i created this blog telling myself i'd always sit and write well thought-out, well-written posts about things going on in my life, and that things would never slip into a typical rambling and ranting style of, well, "journaling."
...but here we are. i've struggled to get this out in a cogent manner, but i'll share anyway.
after years of undergrad and graduate schooling in the fine arts, several years in a formal art museum setting, some teaching, and some years showing semi-professionally, the last one to two years of my life has been almost devoid of creating anything remotely close to good work.
and it feels completely fucking stifling.
my original inspirations of escaping the big city — getting away to the peace and calm of my brother's and sister's farms — have become null and void. those types of emotions or needs no longer come from within. i'm 32 years old, and i actually live *in iowa* now. the intense visceral monsters of my very early work, ten or so years back, have occasionally come back into some pieces the last few years as more mature manifestations, but now when i get into the mindset of listening to and playing along with dark, brooding, "loud fucking heavy shit," there are no sparks of visual creation involved. Everything's strictly auditory. I want to maniacally play guitar, not get dirty and roll around in some evil drawings. this isn't necessarily bad, but... i fell like i'm slowly losing a very important part of my identity. i feel like i'm no longer an artist. and it really sucks.
i'm not sure what's going on. after a drought of two years or so, it's not easy to "just let it work itself out."
1 comment:
I've met artists and song writers who have felt that they can only create with angst. They only liked the results of their emotional outpouring related to bad events in their lives, so they tried to stay in that state by destroying their relationships with themselves and others. Take it as a sign of your peace and contentment with your own life and drink deeply from that well for a change and see what comes out. Journaling is just a way of organizing your thoughts...it's the rough draft to the final output. Not everything needs to be polished. Raw is real.
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