Inktober Week 4
Some things get easier over time. You find a rhythm. Your muscles learn the methods, the manoeuvres. Your body remembers all the right moves. After twenty-eight days of making art in response to a different prompt, Inktober has been nothing like that for me. Neil Gaiman says that you never learn to write a novel you only learn to write the novel you're writing. That feels closer to my experience lately. Every day realizing you have no idea what you're doing. Learning as you go. Making it up along the way. Figuring it out. Getting it done. And then forgetting everything the very next day. Relearning it all, all over again.
Day 22 - “Scratchy”
A terrible and uninspiring prompt given to an inspired artist with terrible exhaustion. But, while I was at the gym listening to Oliver Sack's book, Hallucinations, he discussed Phantom Limb Syndrome, and that was something to work with. So much of what we feel the most and feel the most deeply are the things we've lost. The things that left. The things we no longer have. Regret. Nostalgia. Homesickness. Grief and Longing. The twinge of things absent that we always trying to scratch at.
Day 23 - “Celestial”
Quotes have saved me throughout this challenge. It's been Tolkien more than once and Robert Frost so far. This week was no exception. It's been a long time since read On the Road, by Jack Keroac. Or, since I tried to. I couldn't finish it. I just couldn't get into it. It was before my son was born. He graduates this year. I've never tried since, but I still recall this passage:
"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars"
Maye one day I'll try again...but not likely.
Day 24 - "Shallow"
If there's anything you think you'd get used to throughout a creative challenge, it's the feeling of being stuck. And yet, just when you think you've hit the lowest level of stuckness, you discover there's a basement. And when you start to think the basement's not so bad, you find there's a cellar underneath. And cavern below that. And then a subterranean cave. The only shallow was my capacity for creative thought. I cut out the letters to the word "shallow" and tried to arrange it an interesting way. A shallow attempt, indeed. Just two steps above phoning it in.
Day 25 - "Dangerous"
What could be more dangerous than Love. Love is a loss of safety and foreseeable guarantees. "To love at all", says C.S. Lewis, is to be vulnerable". To be laid open, prone and bare. Exposed to hope, and want, and heat, and winter, without a vow of sheathing or defense. If it offers an oath of anything, it is the promise of a heart that will be halved and likely broken. And yet, this is "the ultimate mystery of love", Slavoj Zizek says, that "incompleteness is, in a way, higher than completion", that "Only a lacking...being is capable of love".
Day 26 - "Remove"
Miles Davis said that “It's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play”. That's appreciation for negative space has always stuck with me. Not only in music, but in every kind of artistry. The paradoxical thing however, is that for this piece I removed a bit of myself and added a kind of collaboration. Special thanks to
.Day 27 - "Beast"
There wasn't anything especially clever that motivated this one. Just jealousy, mostly. I love the title of Stephen Graham Jones' book, My Heart is a Chainsaw. I wish I had thought of it, and I wanted to to try to steal it in some way.
Day 28 - "Sparkle"
I took a couple days off work, which is something I almost never do. I wanted to spend some extra time with some of the people that mean the most to me. Maybe you wouldn't call it magical, but there is a certain kind of magic in normality. Maybe you wouldn't say it was perfect, but there is a kind of perfection in the everyday-ness of things.
For more daily Inktober magic be sure to check out
andI can't speak for everyone, but I for one am counting down the days to the end!
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I absolutely love this Inkytobered round-up - possibly my favourite of the three thus far!
Kerouac is one of those authors - one you should love, one everyone raves about… but there's just that little something something missing (story of my life!)
My favourite this week is the last one 😊 Beautiful words and a really sweet explanation. Time with loved ones is the most important thing! As my most favourite author once wrote ‘heart before art’. X
Day 27 is absolutely the beast!