*wipes the dust off of the monitor* I am sitting here, in my office… in my kitchen (trailer-living dictates that some places must be combined) ~It would not be much of a stretch to say that this room is a kitchen/office/family room.~ And I am surrounded my comics… and clutter. Although, in defense, it is comic-related clutter. After birthday presents and my own spree it has multiplied. Still moreover, there is my small but scattered pile of drawings. As I scramble for something, anything to draw on my tablet.
This would all be fine, I suppose if my son and wife did not have a few of their favorite things tossed about. Many a groans have been made as yet again I run over a discarded toy or a favorite video tape, making it now useless. Even now I cringe as my son, gaining independence traipses across the kitchen with a plate of food looking back, and telling me bye. (I must admit I will miss him while he is in the other room visiting his mother dearest).
By far I am the main culprit of this chaos, and it is killing me. I try to be practiced in my organization of my collection. I have learned that an unprotected book will be in tatters at a moment’s notice. And it is not only my house that is disorganized. My mind seems to have followed. I can’t draw, I can’t write….
This being my third attempt at writing this blog. I kept telling myself that my life is the last thing I want to write about, but at the same time, I could think of little else. So by process of elimination, you get what seems like rambling, it is.
I feel like I am chasing inspiration. And that in and of itself feels wrong. Because every writer or artist I have ever heard asked the question about where there ideas come from or how they keep things so fresh will say the same thing, “I couldn’t stop writing if I wanted to. The ideas come and I have to write them down.” I just want to have the moment of escape that drawing and writing, to a lesser extent bagging and boarding comics gives me. I am easily content, and yet it has never felt harder.
2 comments:
Let me say that inspiration comes a lot more easily when you don't have the thought processes of making a living or keeping the domestic scene at peace. Few of us have that luxury. We fret over how the bills are going to get paid, how to keep Mount Washmore down to a mere molehill, what we are going to put on the table for the next meal.
Nothing puts a kink in my creativity more than stress about things that I know I am obligated to do. I have to be in a certain frame of mind to create, whether it is drawing, sewing, or writing. Stress from things I have no control over, however, can bring me into manic creativity. I wrote my first fan fiction in a hospital ICU waiting room, amidst screaming children and crying adults. I created my first true "art quilt", for which I was not being commissioned, after I had to place my mother in nursing care. Subsequent panels in that series were results of insomnia and wanting to stay out of the way of someone else in the same house.
I find a release in my artistic endeavors that is equal to nothing else. Unfortunately, it's not something that just jumps out of me 24/7.
So I don't think you are alone in drawing a blank. Reality often sets in just about the time you have a flash of inspiration, and the moment can be far too fleeting.
I think I will have to go write some more about this on my blog. I'm taking up your space. Heh.
Good luck with that creativity thing!
Hmmm. If I had an ounce of creativity left in me, I might be able to speak more from personal experience. However, failing that, there are a couple of things which spring to mind here. You know I always bang on about the Room of One's Own premise, which Virginia Woolf applied to women at the time she was writing, but I feel could be equally well applied to men whose primary domain is the the domestic one. How can one be creative at the kitchen table, with your 3 year old singing (beautifully, no doubt, but that's not the point) and chatting away? I know this is simplifying the Room of One's Own thing painfully - there is the whole issue of financial independence which also plays a part (which Alice touches on too, and which is not insignificant)...but nonetheless the need for space and time should not be underestimated.
One thing which I found enormously helpful when I was actively writing (god help me, I have never been able to draw much beyond very bad stick figures) was being part of a group or community of like-minded creative types. Now in those days (aye, back in the dark ages), this meant actually physically being with people - in my case the best example was a poetry group which met for regular readings and drinking sessions ;-) Just having those people around can fire creativity in a way that it's hard to do in isolation. I suppose that for the modern day recluse (that would be you ;-)), an alternative would be an online community (or even several). Somewhere to bounce ideas back and forth, consider other people's work, and receive feeback and ideas about your own.
I wonder if there is a case to be made for blogging one's way out of a block? You might try it. Is this my way of persuading you to provide me with more reading material? Perhaps...cunning, eh?
As for the physical clutter, I also suffer from that. I often feel that if I could get on top of it, my mind may become less cluttered too. Or would it? Maybe it would simply become more regimented, and that's not to be wished for either. Hmmm. A conundrum. Let me know when you work out the answers...
(Ooops, this was meant to be a quick comment, but I got a little carried away...my apologies)
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