No New Music

I'm not yet middle-aged nor in danger of a destructive midlife crisis, yet there are few people thereabouts my own age that don't seem to be so lucky in this respect. I'm talking about the already jaded claims every generation jeers about, in that jaded, grizzled tone: there's no new music/movies/books/ideas etc.

I can't say for certain this isn't true. Every book is a different combination of the same 26 letters. Every movie had a clear beginning, middle and end. Tropes are used over and over. People really haven't changed much since that last big crawl over the evolutionary hump. Music theory has already proven that certain chords and formats always make the most popular music.

So what's the point?

The point is that people are too overly focused on the elements of egotism, formula, and inflexible taste to really look at the magic of creation. It's not the fame and fortune that keeps people from creating when their work is likely to just be a saturated influence of all the things that have already been done. Yet, lately, I've been digging around YouTube and I'm seeing some pretty inspiring channels. A voice coach that dissects professional artists and covers without trashing anyone. A girl who takes the songs of one artist to do it in the style of another. A digital painter that teaches you to paint skin without a step by step format because art is still personal. A brilliant watercolor painter who was ridiculed for his style in art school but blows me away with his work.

I won't keep you in suspense, so I'll post these channels now:

Sam Johnson

Ali Spagnola

Istebrak 

Laovaan

I might link those when I jump on my laptop later, but as I usually blog on a tablet, the switching around is tedious...

What really stands out for me is that, whether you want to or not, it's really hard not to feel the pull of both their obvious skills and passion for what they do. I'm not really the sort that is drawn to artists for their public image, and that's never more true than my more recent fascination with Billie Eilish. I don't care for her videos or cultivated 'rebel' look. P!nk was similarly the edgy pop star that didn't fit as the pretty little industry princess. Yet when I'm listening to music, I care less about whatever image they cultivate for themselves and wholly about what their work creates in me. In both cases, these women speak to me because they create moving music. The same goes for Alanis Morissette, who in her advent days, did a lot of weird twitchy grunge girl videos. Undeniably, her music overpowered any visual accompaniment.

Who did it first? Well, who really cares? Historically, when things had to have been 'new' at some point, were they ever really new at all or was the combination and delivery just really resonate with experiences or innate feelings we always had as humans? The first humans were already creating, even when survival was supposedly all we had time for. The crude cave paintings were often renderings of actual animals, but then you see the hints of pure imagination. Imagine how crazy the fellow cavepeople thought their friend who was painting SIX legged buffalo!

So, yes, some artists are awe-inspiring in their ability to reproduce things we actually see with painstaking accuracy with tools most of us can only manage to use to scrawl out a chicken scratch signature. Some artists wow in the abstract or fantastical categories. Some start movements or never end up trending until they aren't alive to experience it.

But when you find yourself jaded by the thought that nothing is 'new', remember to look for the people who are caught in the whirlwind of inspiration. Look for that mix of humility, enthusiasm, and obsession and listen to the way they are looking at the things you gloss over. Stop giving everything seconds or minutes of the time it takes to look at a finished product and start analyzing the hours and months that go into the work.

Appreciation is becoming lost in the flood of consumption. It can happen to any of us and it can be fixed. Rather than being the crab at the bottom of the tank, yanking everything back down, catch the flow and ride along at the top. Be vulnerable to experience change. 

I definitely doesn't mean you have to catch every trend. Nothing on this earth could make me appreciate mumble rap. But there's still innovation and connection out there. Shed some of the salt and moss gathering on your skin and look for it.

Work, Work, Work, Work, Work

It's my favorite kind of weather and I woke up tempted to go back to bed. The only way to get the energy going was to bend to the joyless task of housework. Not just the normal fare like vacuuming, dusting and wiping. No, I went whole hog and bleached the kitchen garbage can, scraped my windows (I'm installing some of those heat-reducing films later this week), and covering evidence of where my adorable little hell-cats managed to scrape paint off of the wall.

It worked. So I worked.

Finished up the business card image:

Done with my XP-Pen Artist 22E Pro

Playing with the design for it, but not yet done with that. I spent the better part of today just cleaning this image up and hadn't set up a business card template beforehand so I just took care of that part.

I may do more tonight, if not, tomorrow is going to be another gorgeous day to do it!

Goal Met!

Order placed, I'm now awaiting my XP Pen 22E digital pro drawing display! It's not scheduled to arrive until mid to late next week but I plan on doing a review of it once I've had some time to set it up and give it a go.

The remnants of the fatal fish fiasco are cleaned up. I've moved my furniture around to start anew. Still some tidying to do but after four taxing days on my feet, I'm going to get some decent rest in before I tackle more housework. My sister got us pizza for dinner so it saved me the work of cooking too. Another beautiful day to keep my spirits up too.

My cats probably want you to know that they are not happy with the changes. Moved furniture is more change than they like but they'll get over it. They also probably wanted me to give them the fish. I draw a lot of lines with them and that's one I've repeatedly told them would never happen. Family doesn't eat family, no matter how delicious.

You and Me on the Ceiling

Choosing a topic can be difficult at times; not because there's nothing to talk about but because of the sheer number of possibilities. Rambling is fun too, but on occasion, I've thought it might be even more fun to grab-bag some topics, tackle them with my own perspective.

Pulling from a list of possible 'writerly' topics, I came across: how do you come up with characters for your stories?

The simplest answer is in the heading: one-on-one conversations with a best friend, staring at my ceiling. I have sloped ceilings in my bedroom. I'm not fond of bright light or too much blank space. I don't really do much eye contact when talking, so I usually end up talking while staring off in the direction of my ceiling. When I'm doing some of that rambling, I'm not exactly talking about my characters or my story at all, but often, it's the act of doing nothing related to thinking about my story that makes them as real as the life I want them to have.

Sure, I guess sometimes, we tend to borrow snippets of people we know, observe, idealize, loathe. Maybe even pets or a favorite character in our consumerism becomes the inspiration. 

Brainstorming can be a ripe pain in the ass for me. If it wasn't such a spoiler, I'd take a snapshot of the word vomit I just made of a couple pages in a notebook. There are some things clearly labeled, things like ADD TO SCENE or CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT or PLOT, (all caps because my inner muse screams at me in a German accent) but most are squeezed in scribbles of an 'oh, yeah, put this somewhere too.'

And my Scrivener notes on characters? Never to see the light of day. I end up really yanking a character from their ideal to a more organic development once they breathe the air of the world I put them in.

Sometimes I draw them, sure, but I'm really not a big fan of always defining what the reader sees. Granted, I did do that with my first series, but magical humans and hybrid creatures are not something I wanted to throw away with 'whoa, dude, there was like this big venus flytrap only it's blue and eats people! RAWR!' I see a lot with the young ones, this insecurity about providing fan art, maps, visual references that are supposed to enhance the reader experience. While I certainly use such things for expression and the writing process, let's not forget that book readers are there for the words. When you see popular series with their artbooks, maps, etc. these were often done later, so it's also entirely possible to just focus on the writing and worry about dressing it up for fans later.

When it comes to aids for character design, I often end up with folders with images of fashion types, hairstyles, bits and pieces rather than just the picture of an actor or model. I use these specifically for when their clothing becomes part of the plot-- a raincoat, a half cape, a corset with loose laces, etc. While head to toe, I'm usually mentally dressing them for their appearances, this is only a practice for me because my focus is still on keeping it interesting to read. If I mention them wearing a hat, there's always that place in mind that makes sure that, unless it's pinned firmly, it might be falling off or getting wet or burnt or otherwise assaulted by its environment, so do I really want it there?

More often than not, even though I do play with planning and deliberation, the dynamics of conversation and development are more likely built in cracking jokes, heart-to-hearts, emotional or light talks with someone who doesn't mind my brain dumping.

With my feet on my sloped ceiling, looking at and talking about nothing in particular.

The Distance and the Intimacy: The Love Affair with Writing

We're all consumers before we are creators, no matter how much our parents/caregivers might have insisted the massive dumps in our diapers were a sight to behold. Learning faces through the blur of first sight, hearing every strange noise to prickle the ear-- assuming we're born with all senses intact, that is. (Perhaps this is why some deprivation of sense is fascinating to me, but I'll get to that.)

What do I mean by distance and intimacy? Well, not all of us really know that our 'passions' have longevity so there's a time issue involved. Sometimes, and for long periods of time, we may break up with our passions, cheat on them, all the while pining for them. Sometimes a particularly sensitive piece creates a different phenomenon of distance/intimacy. Sometimes we need to blubber and roll in the juices and sometimes we need to be the harsh logical judge of it. We get through the passion parts and then poke, edit, play, indulge, reject, accept-- it's 12 stages of grief and euphoria, but we each fill in the blanks. I've said before-- ebb and flow and some of the best writing I've seen uses the push and pull of development, to align with the very real state of many struggles. Something the characters move on their motivations, sometimes things have to happen to them. Do we take the omniscient look and hash it out in great detail or do we limit it to experience the spotty details alongside the character? Neither one is king when it comes to depth. From any perspective, we can get uncomfortably close or coldly analytical.

There are a lot of aspects to me, for one, that people try to explain. It's especially trendy these days to assume to speak for others, even when the subject is more than capable. I suppose you could narrow down my attitudes to trauma, whether it be my sexuality, my draw towards art and writing, my lifestyle. You could correlate things simply, but there's more to that history than I will ever feel comfortable writing or explaining, especially when it pertains to the 'stressors' outside of myself, the people that did and still can terrorize me if I step over the line. I will not give them that piece of fame, to ride on whatever failures or successes I have in my life with association. If you have bogeymen in your life, give them to your fictions. A memoir is the thing to write if you outlive them all.

That being said, there are 'other' things. Things I stopped trying to understand, things I use and learn to master as much as possible and I don't aim to be mysterious with those so I'll describe this the best I can without using labels that might give you false impressions.

I've struggled with neuropathic issues from a very early age. For no apparent reason or stressor, I've temporary lost my sight or hearing or sense of touch, or had them 'heightened' to unbearable and painful levels. No amount of searching ever gave me answers and in most cases, I was too afraid to tell. I had some wonderful teachers along the way that saw me melting down in my confusion and helped me, no questions, no words. Sometimes it was just a space to cry in their office, sometimes it was me interrupting to go to the bathroom. The counselor, for some reason, really liked me, even gave me her home phone number and told me to call if I needed it, made sure all my teachers knew that I could leave class any time I needed to (on days I bothered to show up, I didn't leave class at all-- kind of an all-or-nothing when it comes to showing up). It's not that these people thought I was suicidal, but looking back, I think they knew my 'other' better than books or doctors had any grasp of back then. They also saw my potential. Another thing I couldn't see without hindsight, but learned to trust some people when they said good things about me.

Because I don't see what's in front of me or, rather, rarely do. I see things more clearly looking back, sometimes beating myself up for how stupid or ineffective I was in the moment. I became adept at trying to recreate the person I wanted to be, to try to learn to be a person that can see the moment or even a little ahead, learn to anticipate the world around me. Somewhere in the invention of myself, I became a storyteller. I never saw a place for THAT (I never could get the taste for lying) in my life, but there was a pocket I'd stumbled on where worlds did wait. Despite all the characters and events happening over 'there', it could still be a lonely place, not a place of inside jokes and the things I could talk about with others who weren't familiar. So I wanted to find ways to show people. I was already building those places, learning to express through art and writing what I struggled to say.

An honest place, one I have trouble lying about too. It's not a place that can actually speak for my desires, doubts or fears, just a gathering ground from my journey in this world. And I don't have these fascinating stories of world travel, but I can simulate it through the means that I have. It's maddening, a bloom of chaos and beauty. It can be safe and warm or frigid and frightening. It affects moods that people can't see the reason for, and sometimes I don't even know why I feel or act the way I do. It can be a real bastard trying to recreate it for the sharing. Yeah, sometimes I thought about giving up because creation and using it to funnel what I don't really understand is never a safe place. It's erratic and it's not structured. Because of that, writing...

Writing holds structure or none at all. The only demand is what you intend for it. I wrote stories for school, but then I wrote stories in school when I was supposed to be doing something else. Just little stories. 'Born to Play Video Games' and 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Kitties'... (I loved the Turtles, but the idea of drawing humanoid cats was just so appealing.) I wrote poems when I fell in love with rhythm and rhyme. It was music and color in words alone. Alongside this passion, always came the impulse and whimsy of 'doodling'. I love that word too, doodling. So often it was said to me in an attempt to belittle it or guilt me for wasting time, but doodling and noodling about-- those things brought me closer to a feeling of rightness. Doodling has brought me closer to some of the most amazing people in my life-- my best friends, family, and my friend's children especially. No matter how much adulting pressures my drawing to be 'more', kids always give me this surreal sense of expertise I forget to see sometimes. They're not comparing me to 'masters' or ticking off all they've liked better; they're capable of just loving it for what it is. (Not unique to kids, by the way-- my best friends always seem to lift me up like this too. Also people who are terrible at lying, but are also likely to clam up if they don't want to hurt my feelings either.)

It's hard to say whether I can make my characters and worlds resonate the same way they do with me. I'm not someone who can see the hook, the blurb, the simplification of the big picture. My love affair with writing and creating is selfish but it wants to be generous. It can feel superficial, it can feel overly deep. Courageous and cowardly. I can't lie, but sometimes I can omit or gloss over, defense mechanisms for survival and a habit I try to break.

I write because... it's too big to contain. Because otherwise it can leak out where I don't want it to. Just like my neuropathic struggles, it's not about the cure, but working with the intuitive treatment of it. Writing is often a sensitive organism, sometimes needing compassion, sometimes needing tough love. Raising kids-- much the same. You treat every kid the same and they lose sight of what could motivate them to improve or change. I don't discipline my nephews the same, nor reward them the same and when they notice this, I explain the circumstances, let them see the logic (the punishment fits the crime and so on). Almost always, a punishment or a reward merits a discussion, but there is also a lot of time for play, contemplation, or things being what they will be. I never wanted to be a parent, but like most labels, it's not important. These little guys grew on me and the one thing I want to give them are tools to maneuver through an unfair, unsympathetic, confusing world.

I write because it's not an exaggeration to say they saved me. I call them my little heroes. I knew it would never be fair for a human being to inherit my issues, but I did need 'new life' to remind me of the one the world tried to beat out of me. I did find myself and it wasn't just through me. It was all the things they helped me see-- family/friends, writing, drawing, music. I didn't need to 'have kids' to learn to look ahead. I just needed to open myself to the 'other' things.

Why I Started Coloring with Orange

I've had this weird aversion to the color orange for as long as I can remember. It wasn't a strong feeling because if it had been, I might have been conscious of it. It seemed every year I was in school, the school would demand 'new' school supplies, which meant more colored pencils. We'd just dump the rest into the big box at home and never really look at them ever again.

At least until I was older. Sorting them out, it became immediately clear that the oranges were almost never sharpened, still with the vertical ridges of the original factory sharpening visible even. I knew by then that I often had a preference for dark or cool colors-- blues, greens, purples, but also deep reds and golden yellows/browns, but I was still steering clear of orange.

Again, not sure why. In 7th grade, one of my favorite outfits involved a sleeveless orange tank and a long purple zippered jacket. Orange with purple seemed to be the only exception. In fact, some of my favorite tropical flowers are orange and purple.

Visually, the complementary colors also don't speak to me. I like purple with orange, not yellow. Blue with red, not orange. Green with yellow, not red. I think the whole red and green thing was something I found obnoxious about Christmas unless it was more like a burgundy and forest green. It would have been nice to know why I had a visual stubbornness, but at the same time, people were always complimenting me on my very different color choices.

One of the things I possess is a very handy Color Layout book I got in college. Even though I manage to find some great color combinations I resonate with, I still tend to find the fundamental 'complements' a lot pickier in my shade preference tolerance. Remember the fad involving hot pink and chocolate brown? I could dig that combo and I'm also not a fan of hot-anything where colors are concerned. I still think a bubblegum pink or turquoise is absolutely amazing with a brown, although fuchsia and brown is a close third.

I didn't want to be color stubborn. I didn't want to be inflexible or even start to lean too hard on pieces where people liked the colors. I liked to note that for future use, but I still intended to be experimental, to find other people's color preferences outside of my own.

Orange was not an easy color for me to want to use though. I ended up making peace with a creamsicle orange. A really vibrant orange cone shade can even work as a single focal point in a composition. Sometimes I lean out of orange and end up closer to peach, but I still try to find places for orange. As an artist, I need to understand how I can make colors work. There are many people who ask me to do art and they love the color orange. It just feels like I'm copping out if I won't do it because I don't like orange.

Hey, I've done the same with fears. Although I'm not going to list them in a public forum, there are many that I've turned from phobias to just uncomfortable and inconvenient. To me, my aversion to orange wasn't something I wanted to become comfortable with though. I wanted the challenge of using it to be stronger than my feelings for it. How could I use it in a way that didn't ruin the visual for me?

Of course, you'll probably find some speculative psychology behind it, but it doesn't sound like a solution nor will it really enlighten you about me. There are a lot of things that I realize are potentially destructive unconscious habits that, once brought to light, I find it most important to go ahead and challenge them.

What about you? Are you comfortable in certain anti-productive preferences or habits? How would challenging them help you grow?

All right, blogging is fun, but time to jump over to writing. I got a nice little break from it yesterday when my dear friend Emily paid a visit, but I should put a little mileage into it today. I have some scheduled posts attacking topics like bigotry and what we attack writers for writing about coming up, just in case I get a little too involved to remember to blog. Handy little thing, that. Makes me seem a lot more present or frequent even when I'm pounding out a few posts then disappearing for a week or so. See you around! Hope you find some fun rabbit holes to explore!