doubt

Antid Oto #17: The chair repels my ass

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

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 #11: Dear Janet

The Janet in this letter is Janet Lilo. She lives in New Zealand, and we have not seen each other for six long years. She is a very great artist. You can find her here.

And here are the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars:

How To Start Something

All the things I did to put off writing the first post for this blog:

1. Carefully painted on 3 (three!) layers of bright purple lipstick. Blot, apply, blot, apply, blot, apply again. Perfect. NOW! I can start.

2. Made coffee. Then tea.

3. Peeled a fruit. Ate it.

4. Blogged on the other blog.

5. Dishes! Such a clean sink. READY TO START!

6. No. Check email. Maybe something important. Yes! Update from some random gallery… in BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND.

7. Lalalalalallaala strum my ukulele

8. It’s so hard, so hard. Why’s it so hard? 45 minutes of Existential Thinking.

9. Google. For three hours. One of the search queries may or may not have been ‘how to start’, also ‘make vegetable stock’, also ‘cool eye makeup’, also ‘DIY dress’, also ‘hawk tattoo’.

10. Quick email check. Press that refresh button like it’s going out of style. Yes! Press release from random gallery. So many people doing things. Living lives. Starting projects. Why must I be such a loser? All that time, lost lost lost. Never to be recovered.

11. Go out to the garden. Look at the weeds. Stare into space. Okayyyy… deep breath! NOW!

12. Google.

And so it goes. Repeated in one form or another for DAYS.

In my seven years of making and showing art, I’ve learned alot of things. I can now walk into a room full of strangers and talk about my work. I can say NO to people. I can ask for help. I can do guerrilla performances on the street.

But there’s one thing that has never gotten easier. Ever. Not even a little bit. And that is…

Starting something.

Anything. Whether it’s writing a project proposal, or moving out of the city, or buying a bicycle.

This little monster costs me more sweat, tears, worry and anxiety than anything else in my life combined. I used to think I would get better at it, a few years from now (whenever the ‘now’ was). But no. The same deep, un-nameable fear, and the same irrational shame at being unable to overcome it.

It’s a strange shadow to live with. Comparatively, making art is easy. It’s like breathing, or playing – it flows, a source of light, a kind of inexhaustible dance.

I think when people say ‘I could never do that’, they’re not actually talking about the ‘that’ as in the doing, the making, the singing, the writing. They’re talking about the shadow. Doubt, fear, guilt, shame. It’s made of all that, and more. I’ve found that it’s pretty inexhaustible too.

I don’t know how to start something at all.

I’m sorry for the misleading title.

You just do it. You have to. There’s no other way, no easy detour or neat path. You hold hands with the shadow, and – cursing all the while – you dance into the light.

Eventually.

Fucking hell, I think I just wrote the first blog post! Maybe I should thank my shadow.

What shadow do you live with, dear reader?

Clips from a little video poem called “Patterns”. I made it in my backyard, for my friends, the awesome folk behind Spread Videoart Project 2 in Japan.