.
Orson Welles on ignorance
This 1960 interview, particularly when he talks about how his ignorance of film let him make CITIZEN KANE, was my main reason for giving up writing (which I knew enough about to make me timid) for metalwork (of which I knew nothing). A perpetual inspiration.
foundations
Some have been with me for decades, others for far less, but these are the books that have shaped my creative thinking over however long it’s been now that I’ve been doing whatever this is that I've been doing.
fuck it
After 30+ years in some form of creative practice, the only lesson I’ve learned worth passing on is that the magic words are “fuck it” – as in “fuck it, I’m going to The Shed and freeze and fiddle with things,” or “fuck it, I have no clue what I’m doing so (so - not but!) I’m going to do it anyhow because that’s the only way to learn”: this magical refrain being what drew me out of the past few days’ creative stupor (nice to see that posting here again with regularity and verbosity wasn’t solely because of the stupor) to the point that maybe, just maybe I have the start of something worth pursuing that makes use of all those flat metal rods that I cut for another project before deciding to go in a different direction (fuck it), flat metal rods which have, for the last week, been sitting on the workbench with the nine-inch-ish flat metal rod equivalent of a middle finger pointing in my general direction and sneering.
arctic processing
Arctic blast continues its arctic blasting amidst mountains of shoveled snow and my patience for being creatively empty (brought mostly by it being too fucking cold in The Shed to think how I like to think – staring at random scraps of metal (or paper, or words) without a single notion of what I’m going to make until a semblance of potential comes to mind – for more than two minutes at a time) is at a low ebb. While it’s nice that I can occupy myself with writing things for this space and making my way through Stone and Chester drum exercises, I’d much rather be out there making shit without plans and batches and/oh hell I’m just being a bitchy old grump this morning.
While Ann Lamott would tell us that being creatively empty is a chance to fill up again, how, exactly, to refill that empty has been and continues to be the question: the ways that used to work no longer work. Perhaps these postings are part of that refilling?
success (? / . / !)
Thanks to a therapy / rubberducking session with Claude the AI (seriously, he works great for that: I appreciate analytical approaches to mental issues, especially when they manage to work in Nick Cave), I've realized that I have no clue of what success looks like to me: I've spent my life living up to my perception of others' expectations and constantly failing. And now that they're all dead (some thankfully, others crushingly) and I'm doing whatever it is that I do, I'm still living up to those perceived expectations. Suppose, then, that my current job is to figure out what success looks like to me. Probably a lot like what I'm doing now but without the soul-sucking striving for the approval of people who don't exist.
I've been in one creative field or another for the last 30+ years and the one constant I know of is that the only way to not feel like a hack is to make something, anything, and lose yourself to the process.
spacepoint
Been having a hell of a time getting myself into writing mode, hence the return of these daily things (finally settled on midday), "What's the point?" being the operative thought – though I have a feeling that's more the result of an all-encompassing emotional exhaustion sourced to the last 15 years. Perhaps it's that I use/d writing as a way to emotionally (and rationally, sometimes) process things and the only rational and emotional answer is I just can't anymore. But here I am anyhow, because what else am I going to do? Current quandary: how do I make my writing side as appealing as the workshop side of The Shed in a way that makes "What's the point?" moot? Notions simmer.
tactile
Conversation with a good friend the other week made me realize what's going on with my move towards metalwork: I'm redisovering my love for and need of tactile creation. Suppose this love makes sense, given that my entrance into the arts was playing drums (hit stuff and that makes cool sounds) and that my downfall(s) began when I shifted more into the internal, less tactile arts (music composition, especially, though writing can't be absolved of its complicity in my descent into creative schizophrenia). Filmmaking was far more tactile than writing – though since I've also started drawing and cartooning, I'm bringing more tactile sensation to my storytelling (should it survive). And I can't forget that I've long considered accepting the Executive Director position at the NPO to be the biggest mistake of my career: I missed getting my hands dirty too much. Alas, live and learn. Eventually.