This is NOT About Halloween

I suppose most people writing blog posts today will be all about Halloween.  This post won't be.  I have nothing against Halloween - I'm just indifferent to it for the most part.  I do remember the costumes my mother made for us quite fondly, though.  And candy.  Definitely candy.

I would change kids to cats here

No, this post is once again about art journaling, because that's where I've devoted a lot of time and energy lately.  I'm really trying to make it an area where I'm thinking about things.  I might think too much but it's fine with me.  I also seem to be spending too much time and energy cleaning and organizing, but let's not go there.  

(non sequitur - this post is being written while listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony - glorious)

Back to the point, ahem.  the journal exchange Lisa and I are doing is still in full swing and I just wanted to show you what I've done recently.  As I think I've said, I usually don't have a plan when I do the journals.  I'm making myself play (kind of a contradiction in terms) because I have a bad habit of sticking to tried and true.  And even in the journals you'll see that.  However, I'm breaking out of the bonds of sameness ever so slowly.  Like molasses.

So here you have the early stages (I have no idea which journal these pages belong to as the journals are packed and ready to go back to Texas)

The left page has a a paper foreground of punchinella-style white paper over a red bronze paint background.  On the right, a very thin, delicate webby type paper was used. On the background I used things like jar openers to create texture but I thought it'd be more fun to use the webby paper instead - both papers came from RISD's store, I think.

 I used a set of rub-ons from 7 Gypsies to add interest - I forget the name of it but it's been discontinued.  I bought a bunch of them from Lisa (she has an online shop called collagestuff.com) on clearance.  I like rub-ons better than rubber stamps, actually since I never seem to stamp properly without leaving marks that shouldn't be there.

I then added a bunch of stuff to the left page.  The "Work Hard..." quote comes from a postcard advertising the recent Pawtucket (RI) Arts Festival, a month-long celebration of the arts held every September in this industrial city trying hard to find an identity (and the city where I was born, incidentally).

Obligatory cute picture of cat

As usual I have my helper - if you want to call him that.  He and I were playing a game of "who gets the chair first?"  Doesn't matter that he has four chairs to choose from - he wants the one I'm using, and so each time I get up to find something (a neverending activity), he sits on my chair.  Doesn't mind being turfed off it though.

The final result of the second page is something I quite like.  It's weird, like myself, and perhaps I need to do a larger version of him.  He's so serious yet he's flying around attached to a card from a game called "Flinch," which I've never heard of but you can read about it here.  

I think the wings might be too small for the weight of the card, though.  He's wearing a deerstalker hat too, though I think he's probably wearing it wrong.

So there you have this week's art journal session.  What do you think?

later,
lin

Out of All the Hours Thinking....

As I write this on Friday afternoon I am listening to a collection of Beethoven Adagios.  The dictionary defines "adagio" as a movement or composition that's to be played in a slow tempo.  Usually an adagio is part of a larger composition, such as a concerto or symphony.

Thus endeth the music lesson.

I know that classical music purists look down upon collections of disparate and unconnected classical music pieces as meant for amateur music lovers.  More "serious" classical music-aholics listen to the full composition.  Which I also do.

Find it here

When I'm experiencing psychiatric angst, I know that my two collections of Beethoven adagios, plus other collections I have of pieces by Bach, Albinoni, Mozart, or Vivaldi will soothe my soul - and mind - in a way that a full symphony won't.  I need that slowness.  

I've been in a state lately where audio and visual hallucinations, plus PTSD flashbacks, have been dominating my world, and where being around people is actually painful, as painful as some may find fingernails scraping down a chalkboard to be.  

Still from Matchbox 20's song "Unwell" 

I've been unable to be present online as often as I had been. Facebook and social media, as necessary as it is to my social and professional life, has become an incessant wall of noise that has had the same effect on me as do encounters with people in real life.  I've had to retreat. 

 I haven't been able to work on the shop.  My previous renewed energy and enthusiasm for making work to sell has come to a grinding halt, only 3 weeks after I ended a summer sabbatical I found necessary because  I was experiencing similar symptoms in May and ended up doing a course of outpatient therapy at a local hospital.

Oh yeah, the obsessional thinking too.

When I saw my therapist on Wednesday, she was concerned that stepping back from the business may be an "all or nothing" thing - a tendency of those with Borderline Personality Disorder (definition here), which is one of the psychiatric illnesses I deal with.  But she reluctantly realized that this might actually be something I have to do, to relieve self-imposed pressure for a while.  And find something else I can work on.

Which I'm doing.  Earlier this week, my friend Lisa sent back my journal and a new one she started, and I started pages in them on Thursday night.  A little bit at a time.  No pressure.

I have a show coming up at the Mill Gallery where everything has to be 10"x10." I'd already finished one piece for that, and have started another, and even might try to do a third.

And I have a project that needs to get started, a very personal, difficult project that will become a sort of "anti-scrapbook."  What I mean is that scrapbooks usually celebrate good times with introspective, sweet, happy bits of journal entries describing the events chronicled. Happy families sort of things - well, no one wants to chronicle bad times, right?

I'm planning to do the opposite in order to try exorcising the demons.  I'm not sure if I will share that particular journey.  But I think it's a project I need to try to accomplish.

I am trying to keep that creative life happening, but... you know.


I do have to say this, though.   There are those who have checked out this blog and been annoyed by my 'whining' about dealing with mental illness.  

Yet, so often people can't talk about mental illness and how it impacts their lives.  People are ashamed to write about their struggles.  People are afraid to write about the difficulties their mental illness causes.  There's a belief (too often validated) that if one talks about their mental illness, they'll be judged, ridiculed, bullied, ignored - or fired from jobs. Which sort of happened to me.  My writing about what I experience are a very small effort to try to change that.  If I'm to write about my art life, I need to be honest about what impacts it.  And my mental illness affects my life 24/7.  And my ability to create my work.

I do my best to push past the symptoms. I try to present a "shiny happy" persona.  I've been in that habit for so long, it's second nature.  Because of it, however, people mostly "can't tell" that I am mentally ill because I'm not fitting the stereotype.  So I defeat my purpose of being real about my struggles.

Behind that persona, I am often howling in a mental anguish I am too afraid to reveal.  At least face to face.

Writing about it is easier.  And at least here I'm being honest.  I think most people want honesty.  I hope they do.  But if they don't, I'm still going to keep writing posts like this.  I hope you'll stick around to read them - no offense taken if you don't.

And I'm going to continue to listen to those amateurish collections of adagios too.  

later,
lin

I'm Hearing Images, I'm Seeing Songs

Most people who know me know that I am an insatiable lover of music.  And many of those people know that I have amassed a lot of music trivia and factoids that most people really could care less about.

Yes, I will admit that I probably need a 12 step program to ease my addiction to music, but there are indeed worse obsessions, I will argue.

My love of music dates back to childhood when the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (a true maestro) would broadcast his program "Young People's Concerts" on Saturdays and later Sundays, and my parents would insist that I watch them.  They didn't have to force me - I was transfixed by the sights and sounds of an orchestra.

Music was always playing in the house.  I remember well the old stereo we had, with the blue case, that was often busy with whatever LPs my dad felt like playing.  The stereo was, for me, a holy thing and it was a great thrill when I was finally allowed to use it myself.  One of my favorite gifts as a child was my very own little portable record player, and I still remember the 45 inch singles I had of songs by Peter Paul and Mary and other artists.

 The very first 45 I bought myself was Elton John's "Your Song," which became the song my ex-husband and I would have danced our first dance to, had we not had to speed up our wedding because we had to move to Syracuse, New York for his job.

Throughout my adult years, music also was a major influence.  It was also a refuge.  When things were really awful at home, I could hide away with my earphones and Walkman (for those who don't remember, a portable tape player and radio made by Sony) or play my music on my own stereo on my room.

Ironically, one of the things that kept me going was also one of the things that drove me to distraction.  For some reason, when I first started having audio hallucinations, it was music that I heard over and over.  Not complete songs, either.  Instead I heard rapid and short bursts of melodies that would change without warning and sometimes repeat itself.  There were pieces I came to hate because they would be a constant backdrop, such as Aaron Copeland's "Appalachian Spring."

It's difficult living with that noise that is almost a constant.  It wasn't just music but also verbal hallucinations where I would hear muffled conversations in the background that were rarely understandable.  None of my physicians have ever been able to figure out where this comes from.  And it's so much a part of my life that, I suppose, I've gotten used to it.

So what do I do to counter it?  More music.  And TV of course.  But mostly music.  It's rare that I don't have something playing in the background.  I go through personal fads - some longer than others.  Much of the time it's classical CDs if I'm not working online.  Mozart, Bach, Mussorgsky, Beethoven, medieval chants all find their way into my CD player.  Other CDs I play frequently include the Indian singer Sheila Chandra, Mumford and Sons, Coldplay, Stan Getz, 1920s jazz, Led Zeppelin, and so on.

And that doesn't even include my Amazon MP3 library which is chock full of everything from classical music to Lady Gaga (only one song by her, though).  I mentioned in a recent Facebook post that my phone's MP3 player had made a weird transition, from Simon & Garfunkel to Van Halen.  I think some people thought that was funny.  I did, anyway.

What's the point of this point?  Simply that my piece of mind AND my creativity are fed by another of the fine arts, music.  

Sometimes I think about what sense I would hate losing the most - sight or sound - and it's a difficult thing to decide.  Being blind would be so difficult because I would not see the sunset or sunrise (if I'm up that early -a  rare thing), I would not see people's faces, and it'd be hard to make stuff.  But hearing - oh to not hear music - that would be horrible.  True, I would have the memory of music I know well to, well, listen to.  But without the external noise to counteract, I can't imagine what I'd do about the other audio hallucinations.

And this is actually a serious question I've asked myself because I am indeed partially deaf in both ears and depend on hearing aids. 

I hope, though, that I won't actually have to answer that question anytime soon.

My love of music does make its way into my work, as in this small wall art canvas that depicts a young violinist at one with her instrument.  It's one of my favorites.  You can find it by clicking on the name below the image

The Violinist

What music are you compelled to listen to?

later,
lin

P.S.  The title of this post is taken from a song by ABBA, called "I Let the Music Speak"