Elevation

All year I’ve been thinking:

I’m blocked. I should be working. Why can’t I make art-work anymore? I’m a hopeless case. I think it’s finished and I’ll never be able to work again etc.

How horrible is that? Life went on (in its usual way) but deep inside, I was afraid that it was gone somehow. But ofcourse, I was completely wrong. It came back. And then it came back some more. And now it comes all the time (somehow that doesn’t sound right but I’m going to ignore it).

A recent example:

untitled

Oh well. Bad photograph of weird artwork. There’s more where it came from and that makes me very happy indeed.

My Ailing Fecundity

Shake me like a monkey. Didn’t they say Rembrandt had sold his soul to the devil? This is embarrassing. I’ve never been lacking when it comes to making and here I am, miserable in my lack of creativity. There is nothing at all in my head. Even my little victory (I did get tenured by the HEC after an epic battle with their evil forces) means little in the face of this adversity. Which means little considering the ministry’s ban on new appointments - so it’s not even a real victory. Even so…

I have been missing for a while. I have been down and out. I’ve been diseased and depressed. That plane crash hurt me very badly. And then watching the terrible flood videos on TV made it worse. Then I got the flu. I still have it and all I can do is watch episodes of Fringe back to back while I lie in bed.

I think I’ll go away for a while.

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

Being the queen of procrastination and suffering from a terrible artists’ block, I was looking up different meanings of, well, block. Isn’t that riotously lame? Anyway, one was particularly interesting:

An inability to remember or think of something you normally can do; often caused by emotional tension

Yes. That defines my life. It has become so intolerable that I have had to resort to watching shoddy campfests like Meteor (1979) which is really one of the lamest disaster films ever. I bet a very small population of mankind has even heard of it. Or I could be underestimating the power of boredom. Usually apocalyptic/disaster films with bad dialogues about impending doom make me feel a lot better but this one is exceptionally bad so I had to resort to looking up definitions (the next best thing).

The act of obstructing or deflecting someone’s movements

Of course I am obstructing myself – or something is blocking me. I wish I knew what it was. All I could manage in the last month is this:

Unfinished and untitled

And it isn’t even complete. I wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. It seems I’ve lost the ability to make anything. A much more experienced and older artist friend told me it happens and I should run away and see the world some more and it will come right back. I hope he’s right.