small attempts at wisdom

[helenic]

Making plans for the summer. This year I shall not fall into that same trap of money-earning, constantly questioned about my bank balance by my parents, of forty-hour weeks and expensive weekends to try to make up for them. I will get a small, relaxed, low-earning job, in a pub or bar perhaps for two or three nights a week, and the rest of the time - I shall paint.

The thing is that every time I go to one of those little craft fair things on Saturday afternoons I see paintings, below the standard I could achieve, selling for good amounts of money. I get momentarily frustrated at my own incapacity to produce anything, and promptly forget about it. Occasionally I do a sketch or buy a pre-stretched canvas on special offer, but not once have I got around to using one. Every term I doggedly take with me my easel, primed paper, palette knife, box of paints, but they are never used. The truth is that I genuinely don't have time. During term my free time comes in bits and pieces - the sort of lengths appropriate for a phonecall or a quick game of Sonic the Hedgehog or answering emails. Usually I am too tired, inbetween attempts at work, to undertake a major creative endeavour - and even if I wasn't, I would never have an uninterrupted space of free time long enough to get really into anything. Mostly I procrastinate, telling myself I will start work "soon" - the internet is particularly good for this - but feeling too guilty about the work I am supposed to be doing to begin a definite, non-work-related project.

It seems sensible, therefore, to just give up on trying to do any art during term. Until my Part I exams are over I will need to do far more work than I ever have anyway. But over the summer, what is to stop me producing thirty or so paintings of reasonable quality and hiring myself a table at one of these fairs? They would not have to be great masterpieces, or even particularly imaginative - landscapes of Cambridge, for example, would probably sell as long as they were beautiful. My painting would improve, I would feel rather more creatively fulfilled, I might make a bit of money (you never know) and I would be so much more relaxed than last summer as to be beyond comparison. Plans and plans. I'm so desperately unmotivated I need all the short-term goals I can get.

Replying to neglected comments last night, I wrote something which, if the_waves will forgive me, I want to repeat here, because even if it's terribly written it represents a sense something I want to hold onto, of how to go on:

Actually I don't know what the answer is except to keep on getting up in the morning in the hope that you'll eventually get used to things not making sense until suddenly, you find that they do. Stopping seeing life as a problem to be solved (preferably immediately, via self-analysis and sudden enlightenment) but as a mystery to be lived. Harder than it sounds and involves a frightening amount of acceptance.

I'm so scared of becoming complacent - or more truthfully, perhaps, of becoming commonplace - that it's simpler to challenge everything. Revolution! Change the world! Don't believe anything they tell you, do your own thinking! And so forth until I miss out on the small acts of acceptance which make it possible to go on. Sometimes, you really just can't do anything about it. I'm not very good at sighing and putting up with it. I vent and fume and write long dialectic LJ entries as if being self-aware and intellectual about things will stop it hurting so much.

Love is one of those few things that makes me wish I was old already - old and patient and able finally to just accept some things and with a small amount, perhaps, of wisdom. I'm so young and I can see my own naiveté and impetuousness most of the time and it just frustrates me. Half of me thinks I should enjoy it while it's excusable and the other half wants it all just to be over already, and for sex to stop mattering so much and the most important things to be companionship and respect and appreciation and understanding and small acts of kindness. (And it's naive and impetuous to want to skip out on life and be at that stage already, isn't it? Argh! I can't win, I don't have wisdom no matter how hard I try...)

And I don't know. Patience is a difficult thing to learn, but realising why you need to has to be a positive step. Just keep holding firmly onto the tangible things and struggling towards tranquillity. Never mind all this nonsense about a "sense of self" - sometimes, it's just getting on with things that's the important thing, in the hope that the rest will slowly begin to make sense.

Comments

[modestic.livejournal.com]

I can relate entirely with what you say about your painting, as I am similar with my writing. Every now and then I'll read a truly terrible (or even spectacularly average) book and know that I can do better. But I keep comparing what I write with the best, knowing that I will never be as good as them. It should be enough to know that there are people out there that I am better than, but ego wants me to be the best, which I will never be.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

perfectionism can be crippling, can't it? I really need to work at shifting my laziness. The thing is I've never taken my creative things seriously before. They've always been a past-time, something I'm only meant to do when I don't have to study (ie. never) - so I've never devoted serious time and effort to painting or writing long-term. It's always (at least nominally) been secondary to "real" work, and so when I do indulge in it it's usually with feelings of guilt.

To balance it, however, I'm intending to only let myself spend the summer painting IF I get a 2.1 in my summer exams. Here's hoping...

[surje.livejournal.com]

i know what you mean about finding time to draw and paint - i bought a little sketch book and small box of pencils to carry around, but i don't carry them all the time, and just don't get a chance to draw unless i make time. which i did this weekend! hurray! here is a picture of my father. it's strange how inspiration comes when you're least expecting it. (http://www.holophrase.net/php-cgi/gallery/paintings/20031227_075_200401041602_drawn_architect_oilclone_diffuse_unsharp_dropshadow_s2) ()

[libellum.livejournal.com]

wow! that's bloody impressive. I love the style of those two Matrix ones - very surreal and a lot of visual impact. In fact I like all your portraits, although possibly that's because I'm not a HUGE fan of abstract work. Is it significant that your father is "the architect"? (freudian much?!) or did he just look like him ... ?

yes. I'm very excited about this plan now. It makes it easier this next term as well, because I don't need to feel guilty about not painting - I'm deliberately taking a break. I think part of my procrastination is being torn between twin obligations - creativity and work, with the effect that neither is really done justice to. Unfortunately I'm not naturally inclined to working in eight-week stretches and then being inspired to paint and write in between, but who is? I'll see how it goes.

I've been sketching tonight actually. Came up with a quick design for my next domain layout - I might have to paint and scan it tomorrow while I'm still excited :)

[surje.livejournal.com]

thanks! don't know quite which ones you mean by the "two matrix ones". my father doesn't usually wear shades, so when i saw the photo that the painting is based on, i thought immediately of the matrix... and as he is old and has white hair and is my father... then the architect was a natural choice.

art-fag is exquisite, i can already imagine what colours it would be drawn in! yellows and pale browns. and maybe a little green.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of the Leo Cypher one as well, which is done in a similar style...

Yes, I'm looking forward to this next layout. I've never had one based entirely on my own artwork before (and I neither have a tablet nor am any good at digital painting, so just airbrushing is out. besides, it wouldn't look art nouveau then). I'm unhappy with the writing and the hair - needs to be less strandy and more mucha-ish, and also should have one big outline rather than individual ones, if you see what I mean - but other than that, yes. As for colours, I was thinking of greens and browns for her, and greyish blues and yellows for the background. making it more brown/yellow might work though ... I shall see! Perhaps I will be motivated to work on it this afternoon? Unfortunately I have tidying and laundry to do...

[surje.livejournal.com]

i guess my leo cypher pic was before the character cypher in the matrix, well anyway i was thinking of louis cypher (deniro) in angel heart.

[haima.livejournal.com]

this is completely true & lovely, especially the mystery part. i love little philosophies like that, things to remember that stop you from panicking. i feel totally warm & calm now, after thinking about that. xo

& you really are talented, i've thought it before looking at the site but somehow never said it. that artfag drawing is completely superb, just beautiful. every bit of luck with keeping the frame of mind and getting a stall running.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

it's something my counsellor said to me once. I don't know if it means anything in itself, but it reminds me of some sort of intangible understanding and clarity I had after I first heard it. Small philosophies aren't truths themselves, but they're keys to truth that exists anyway, not just through the words.

I'm not really making sense. Ah well. thankyou for the compliment (made me grin hugely) but I don't think it's quite true - or if it is it doesn't mean a great deal. I've always been told I have artistic talent but other than a vaguely enjoyable past-time I don't really have much desire to pursue it. I certainly don't want to go to art school or get involved in the drama and politics of modern art and trying to be original and things. I just like being able to make things that are pretty. I'd describe myself as competent rather than talented, but with a shrug. I care a lot less about it than I do about writing, for example.

[haima.livejournal.com]

you are making sense. it's that moment of clarity you have when you hear something like that, that makes it mean something. like you occasionally get from books, or from sayings, or just something somebody tells you. the mindset it gives you. i suppose it's one of those things where the actual words matter far less than the subjective spin you put on it.

i suppose, even if it doesn't hold that urgency that writing does, it has to be nice to be competent. i wish i could draw, even a bit, i'm useless at it. and it must be good to have some outliet in which you are satisfied with just making pretty things, rather than trying to make something meaningful or revolutionary or whatever. calming. i imagine the act of drawing/painting itself to be fairly calming, although i could be wrong. xox