stairs, stares
There's need for a journal after all, need to address my thoughts to the void, not a listener. Addressing a person posits an expectation of a reaction, but I can think of no reaction appropriate to my current state.
I'm conceptualizing. I'm trying to push the boundaries circumscribed by my deficient, almost wholly absent working memory and build a complex visual construct. The effort is painful, it always is. It's all frustration with the inability to create complexity sufficient to satisfy the inner vision (not vision in the usual sense, if I could visualize this, it would be mission accomplished, but the thrust, the goal), all fear of having to settle for my limitations. It's this mental space that I always avoid so carefully, that causes me so much anxiety to enter, or even contemplate entering. This is the root of the many-year long block.
I bound myself to go here. I knew what I was doing -- creating a motivation so strong that I would go here regardless of how much I hate being here. Because here is where I grow, and the angst is growing pains.
But the motivation itself is adding to the pain. I googled for background photo references (saving promising photos, finally admitting defeat after a sketching session -- I will have to crib a composition, at least partially, after all), then went to browse through D's flickr stream for photos of him, closeups of facial expressions as well as wider shots, shots that capture his unique body language that makes him recognizable to me even from the back. But, of course, there's no way to zoom in on something so specific, and so I looked, also, through endless shots of him frolicking with friends, lovers, cats, shots of him looking like a sweet, vulnerable goof, face open and hopeful, a smile playing somewhere behind the eyes. Looking through all these made me cry. It's hard to name all the reasons why, maybe even harder to really admit them to myself. It's that insistent feeling of being a voyeur, being forever excluded from the range of causes that could bring that expression to his face, wanting so much to own some of these smiles, to share in some of these unguarded moments, knowing how hopeless a proposition that is. Trapped behind a glass wall, I can only look in, but not touch.
This particular torture I brought on myself, I didn't have to commit to the drawing, didn't have to immerse myself once again in the close contemplation of him. But he is one of the few lures strong enough to make me enter that other place, the place where I can become more than I am for a few hours, where I can push against the other kind of walls, the ones on the inside that limit me, and so I have to take the bad with the bad. The Stones had it, sometimes we get what we need. Always trying hurts though.
I'm conceptualizing. I'm trying to push the boundaries circumscribed by my deficient, almost wholly absent working memory and build a complex visual construct. The effort is painful, it always is. It's all frustration with the inability to create complexity sufficient to satisfy the inner vision (not vision in the usual sense, if I could visualize this, it would be mission accomplished, but the thrust, the goal), all fear of having to settle for my limitations. It's this mental space that I always avoid so carefully, that causes me so much anxiety to enter, or even contemplate entering. This is the root of the many-year long block.
I bound myself to go here. I knew what I was doing -- creating a motivation so strong that I would go here regardless of how much I hate being here. Because here is where I grow, and the angst is growing pains.
But the motivation itself is adding to the pain. I googled for background photo references (saving promising photos, finally admitting defeat after a sketching session -- I will have to crib a composition, at least partially, after all), then went to browse through D's flickr stream for photos of him, closeups of facial expressions as well as wider shots, shots that capture his unique body language that makes him recognizable to me even from the back. But, of course, there's no way to zoom in on something so specific, and so I looked, also, through endless shots of him frolicking with friends, lovers, cats, shots of him looking like a sweet, vulnerable goof, face open and hopeful, a smile playing somewhere behind the eyes. Looking through all these made me cry. It's hard to name all the reasons why, maybe even harder to really admit them to myself. It's that insistent feeling of being a voyeur, being forever excluded from the range of causes that could bring that expression to his face, wanting so much to own some of these smiles, to share in some of these unguarded moments, knowing how hopeless a proposition that is. Trapped behind a glass wall, I can only look in, but not touch.
This particular torture I brought on myself, I didn't have to commit to the drawing, didn't have to immerse myself once again in the close contemplation of him. But he is one of the few lures strong enough to make me enter that other place, the place where I can become more than I am for a few hours, where I can push against the other kind of walls, the ones on the inside that limit me, and so I have to take the bad with the bad. The Stones had it, sometimes we get what we need. Always trying hurts though.