Month: September 2015

Antid Oto #17: The chair repels my ass

antidoto016

I am supposed to write something. I’ve been avoiding it. I ate a hand-full of nuts, then a hand-full of raisins, then went back for more nuts. Soon there will be no more nuts, or raisins. I walked in circles around my house. I picked 5 fleas off the cat’s belly. I have fallen into a hundred little holes on the internet, or just one big one that’s incredibly deep, and crawled back up – eyes itching, shoulders aching, mind twitching. The chair repels my ass. I want to do everything, anything, all things… except this thing.

The only antidote to the slow doom of not writing, is writing. I don’t know the cause of that doom, but it goes with the writing like my shadow accompanies my self.

They came together, and they go together.

~

Antid Oto – italian for antidote – was one of Leon Trotsky‘s earliest pen names. I also love the Malay word for it: penawar. A few months ago, I started taking regular walks and making drawings afterwards as a way to deal with worry, procrastination, hopelessness, writer’s block, internet rage, and digital distraction. I’ll post a series of them here, one every other day, for as long as I keep making them.

Antid Oto #16: The gap and the edge

antidoto015

I spent the last six weeks making paintings that will be shown in a museum in Australia. Ten years ago, getting into that exhibition and that museum was the height of my ambition. I think about that when I look at these drawings on notebook paper, and puzzle over the gap between my professional artist life and the life that produces drawings like the one above. I remember that all the while I was making it, I hated my drawing – the lack of skill, the amateurism, the banality of what I’d chosen to draw… everything. For 20 minutes or so I walked the very edge of balling the paper up, tossing it into the trash and never drawing again.

That edge thrills and terrifies me. I want to go back there again and again, to trace it in time and space – my imperfect hand making those imperfect lines, not knowing where to go, not knowing how to finish, or why. Doing it anyway.

~

Antid Oto – italian for antidote – was one of Leon Trotsky‘s earliest pen names. I also love the Malay word for it: penawar. A few months ago, I started taking regular walks and making drawings afterwards as a way to deal with worry, procrastination, hopelessness, writer’s block, internet rage, and digital distraction. I’ll post a series of them here, one every other day, for as long as I keep making them.