Oh my God can someone PLEASE make a sock like this for me? I would love you forever. In return I could paint you a picture on a tiny canvas, or paint an enormous picture of a single split pea.

This photo was yoinked from Anthropologie.

A year slips by us on the little river of time.

Last Friday I made pennants out of sticks and pieces of fabric I had on hand, dressed in my best 1950's get up, and went to a high school football game with the Research Club. The event was pure whimsy, a chance to camp it up in a context almost none of us had taken advantage of when it was age-appropriate. A genuine autumnal experience. Football? Check. Crisp leaves underfoot? Check. Hot cider in thermoses? Check. Scarves and hats and gloves; the pastiche of the season? The human patchwork aesthetic? Check check check.

Almost a year ago to the day, I was in my black rectangle at the law office scouring everyone's offices for plates and silverware to shore up the eatery numbers to 80 pieces so we could serve the macaroni dinner to that same high school football team. It was the first week of my two-week-notice period, and that week I thought I was going to die. I have never dreaded going in to work more than I did that week, which is remarkable considering I dreaded every waking moment within those beige walls.



I've been really sick for the last couple of days, and I've spent a lot of that time thinking about how much can change in a year. October 2008 to October 2009. I'm still not sailing the seas on my terms, but I am so much farther along than I was when I stumbled out of that building for the last time. I made a little list in my sketchbook:

Where I started...........Where I am now

No sense of current style...........Experiements with fabric and paper collage are bringing much closer to what I want thing to look like, actually feeling good about what is coming out of the paintbrush.

Nothing in production...........Work momentum is up like mad -- I am averaging about 1-5 pieces a week, chipping away at the 'I have no portfolio' problem.

No contacts...........IPRC, PZS, Reading Frenzy, Art Walk, Camera Graphics, Portland Laughter Yoga...

No web presence...........Website, etsy, facebook, blog, Illustration Friday

No "real world" presence...........Business cards, post cards, zines, PZS poster

No money coming in...........Sales from etsy (including postcards, paintings, zines), sales from the PZS table (more sales than I've ever made), various commissions, gigs and a job offer from Right Brain Resource (it was a form letter to a big group of people, but still it felt nice to get that email).

If I could have seen my future self out the window, happy in a fedora and plaid-wool skirt, I wonder if it would have made a difference.



I can see myself in reverse, fighting tears again in the skirt I couldn't afford to have cleaned.



To leave that job for this journey has been stepping out of the blizzard into the greenhouse.



Things have been frustrating occasionally but never deadening. The limitations I've run into only ignite the passion to push further.

BITS AND PIECES



- I forget how I found Story Online. It's no replacement for Reading Rainbow, but the first story I watched was read by Elijah Wood, and the second was read by James Earl Jones. It's neat.

- Lately I have been OBSESSED with This American Life's financial coverage, which later of course turned into Planet Money. They did a few shows which ended up on my podcast list before they stopped updating, and the ones I missed can be streamed on that website, and wow I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's amazing to listen to all this rubbish for a year and a half or so, wonder about it, and suddenly have everything be illuminated. I like that I can now I can listen to financial news (like yesterday when it was noted that the economy grew last quarter, for the first time in a year) and have a shelf to put that information in my brain. I like that they are proponents of plain speech. I like that they don't talk down to their listeners. I like the way Chana Joffe-Walt speaks (it reminds me of my friend Dani for some reason). All the goodness. Lately This American Life has made two shows about the healthcare system, which can be found in the Oct 09 archives. I also recommend "Return to the Giant Pool of Money" from September, where we revisit some of the key players from the very first show on the Economy menu.

-Doodlers Anonymous.

yesterday's early morning inspiration

(source)

What to say when nothing can be said

(This was originally a raw email that was cleaned up a little and posted at the Reserach Club blog. I liked it so I thought I'd put it here too.)

My grandfather used to say great things, back when he could -- when he was alive and we had ears that heard his words before they were wind. I don't think these things were original, but I hadn't heard them before he said them. Mom always introduces his pithy quips by saying "Dad used to say..."

He'd say, "this too, shall pass." This usually referred to petty human drama, and his general time frame was ten years. In ten years that pain, this grief, this embarrassment, this event. It won't sting as harshly as it does now.

He'd say, "sac de papier!" when incensed or bewildered. It was a false-curse word, probably leftover from living in or around the French Quarter. It sounds quite colorful when pronounced briskly but translates, of course, to "paper sack."

He'd say, "nothing ventured nothing gained." I never actually heard him say this, but Mom quotes this when I mention various risks I am taking in getting this Art Thing going. I signed up for that website, I printed these cards, I'm trying to sell this painting, I'm entering this contest, I'm pulling together these pamphlets. I could do all that or I could sit here. And while all of my efforts may yeild nothing but eggs and rice at the end of the month, that's exactly what I'd get anyway if I just joylessly cleaned houses and never looked up into the sky again. And idleness can't, say, win a poster contest and earn me $50 at a symposium. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

He'd say, "I work to live, I don't live to work," the saying that has been with me the longest. It came from a man who flew kites and received toys for his 84th, 85th, 86th birthdays. It was the way Mom explained the differences between herself and my Dad, the business man that will never retire, not because he can't afford to, but because he does not want to. For him, work is life. His primary identity. Mom likes to travel and have adventures and eat ice cream, and when she took the work at home gig that she still holds today she explained that it helped her live the life she wanted to. She works but does not allow it to rule her life. It is not her life. She works so she can live the life she wants, she was not put on this earth to work. And that makes all the difference.

And the diffrerence here is: this art stuff is my life. It is how I interpret my surroundings, how I explain my feelings about them to others. Hopefully it stirs something in others as well. But that's not why I'm doing it, I'm doing it because it is my life and everything about it. This other job I'm doing -- that's work I do to live. To make the art possible.

And I think it's like that for you, too. You creative minds. These big thoughts, these questions, these interpretations. These people who toil about the wrong things, who are not humans but just fuzzy outlines that want to be. These people who are not being taught to think. These people who need your help.

(I have to say as an endnote: Grandpa had a plaque on his desk that said "it's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am.")

THINGS I AM STRUGGLING WITH

1. I am struggling with acceptance of difficult positions and beliefs of other people, struggling to rid myself of the intolerance I accuse other people of (see previous entry).

2. I am struggling with the geography of our lives. Anthony and I are in two different cities, and sometimes I wish we didn't need to be.

3. I am struggling to let go of the stressful parts of this art thing -- remembering that I want to be MAKING ART, not MAKING MONEY. I am struggling with convincing myself that this is going to make the quality of my work much richer, and this in time will draw the attention I want, rather than fawning for attention at a time when I might not need it.

3a. Relatedly, I am struggling with this phase:



I am struggling with the quality of the art work itself, and feeling glum about it sometimes.



4. Specifically I am struggling with clarity and a certain image-conciseness that illustration must have in order to work. I am struggling with achieving this visual literacy while maintaining an aesthetic that I want to see. The ideas I have in my head are not necessarily images but rather feelings and inklings, and it's not until I begin to piece together the bones in the real world that the image reveals itself, and right now I am struggling with that process, with making it into a workable path.

4. I am struggling with the patience all of this requires.

IF: Frozen

But I think the most likely reason of all was that his heart was two sizes too small.

I heard an item on NPR this morning about "new" atheism, one that evangelizes for its cause, focusing on hatred and contempt, casting all religion as dangerous and ignorance.

They interviewed a man who'd posted a photograph of a communion host impaled on a rusty nail on his blog. He laughed, saying, "People got very angry. I don't know why."

I thought, yet you do. Because it Means Something. Otherwise you would not have done it in the first place.

I was surprised how deeply upsetting the story was to me. It quite literally gave me a sick feeling in my stomach that I couldn't shake for the rest of the day. I understand wary questions and even cynicism, but I don't understand circumventing the natural act of discussion by objecting in such a mean-spirited way.

It seems to me that at a most basic level, religion emphasizes the importance of symbols and ritual on the soul. The importance of CULTIVATING the soul. The focus on the spirit, as well as the mind and body. So what I take home from this story is: it's weird that people don't want others to do that. I know religion gets big and messy and fundamentalists really ruin it for everyone, but I have poked around quite a bit and have yet to find a religion with central tenants of nastiness and cruelty to others.

And atheist fundamentalism is still fundamentalism.

And within that I suppose there is also the problem of respect for others. I would not dream of tearing the pages from the Sikh holy book, just as I would not dream of trampling my neighbor's flower garden. It worries me that other people don't see things that way, regardless of opinion on higher powers.

It's the intolerance I find so distasteful, and I realized this morning that I was thinking to myself, I am intolerant of intolerance, which I realized is completely unsound. How does that make me different, in a big cosmic sense, than the people inventing Blasphemy Day? I don't think it does. And if I am going to claim to be at peace with everything in this world -- really at peace -- then I'm going to have to come to terms with this somehow.

Which is why I am here, in this image, as both the accepting loving heart and the frozen heart of the intolerant bigot. Because until I can work this out -- this intolerance problem -- I'm just as bad.

Little reminder to myself

When brainstorming: keep your mind soft, liquid, let the associations be loose and interesting.

Harden up and be critical after the list, the wealth of possibilities, the walk to think it all over.

The first installment of the series can be found here.

WE BEGIN WITH ASSORTED KEYNOTE POINTS, AND SORT OF CONTINUE ON WITH THAT THEME AFTER SOME THINKING

- Figaro IS the Barber of Seville. Check. He is not the leading man in the strictest sense (that is, he's not the person seeking the affections of the ingénue,) but rather a very strong sort-of-secondary character, friend-of-the-lead, which greatly appeals. I learned this from a wikipedia article. It included a plot synopsis that was a butchered version of the original 1913 language; I was able to read the synopsis as it was meant to be read after a little digging, and I strongly encourage you to do the same.

- The full title seems to be, "The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution".

- An aria is a musical piece sung by a vocalist accompanied by the orchestra. For me, it is essentially what makes opera opera. Analogous to monologues in Shakespearean plays? It's interesting that characters in a work of fiction, yet who stand before us, also then turn to the audience to confide in it, although they are essentially written to be speaking to themselves. A bit like blogging, I think crassly to myself.

Woody is perhaps the best example of the new type of cartoon character that was becoming popular in the early 1940s — a brash, violent aggressor who pesters innocents not out of self defense, but simply for the fun of it.

I think most people my age are familiar with the Rabbit of Seville, but I hadn't realized that Woody the Woodpecker took a whack at opera five years earlier. (This is due in part, no doubt, to Woody the Woodpecker being an incredibly irritating character.) So when it came up during my rueful initial opera searches on the library website I immediately put it on hold.

I haven't watched much Woody the Woodpecker -- the true original Woody, not his later incantations through Disney -- partly because he's irritating and partly because he hasn't been as widely distributed as his Looney Toons cousins. If the bulk of his work is anything like his Barber of Seville, it's probably because the censors are unhappy with how very 1940s the cartoon is. Delightfully-yet-shockingly un-PC, no discernible plot, forced one liners, and lots of bashing around. I'd forgotten how these old cartoons make such light of violence -- Woody and Bugs both essentially chase their adversaries around with giant scalpels, although Woody is ultimately flung into a cupboard of mugs while Bugs triumphs over his adversary by dropping him into a giant wedding cake.

OTHER NOTES REGARDING THE CARTOON

- The only time I really laughed during the cartoon was when, after an elaborate set-up involving a hot wrap and a headdress shrinking into a badminton birdie, the Indian says, "You give Chief the Bird?!"

- When things escalate into the opera score, Woody seems to actually sing the lyrics. Or at least an approximation of them. Impressive, though I think the rewriting of the lyrics as is done in the Bugs Bunny cartoon is very clever. There is rising panic on the part of the Italian Immigrant worker as Woody sings, which is understandable.

- The false teeth among the pile of detritus is a nice touch.

- Is the reason these cartoons were scored with classical music because such music was on public domain?

- If we are to take the similarities of the cartoons to have any weight at all, there seems to be a theme of dicking around with the clients at the barbershop.

OTHER NOTES REGARDING MY OPERA QUEST IN GENERAL

- Our library evidently offers little mini-lectures on opera. I think each lecture will correspond to whatever story is about to be shown in town.

- Regal cinemas will be showing various operas in HD to correspond with the 2009/2010 season. That should be a really interesting mix of highbrow and lowbrow. I am aiming for January-ish for that.

- I may vicariously know someone involved with the Portland production of the Barber of Seville, meaning I may be able to get discounted tickets. This would make me talk the big happy cheese cow talk.

- The Portland opera has some pretty great volunteer opportunities, including one that could land you a spot on stage. That would certainly get you closer to the process.

Tree test for the Canada pieces. I really like the look of this. I was going to ink on top of this but on its own I find it really simple and nice. I'll have to let it incubate and see.