Archive for July, 2009
Packed…
Here we go. They’re no larger, but they are heavier than when I brought them here. Think kind thoughts about my back.
Tags: daily photo, Sylt, travelRelated posts
Blow, wind, blow…
My final day here has been punctuated by the most aggressive winds and downpours that I’ve seen so far. It’s a real reminder that we are on the sea, dammit. It gives me a bit of insight into what the off season must be like here. Every time I think about heading down to Westerland for a couple of final purchases, the sky will dump buckets of water outside the window. Some folks may not end up getting the presents I thought to pick up for them.
Could be it’s just nature telling me to stay in and get my stuff organized and try to knock out another couple of drawings before I pack it all away. If I could just resign myself to that course of action I’d be much happier. Instead I keep hopping up when it clears and thinking hmmm perhaps now I can get down there.
I do much better with limited options.
There are also still a couple of pictures I want to take around here, and at least I got my laundry done. I think this is the first time I’ll be coming back from a trip with more clean clothes than I arrived with. Which is good since I’m thinking about the massive amount of cleaning that has to happen at my place upon my arrival.
I am looking forward to getting back, I must say. There’s a lot of dirty New York I’m hungry for. And I’m hoping that I have the courage to retain some of the lessons learned while I was here.
Tags: daily photo, Sylt, travel, weatherRelated posts
Yesterday’s drawing…
…always looks slightly strange to me. Alien. The things I’ve made contain memory, sure, but it’s not released in the way that might seem logical. I can remember certain things about drawing, while I’m drawing, and not otherwise. A memory that resides in the hand, not the eye. So scanning what I’ve done is always a surprise.
Similarly with writing: I revisit things from years ago and can’t believe that I was able to put the words together, even though I remember the particulars of sweating it out, the strain of writing, or rather the strain of not writing, of trying to force the confrontation with the computer screen. That memory comes easily, but the fact that I got something done and that this is the sequence of words that arose? It seems far fetched.
I’ve been going over the drawings I’ve made here and a bunch of journal entries that I’m adding tags to and the effect is far from flipping through a scrap book. I’m often perplexed. And that is why the cultivation of these habits is so important. The memory that resides in the hand, the ability to connect one day’s thought to the next through making certain gestures that lead to marks, that daily caress is the first thing to disappear in my usual daily assault of media consumption.
I wrote last month about needing a blank space to project work into, and earlier this month about needing a cascade of images to prime the pump. Here’s another ting I need to get to my true working place, the daily feedback of limber up, move the pencil, start again lines and choices about lines catching thought, moving thought forward in the ways that eyes can’t on their own. When that is happening every day, the drawings can go deeper and become fuller. The next day’s surprise is that much more welcome. When the gap is too long, that gap simply becomes a measure of how alienated I’ve become from my own process.
That’s three needs, and I’m sure that are others. They are not unreasonable things to ask of myself. And not hard things to provide. The reminder that they are there, and that they don’t go away, the laying bare of what’s required, truly, for me to do this thing, that’s the most important outcome of this month. I’m setting this down so that It can serve as a refuge and an accusation to me when I lose the way.
Tags: artists' retreats, daily photo, drawing, making art, notes on practice, self portraitRelated posts
Winding down…
Slept until 10:30 this morning. So it’s no surprise that so much of the day is gone by the time I’m getting around to posting. The rain I thought I would avoid yesterday caught up with me in the middle of Westerland, making for a damp bus ride back.
I’ve figured out my exit strategy however, and booked a room for Friday night in Hamburg so that I don’t have to: a)haul a heavy piece of luggage around a city I’ve never been to for hours in the evening and b)get to the airport eight hours before my flight departs and try to camp out while staying awake all night. I’m paying around $100.00 for the privilege of avoiding those options so I guess it means that I’m no longer the rough and tumble young traveler I used to be.
No everything I’m looking at is starting to take on the cast of: am I looking at this for the last time? and I’m starting to think about apportioning my hours: it’s clear right now, should I head over to the beach? Wouldn’t drawing be a better option. I’ll have plenty of time to read on the plane, so I shouldn’t do that.
Thoughts, just thoughts. The wavering bits that blow through my brain. They don’t really matter to me, and I assure you, they shouldn’t matter to you.
Tags: daily photo, Sylt, travel, triviaRelated posts
Yes…
There is some sort of water park here.
Overcast today, in the way that doesn’t portend breaking up later. I’ll make the walk into town after lunch anyway. The usual confused dreams about relocating studio, looking at possible rooms to rent, etc. The location shifting between San Francisco and Brooklyn.
The things I thought I’d get done here and those I have done. I’ve read eight books. I expected to edit and repost most of the pictures of my work from my old website. No such luck. I’ve done more bike riding than I have in the past ten years, which is not to say much, but still. I returned the rental bike rather than renewing it for the final week, without regret. I enjoy the long walks. I’ve spent very little time hanging out on the beach. Silly because it’s only fifteen minutes away. I thought I would wade through all the podcasts backed up on my iPhone: nope.
And I didn’t think that I’d post so regularly here. It’s proved very easy to get online, perhaps a little too. And I’ve come to have the habit of daily photographing and posting. And I’m very happy with the little eeepc. It has exceeded my expectations in the past year. Last week in the cafe, it was one of three petite Asus models in operation. I haven’t felt it as limited in any way. Little more than a year of use, so we’ll see how it does on durability.
And I’ve drawn a bunch. Not quite as much as I’d hoped initially, but there it is. There’s still a few days left, and I’ve the feeling that I may have some developed some momentum to carry me into the next month.
And boy have I missed folks!
Tags: daily photo, eeepc, reading, Sylt, travelRelated posts
Looking like a nono…
Working on the third drawing of the day. Or rather procrastinating on the third drawing of the day. There’s an itch to get on with some of the sorts of things that I’ve been thinking about doing for the past couple of years, but I wonder if that’s simply one of the things I’m using to distract myself, mainly because it requires a bunch of equipment I don’t own at present, so it’s conveniently out of the bounds of possibility. The paper that’s in front of me, the pencils I have with me these are more than enough for me to make something with. Get on with it, sluggard.
Treated myself to downloads of three albums I haven’t listened to in years: Portfolio, Warm Leatherette and Nightclubbing, all by Grace Jones. Portfolio really because it makes me laugh, what with Grace battling her way through horrible arrangements and gamely trying to put over a terrible version of “Tomorrow”. I picked up the other two because they used to be in heavy rotation when I worked at Just Desserts. And of those, Nightclubbing stands out on this listen: great playing and a sly assessment of her limitations and strengths.
And now I’m on to to Strangeways, Here We Come. So I’m deep in 80′s San Francisco thought. Perhaps in solidarity for all of my pals heading over to Dore Alley this afternoon. Although I’ll most likely be beddy-bye before you all get up to any mischief. Just remember I was there the year it started.
Oh and the picture is a very straightforward view of where I’m staying: in the center is the gallery/restaurant and to side is the bottling plant. Just behind it to the right are the apartments where I lay my shaggy head.
Tags: daily photo, drawing, Grace Jones, music, Question Month, san francisco, SyltRelated posts
Slow fade…
Quiet day today. Stayed around the apartment, a bit of tidying, a bit of drawing. Not much, only one drawing done. Hard to believe that it’s almost ten pm already.
Tags: daily photo, SyltRelated posts
You can’t make this stuff up…
Since I’d walked into town today, I almost took the bus home, but I was feeling pretty good and decided to make the trek on foot. About four fifths of the way back I started to notice how crazy the sky was getting, with huge clouds piled up across the horizon. No rain, but the sorts of canyons of fluff that you just don’t see all that often. I took a bunch of pictures and then walked on and before I got much further I just had to stop and shoot more. And then I saw it and hopefully you can see it too: the rainbow just to the right of the center of this picture. I have some where it’s more distinct, but I’m choosing this one to show you because It shows where it’s touching down. That building you see there? The kind of large one? Well, right behind it is the place I’m staying.
I didn’t want to goose the color in the shot, so this is pretty much what the camera saw. If I were a suspicious man I’d call it a sign, but instead I’ll take it as a bit of good fortune, a reward for walking.
Two other very nice things happened today as well: the post that I put up on the 13th of this month the one called “In Response” has garnered a lot of kind words over on facebook, and has been reposted here, in a great blog called Little Paper Planes, which has one of the most comprehensive sets of interesting gallery and artist links out there. Well worth your while.
And a very nice (and talented, and cute) artist, Joey Veltkamp has published a short interview with me here, on his blog. SO if you haven’t read enough of my yammering, you can go read some more. Or just use the links and go look at Joey’s stuff.
Tags: daily photo, good news, Sylt, weatherRelated posts
German Confectionery Tastes Plus Aquatic Themed Souvenir Equals
The view from the side of the road…
This morning I dreamt that I was waiting to be sworn in to my new job as a congressman and while trying to remember the oath, I was mildly embarrassed to realize that I wasn’t quite acquainted with a particular issue that I should have been speaking out on.
The feeling in the dream and when I woke? Fraudulent. I feel it often: I’m not supposed to be here, I don’t deserve it, I’ve wronged someone. Want me in your pocket? Want to poke me where it really hurts? Give me the message that I did you wrong, that I didn’t think of you, because true or not, I’m halfway to believing it myself. Any piece of good news comes with the conviction that there is another shoe about to drop: this time I’ll be exposed for the fraud (intellectual, emotional, professional) that I am, deep down. When I shut down, it’s in the face of feelings like that.
And the shutting down is a simple reversion to a very young me, a set of behaviors that I’ve carried on with for so much of my life that it seems wrong to name them immature. As a sum, they are behaviors that often serve to provoke the kind of frustration and anger that I perceive them as being a reaction to: behaviors of silence, isolation, panic. All on my own I’m tried and convicted, under house arrest, sent to my room to think about what I’ve done. Which from the outside looks like blithe indifference. You don’t have to punish smart kids: they figure out how to punish themselves. And the really smart ones know how to turn turn that self punishment into a weapon.
Never cross a narcissist: they don’t like to be interrupted.
So here I am at an “artist’s retreat”. I’ve been given time and space at a resort to “work”. A very good thing, one that would herald a very big other shoe suspended above my head. At least that’s my norm, to feed myself the delicious terror of that impending crash. But then there’s a sign by the side of the road. When you go somewhere else, you get to see your norm from another vantage point. And one thing I’ve been seeing is the way that my norm hasn’t been serving me. My 50th birthday is marching up the path to meet me, and I’ve been thinking of how it will find me; my hope is, shorn of emotional cowardice. Not in hiding from my life. Unapologetically alone when I need to be, and joyous with others when I am with companions.
And with my norm shucked like the tired husk it is.
Fraudulence is not my truth: the tools we need as children are not our friends for ever.
Tags: daily photo, emotion, self destruction, Sylt, work