It Gets Dark, It Gets Lonely

So I am finally feeling like making art after 3 years of not producing anything. I’ve been an art bum. Crud. But now I’m inspired, and I’m just thinking about what it’s like to make art. It’s so hard sometimes, just me and my thoughts alone in a room with some technology and dirty laundry piling up. The blacks get washed with the whites because my brain is somewhere else. And it’s so constant, I’m sitting down at breakfast with pen in hand scribbling in case the magic sentence that works will show up for some coffee. Walking down the street so fancy free and I totally space out while my characters have a conversation in my head that I need to go write down. Recently at an art event some friends were surprised that I brought my sketch book.

The Muse strikes at odd times, it’s true. Sometimes a gentle tapping, sometimes a full on punch in the face. Sometimes she’s there for hours getting giddy and you have to call her a cab to send her home. Sometimes she runs into my bedroom in the middle of the night and shakes me awake with the perfect moment.

The hardest part is when the concept is still so abstract, so fuzzy and out of focus, far away but you just know it’s there. Excavating your soul until you can make sense of it, and then trying to put it into a form other people can make sense of.

It’s worth it though, I think. I try to believe that anyway. I make work so other people don’t feel as lonely as I do. Yeah, if someone asked me today why I make art, that’s what I would say.