I often trot out the aphorism about putting on your own mask first, but lately I feel like no one else is putting on theirs afterwards.
It was loosely meant to link back to the sequence of “aversion” and “reversion” but I was loving the pure geometry so much I didn’t draw myself in the chair.
Nothing too profound to say about this one. After rejecting the message of this idea in the last post, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And what a joy to work on it’s been, learning to push myself to do it in awkward gaps of free time now I’m spending my Wednesdays at the beer course. A life option that I didn’t discard despite what this drawing says.
What does it mean that the negative ideas are the most satisfying? Is it cathartic to get them out on paper? Or are the things I want to say about happiness shallow?
Either way, there are a few small technical things I’d change about this, and I wish I’d thought to set the bonsai on fire, but the icing on the cake was unplanned. The blue ripples were a last minute addition and they really bring the whole thing together.
Maybe that’s the profound thought. Keep rolling the dice, and jump when the numbers go your way.
I started this one a while ago. It had a bit of the new year’s resolution to it, more I’ve got to do something than knowing the direction. Things have changed along the way, mainly seeing a counsellor, which is helping.
If the pieces of the model were choices that could be made, the notebook idea was about the options that have gone. About letting go of them.
Today I went to a campus to explore a beer brewing course, looking towards the future. Tomorrow I go to spread Michael’s ashes in the forest, one last time looking back.
Is it life imitating art, or the reverse? Neither are turning out the way I expect.
Feeling like I had no burrow to retreat to, no place in our house that was mine, I bought a partition. Built myself a wall around my desk to draw in peace.
Emotionally I’ve been doing the same. Telling myself I’m embracing moments of joy, but most of those moments are on my own.
There’s a metaphor here somewhere. That the mess and pain are still on the other side, that those moments of peace and joy are so bright because of the contrast, because of the darkness around them.
I stated drawing this as defiant, but it just feels isolated instead. Art imitating life.
The original idea for this came early last year, back when my biggest worries were getting old and disillusioned. I started drawing it later when I knew better.
It all got too hard, both life and drawing, and it stalled until six months back. It came together surprisingly quickly and I sent a photo of the finished pencils to Michael.
“Where’s the Prince Albert?!” he joked.
I was feeling so positive I even wrote the words to go with the finished drawing…
“It does sometimes happen that I’m happy and I find myself lost for what music to listen to. My bookmarked songs are all anger or despair, or both.
No issue choosing today. I started this drawing late last year, and put it on hold when it wasn’t coming together. I’ve had a new idea brewing the last week or so, with the plan to reuse this drawing board and erase what went before… but it still fit. Also with anvil, sledgehammer and clamp, just with a gut octopus flavour of pain rather than a bone android flavour.
New year, different child, same despair. The happiness never lasts long enough for a drawing, let alone a theme that repeats.
Restart the playlist.”
The next day Michael was dead.
A gentle drawing about grief. I finished it last week, but the hardest part was not being able to text a picture of it to Michael.
I should have posted this then when I’d had two Wednesdays off to myself, for the first time in months, when I was feeling positive about things being back to “normal”.
About the only thing I would change about this one is making the edges of the ground burn fuzzier instead of a hard edge.
I keep forgetting the details.
We were talking the other night about how Karen’s gall bladder emergency was a major trigger last year for Brigitte’s breakdown. But then we remembered the boy who was stalking her, and talking about killing himself, just beforehand.
I’d been so focused on the aftermath that I’d forgotten that when Michael’s parents rang me to say he’d gone missing I had to keep the conversation short, as I was waiting in the car to pick up Melanie. To take her to a hospital appointment about eating disorders, and realising I could only choose one crisis in that moment.
There’s an old drawing about a patch of misfortune, Karen and I laughing that it was the point in a movie plot where you’d say it was too farfetched, that couldn’t all happen to one family.
Each death, each close call with it, used to give me a burst of feeling… live life to the fullest, you never know how long you’ve got, bla bla bla. But it’s never sustainable, both the shadow and the motivation fade.
Now I’m trying to flog myself to a similar feeling… be glad it’s not worse, not being at school is better than self harm. But that’s even harder to sustain.
Mostly I’m just trying to have no expectations, but failing at that too. Mostly I expect it won’t get any better, missing the things that are gone. People, dreams for the future, simple pleasures.
Sometimes I expect it will get worse.
Last Wednesday I couldn’t face the picture I’d been working on. Another one that’s a bit grim, but somehow didn’t seem dark enough. The Wednesday before that I’d sent a progress photo to cousin Michael like I always do when I’m working on something.
I’d thought I was sending texts and photos for him, keeping a flow of human contact to help him through. Drawings, graffiti, motorbikes and most of all beers. Turns out I needed it just as much, contact with a fellow traveller looking at the debris washed up on the shore.
This drawing isn’t about Michael, or even grief, but a gentle distracting concept. Feeling like I was burning my emotional energy on too many fronts.
A tidy little drawing, done in a single sitting, nothing groundbreaking about the technique or imagery. With no one to send a picture to.
This one sat half done on the sidelines for a while. I got stuck on how to do the sky, but waited so long I forgot what I got stuck on! Procrastination not really a winning strategy…