processing

Thinking today of how my means of processing life, my processings of processings, have changed over time. Writing - journaling in notebooks and reMarkables or blogging here - used to be the main way, but now I seem to have moved more over into fiction and cartooning. Attendance Cards as graphic blogging, having replaced the old daily maunderings that gave birth to this space for the last two years now.

In an effort to figure out where I am now – who I am now, creatively and, perhaps, more deeply – I've spent the last few years revisiting all of the art forms of my past: while it wasn't unpleasant to work thorugh Stone's STICK CONTROL, a return to music yielded little more than a reminder of why I left music in the first place (it served its purpose, to get me out of Ohio when I needed it most) and so here I am, even further back, playing with drawing and the memories of stick figures with my grandmothers at their respective dining room tables. Maybe this is where I was always meant to be, having given it up in my late teens, or maybe it's nothing in particular but what it is. Doesn't matter. I'm enjoying myself either way.

Continuing on with the Fictions, but also with one eye and one or more braincells focused on transitioning to more of a balance between prose and cartooning / comics. If I were being honest with myself, I'd tell you that my goal is to shift entirely to cartooning but, alas, I'm too chickenshit to go all the way without a bit of a fallback (and, I can't forget that the medium is the message, right, Marshall?); suppose it’s moderately poetic that it only took me 35 years (and will probably take a couple more) to get to where I wanted to be when I was eight.

Blood sacrifice made but, more importantly, on the drive in, listening to The White Stripes, three ideas: One, that I want to take more of a songwriting approach to writing my weird shit by which I mean a more write it and move approach; I love the feel of things like that sound like a creative explosion – The Beatles's White Album, the oeuvre of Jack White, etc – and less a polished thing (novels, screenplays, etc). Second, I shouldve made a five year plan in the vein of Cal Newport’s SLOW PRODUCTIVITY ten years ago; better late than never, I suppose. And finally, I really fucking hate this switch back to cold because my blood sugar is out of control and it pisses me off which makes it even more out of control. But, ah, matcha: that stuff really is great.