chronicled & illustrated

In addition to that fancy camera, I got a computer drawing tablet and pen for my birthday.

I KNOW it’s going to be extremely useful
—especially once I get the hang of it—but so far, all I can think to do is play with it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This is one of the things I’ve done. It’s a doodle. An experiment with letters and other marks that could be letters. It was fun to do and as such, it feels as if I’m using my new tool (”For the serious photographer, designer and artist” the package states) as a toy. At what point do I begin to feel serious about it? My husband often asks when inquiring about what I did on a certain day, “Were you working or playing?”

Whew. That’s a tough one to answer. If I enjoy my work, does that mean it’s always play? If I usually enjoy my work but am dealing with a challenging problem, then is it work? Or if I am doing art for no one and no reason, but am frustrated by it, does that mean it’s work? Is doing art for no reason ever anything but play? Where’s the line between a “serious tool” for serious creative types and a toy for someone who’s “just playing?”

Ahh, I don’t care. It’s just my brain playing with words, isn’t it? And some days, that’s what art and work is all about.

mirror image,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

I have a great new camera. I’ve always dreamed of one day getting a really good camera but put it off and off even when digital made photography immediate and playful and when the internet made it possible to share and get comments from people all over the world. I put it off because I have a superstition about getting good/expensive equipment. It sometimes signals the death of a creative era.

It may be a superstition, but it may also be learning. Years ago, not long after purchasing a huge roll of canvas and being given a fancy wooden easel, I stopped painting.

The problem is: you get the fancy equipment and suddenly there are expectations of producing something excellent. Suddenly it’s changed from: see what nice results I can pull off with my simple digital camera? to: if I can’t get fabulous results with this camera, I’ve wasted the money and let myself down. Suddenly the playfulness leaves and Things Get Serious.

I’m not letting that happen with this camera. It’s just the reason I put off getting one. The only way I could truly let myself down with my new camera is if I fail to use it. If the last week is any indication of future use, it seems I’m likely to be at the opposite end of that extreme. I’ve taken hundreds and hundreds of shots and the word “obsession” has been used several times.

But this all is a reminder of the kind of mental distortion that can happen around creative endeavors.

Anyway, as it happens, I am drawn to visual distortion. The photograph I used today is one taken with the new camera. It’s a view of my office area reflected in an old, cheaply-made mirror—thus the funky distortion. It’s my reminder that even if I’m still getting quite a few out of focus shots (it’s only been a week AND I don’t have a tripod yet!) that my photographs will always reflect my own vision of the world, distorted or otherwise.

After hours and hours of work over the last two and a half weeks, I have only one page left to finish (and—oh well, yeah—thousands of tiny adjustments and corrections)

Three books in the works (Galveston, Causeway and Nova) and none of them are thrilling me.

Just heard about this technique from a friend; I decided to try it on my mysterious leg pain since “western” medicine isn’t offering a cure. whatthehell…

the ins and outs of the Nikon D80 AND a computer drawing tablet and pen!

in through the windows,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

I’m reminded this morning of the Woody Allen quote, “Eighty percent of life is showing up.”
My husband tells a story about when he was in high school and had a job selling shoes. Well, selling shoes is, according to him, an overstatement. He rarely sold any. He hated the job as most of it entailed standing around for several hours doing nothing but trying to look busy. And yet, even though he hated it and rarely sold anything, his boss loved him. When he mentioned this paradox to his father, his dad told him that the boss liked him because he always showed up. He was reliable and there, just in case someone wanted to buy a pair of shoes!

Over the last five days, I’ve been finishing up on The Practically Creative Quarter. This is the second full month of the new format and it’s working out great. The site functions well and—while it’s still a lot of work—it’s doable. Instead of working three solid months to get it ready, I can do a little each week and still have a variety of new things for people to read and see.

So there’s the showing up part.

That’s eighty percent of it, right?

Not really. Because the eighty percent has to include the future as well as the past! Consistency is difficult for me, so I know from experience that two months means nothing. I can fall off this wagon in a heartbeat. That’s why I always need the practical side of me to show up along side the creative side. The first PCQ was creative but not practical. The new version is, I hope, both.

But this morning, I’m being nagged by that other twenty percent. What’s that, Woody? Well we know, don’t we? It’s being good. It’s being unique. It’s offering—showing off—something that people want.

I didn’t start The PCQ to show off. From the beginning, it was about me wanting a place to process creativity. If I still have issues with creativity—need for perfection, trouble finishing things, over-stretching my limitations, and more—I knew that other people do too. So I thought I’d share those challenges with others. What I’ve learned and what I’m learning. But somewhere in all that, I have to deal with the exposure of myself—repeatedly, as it turns out. I often have a bad, let-down day after an email update goes out to my subscribers.

I was writing a piece of fiction last week where a grandmother is watching her granddaughter practice a performance. It’s just the two of them; the granddaughter is talented and very good in the performance. Afterward the little girl gets quiet and comes to sit very close to the grandmother. The grandmother leans down and whispers to her, “Sometimes we can end up feeling that we did something wrong even when everyone tells us we’re good.”

Those words, coming out of my character’s mouth, surprised me. I didn’t know I was going to write that but it sums up my feelings about the showing off part of showing up.

No matter how many people are reading The PCQ (and the numbers are good!)—I feel like the granddaughter in my story, wishing I had a comforting grandmother to snuggle up against. Someone who would know instinctively the down side of showing off.

And yet, those are momentary feelings. The project that is The PCQ is still about process. It’s not perfect because I’m not and because I have sworn off even yearning toward perfection.

My plan is to show up and take the eighty percent odds that it’ll be good enough.

THE ILLUSTRATION: this is a photograph of light hitting a watercolor painting. Speaking of showing off, it was the first painting of mine (done over 20 years ago!) that I felt was good enough to be framed. I loved the way this photograph turned out because the “real” light seems to be coming in through the painted window. Illusions.

READING: Causeway, Linden MacIntyre
EXPECTING: Company! two childhood friends are spontaneously flying up from Texas for a week!
HOPING: We have decent weather (what else?)

two loves,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

So now it’s time to write. I have other things to do, of course. I am supposed to be working on the update of the EPIC website.

It’s so far overdue that I’m embarrassed—even though there is no one but me upset by it or waiting for it (though my husband will definitely like it—and me —when it’s done!). As well, I accumulated other things to do while I was away. I started a small artist’s site for my son and promised him some business cards. I want to do that asap because his career is taking off in small ways and I want to give him what I can to help. And of course, those are *fun* things to do. There are other things on the to-do list as well. But none of them are crucial. They are all things that can be fitted in around whatever is most important.

So now, it’s time to write.

All the way down to Maine, I thought about three stories in various stages. First I thought about the one I had just started. I have about a page and a half written. JUST a beginning…but, the idea came to me full-fledged (a rarity!) and with hours by myself to do nothing but drive and think, I filled in a lot of what was vague. Or, I think I did. One never really knows until the writing is being done. Sometimes what is in your head, isn’t what comes out on paper and stories can definitely take sharp turns that weren’t on the planned journey.

A second story I thought about was one I did a lot of work on a year or more ago. I liked it, it seemed like a good beginning, but I never could push myself to finish it. So I thought it through. Decided what needed to happen. How I could improve the tone of the piece. I don’t even think it would take that long to have a finished first draft.

The third thing I thought about was just an idea for a story. It has to do with music and communication and ‘races’ of ‘people’ who use music for their own ends. I am not sure yet what else. It’s definitely NOT a story yet but I write down the whiff of an idea here so as not to forget or minimize it as a future possibility.

This is all motivating to me because I had just about given up on writing short stories. Novels, it seems, are my forte. A short story feels frustrating and limiting and I began telling myself that it was okay for me not to write short stories if I didn’t want to. But now…with a collaboration project in the planning stages, I’m motivated again. If I can pull off any of these ideas, it’ll please me to have gotten back to a written form that I should be able to participate in whether it’s my favourite or not.

READING: Tales of Protections by Eric Fosnes Hansen (book club this Saturday!)
WRITING: NetWorld, a short story
WEBBING: Quintessential Abstractions, an artist’s website
PHYSICALLY: lousy, I’ve got a cold
EMOTIONALLY: calm, optimistic

The Illustration: this is a layered composition made up of one of my doodles (marker and gelpens) and pages of my writing. Click on it to see a larger version on flickr.

first sketchbook-sized gel pen doodle,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

This is by far my most popular piece of art work on flickr, and very close to the top of my most popular images. Just today another sweet person found it in the depths of my photostream and favorited it. I’m so surprised by the response to it.

I do not have good instincts about what people are going to respond to. Of course on an individual basis, one can never predict what a stranger is going to like. Because of this, artists—in my opinion—aren’t doing themselves any favours by trying to please others. But it does seem as if it would be useful to be able to predict in a broader sense what might be popular.

The only thing I’ve learned for sure on flickr is that cute animals will always rack up the viewers. Photos of my dogs are among my most viewed and most favorited though they are certainly not the best photos I’ve taken. Two golden retrievers of different shades are naturally lovable.

I suppose this drawing is popular because it’s accessible. I call it and think of it as a ‘doodle’ but of course, it’s an elaborate one and one that took many hours to draw. But most people can relate to doodling, so on a doodling scale, it’s probably *high end*.

The main thing I’ve figured out is that what people like has nothing to do with how much care and time I took with it or how much skill did or didn’t go into the creation of it. Sometimes I feel frustrated that I can’t get any attention for the things that I’m more proud of, things that I regard as having been more difficult. I need to get over that! It’s the finished product that matters. No one else can know or cares what kind of blood, sweat and tears went into to it. In fact, if the bodily fluids show on it, it is doomed to failure. It needs to look effortless whether it was or not.

I’m finding that the same is true in my writing. It’s just possible that I tend to over-think, over-complicate, over-work my writing. Unfortunately, there’s no flickr for the written word, but I should probably keep this image in mind as I write. The finished work needs to be accessible, at the high-end of what’s expected, and with no evidence of my personal DNA on the page.

Reading: Tales of Protection by Erik Fosnes Hansen
Planning: A short story about a computer game designer who avoids real people
Collaborating: On editing an anthology of short stories
Writing: Words of Paradise, a novel set in the 60’s
Suppose to be: Finishing the EPIC website
Travelling: To Maine for my granddaughter’s 2nd birthday
The Roller Coaster: Just barely on the way up

deep pink blues,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

The photograph is a mock-up cd cover that I did for a utata project last summer. The guitarist is my son Carson who is a singer /songwriter in Albuquerque. He’s been slowly working on a web home for himself and his music all this year, and is, in fact, my inspiration for moving my website-family to wordpress. I THINK it’s been a good move. He’s on my mind, because I just took a look at techornati tags this morning and found that he’s put in a link to my zine. The “web” is indeed a fine metaphor.

I brought this fun project out of the archives because it relates to one of the themes of my life this year. That of self-promotion. I’m terrible at it and always have been, but I have accepted that as a fault; something that I must overcome. Even as I do it (mainly on the web, at this point) I feel that others won’t like me. It’s an old primal tape running in my head. Mustn’t draw attention to ones achievements. Particularly if one isn’t absolutely sure of that those actions/behaviors/products can be counted as “achievements.” Yes, there are always doubts.

And yet, I’m pushing myself to make connections, promote my sites, feel happy that my photo was the needle found in the haystack of flickr for the german beer ad. Perhaps age has taught me a few things—usually three or four words at a time: Things take time. Little things add up. Life is too short. People like success. Pride cometh before a fall—

Oops.

Old tapes.

I titled this Pridefall because those two words are firmly associated in my mind. I have experienced the relationship many times. Pride makes us boastful, boastfulness makes us vulnerable to tripping because our nose is in the air? I don’t know. It’s a firm relationship, but not a useful one.

I’m proud of my son and his music. I’m proud that he’s hung in there with his creative endeavors even as he works so very hard at his academic and teaching careers. And in that, there is no fall. Being proud of others is ok.

By the way, the title of the album and band on my mock-up cd cover are not my son’s.
His site is carsonmetzger.net. Go. Find out his names. Read his words. Listen to his music. Go see him perform. Understand my pride.