Getting back on the horse (typed out in Notes app last night and made into a post today)
My inability to move forward with things quickly could be because I do too many things at the same time. It could be because I’m addicted to letting them and me breathe. When I was young my mom brought this to my attention, because I did watercolour, and would abandon paintings I lost interest in. Later on when I was young, I was thrown off the horse I rode while in canter. Right on my ass. I was in shock, amazed to be unhurt and the only reason I didn’t want to get back on was because he was really grumpy that morning, and he never acted like that, and I knew he was going to get his way. But, I got back on poor beautiful grumpy Eugene. We made about two more laps before he made it really clear he wanted to call it quits so we did. I still dream about him, and the stables at my neighbour’s whose horse I met a few times. In my dreams I see them and it’s always the other horse I greet and ride as though she’s a long lost friend.
Well, I’m getting back on. Like I just talked about, I needed the summer off to work in my garden while it worked on me. As much as I’d hoped it’d be THE summer summer and everything in life would move forward together and explode at once. I just re-read the introduction to my eroticism, culture and image making series and I’ll be nice and unlock it. But here’s the deal, I’m censoring some key images, and I’m unlocking it as an enticement: I’m writing again so that’s where the energy goes. I’m on Instagram because I have to be as a creative business person and worker, and to hold the leash I already have on people and jingle it once in a while with whatever the hell I want to. There is no content strategy there, I’m posting at my own resonant frequency, and it’s probably confusing, and I don’t care.
Someone once described my Instagram presence as “chaotic and elegant” and my honest reaction was, “it would seem chaotic to people who don’t get me enough or don’t know what having a personality is” but I didn’t say that. Elegant, yes, I’ll take it.
Today after sharing the Instagram-facing version of this note there, I had a few back and forths with friends who responded about the sense of something like a painting or a photograph ever being finished, or being necessary to declare complete. Which is a slightly different engagement than writing, because when we write we usually have declare something ready for something, and any subsequent changes are also more official. Some crowd sourced insights:
it’s never unfinished, because unfinished is finished (some quote, can’t remember source)
work on several pieces at a time, to distribute your attention and freshness, and declare something finished when you truly just don’t want to work on it anymore (friend’s instructor in art school)
you never have to think of a photograph as fully finished, the exposure is the beginning of its life (my curator)
Anyway. LET’S RIDE.
