Today is going to be murder to get through, but it’s my own doing. I let my depressed state screw me over. I should have planned to go down to the Supreme Court marriage Proposition 8 protests/counter protests regardless.   I actually took the days off well in advance.   But then I cancelled because I have been down ever since Valentine’s Day and I just didn’t want to deal with that part of me.   Ironically, that not wanting to deal with the emotional creative part of me is what got me into computers, and making the very nice living I am making now.   But there was a big drawback to all of that.   This path I chose, has led me to a cliff.   Now that the day is here I really want to be down there with my cameras photographing it but management wants not. Ever have one of those conversations with your boss, where the boss looks at you, smiles and says “It’s your call” and you know goddamn well what the call is supposed to be?   It was one of those.

Maybe that would have been the reality anyway.   So many things are happening at work now.   Launch is in 2018 and while that seems like a long way off, there is a lot of up front work that needs to be done.   A lot. Probably, it’s no fooling, I really have to be here and stay on top of my work.   Maybe making it up on the weekend really just doesn’t cut it.   Maybe it wasn’t a question of my boss telling me I could not have divided loyalties in his workspace.   Put that artsy fartsy stuff away, you’re an adult now, live in the real world… But this is really stabbing me in the heart now.

Sometimes I wish I could just surgically remove that emotional creative part of me that keeps wanting to make imagery.   I hear this thing inside of us drives other artists insane too and it’s been this way all my life, particularly as it’s become lonelier and lonelier and because of that, sometimes I really don’t want to look at what comes out of me.   And while it’s had its rewards it cuts me to ribbons too.   It is right now.   I could have done without it.   Life as an emotionless cog in the machinery wouldn’t be so bad.

So now, at fifty-nine, I think I know why the stereotype of the starving artist exists.   It isn’t because they can’t find decent work, it’s because they know what will happen when they do, so they stay in their little slumtown lofts and hovels because any work that pulls them away from the creative urge makes their inner lives a complete mess.   Well…more mess then what would be normal for them anyway. In the end the choice isn’t live a very low budget life but get to do your work whenever you want to, verses get a good job and appease the creative urge in your spare time…it’s follow your heart or slowly go mad, pick one.

Wish I’d been brave enough to take the poor scrappy starving artist path. Who knows, maybe the boyfriend would have been somewhere along that way.   But nerve was always something I had trouble with having enough of.   Just ask Tico.

Anyway…to those confronting the haters today and tomorrow…be proud. You are writing new lines in the history books. Wish I could be there with my cameras to get some shots of it happening.

A friend from back in the BBS days recently posted a photo of the Names Quilt panel of his very dear and still very deeply missed friend. It reminded me of something I need to keep close to my heart whenever I wonder if my art work matters much at all in the grand scheme of things, and why should I even bother.   I was given the task of designing that panel, after the passing away of the one it was to be in tribute to. His name was Chip.

I was not as close to Chip as the friend who brought me the work, and I was deeply honored he even thought I would be up to the task.   His friend made a few suggestions as to how to proceed, gave me some needed pieces to start with.   I thought about it, about the person it was for, and about all his friends, and their love.   What I was being asked to create was a pretty simple design, but I was afraid of getting it all wrong.   Chip was much beloved in his circle of family and friends and I wanted more then anything to give them something that let them remember and heal.

There is an utterly non-verbal place inside where there are only feelings, and images that are feelings.   I have no words to describe it…it’s just how that most creative part of the work happens. There are no words.   I don’t even try to find words in there anymore.   But there are images.

I drew a rough sketch and presented it for approval and the friend was so taken with it he insisted that was it and no more needed doing.   He organized a gathering of Chip’s friends and the sketch was projected onto a canvas sheet and we all worked on it.   I’d included a spot organic to the design where friends could sign their names, and perhaps leave their own memories, thereby completing it…making it the perfect tribute I alone never could.   Basically all I did was create the setting.   But it had to be something that put them instantly in mind of their friend, so all those feelings would come out of them, and they could do the rest, and make it their own.   It worked.   They put their own hands on it, and made it their tribute to their friend.

It’s part of the larger Names Project Quilt now.   Time passes, the universe expands, and decades later that panel is still very much a place of remembrance and healing for Chip’s friends.   It was a small enough task, but I will never feel as though I’ve ever done anything more worthwhile with my talents, such as they are.   All artists want recognition.   But even more what we want is to touch hearts, and maybe, if we’re good enough, lift them up a little.   I can go to my own grave knowing my art was able to do it that one time when it was needed.   Just a little sketch, but it did its work.

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”
-Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me