It is hard enough to work at present. I am aware of the presence of a depressed mood, dulling my mind, rendering my hand inactive. Am I depressed, or is the lowering of my mood the sadness of grief? I need to be watchful, for I sense the winding sheet of depression about to enfold me. Nevertheless I find within me the resources to capture images of recent drawings with my camera. The above drawings were made, with the exception of the fourth, before the death of Silas. The fourth, the following day. There have been two others, but they do not please my eye.
It is a day of still air and great heat. Minos seeks shelter beneath the cotoneaster; a rambling shrub that grows alongside the wall separating us from our neighbour. I sit with him for a while in quiet companionship, then repair indoors to photograph the remnant drawings made during this month. The act of photographing the drawings is helpful; satisfies my need to be active, engaged, even if I feel something amounting to horror at the hours yet to pass before my partner returns from his place of work.
A poet once wrote something along these lines; 'what keeps you from your work becomes your work'. I ponder this whilst I sit on the bench with Minos. I feel no inclination to work in visual terms, although did make a fresh beginning in my notebook a couple of evenings ago. I am reading 'Daybook' by Anne Truitt, which is deeply satisfying and illuminating. I know that I could never write as she did, yet reading through some of the notes made earlier in the year I sense a voice, timorous in places, yet nevertheless a voice distinguished by it's uniqueness. My youngest sister tells me that she is keeping a journal; I resolve to do the same, to chronicle my life as I live it from day to day, jotting down thoughts, ideas, should they come, chart my emotional responses to life events as they unfold around me.
I write in different places; I haven't a consistent , dedicated repository for my words. Perhaps that does not matter at this stage. I am aware that the words I commit to this online diary are different from the words that I commit to my notebook. The very act of setting down words is different; sometimes I feel that although I cherish the idea of writing longhand in a journal with a fine black pen, I am, despite my lack of fluency at the keyboard, a better thinker when I type. Perhaps it is the question of audience that influences me and my thought processes. I know that when I publish words here, I am writing for an audience; that necessarily shapes one's thoughts in a way perhaps not utilised or appropriate when one writes in a journal.
During the seven long years in which I was unable to make visual work, I yet found myself able to write; this means of communication has never deserted me in the way that my capacity to organise my thoughts and ideas in visual terms has, leaving a fathomless void in my life. At least there was something, a vestige of the facility to communicate; I held fast to that ability, using it to scribe my deepest fears and and insecurities about being an artist. For, despite these ephemeral drawings, and my love of the sooty black paper on which they are made, I still do not consider myself an artist; I do not believe making visual art to be my first love, despite my training and background, my years of practice.
What then? How do I then define myself? Am I a writer, despite having failed to complete written assignments on time, if at all, owing to an inability to organise my thoughts in coherent sequences? I remember the piece of written work that I submitted as part of my undergraduate degree; I described the condition of not being able to project a presence in literary terms, the utter collapse of my thinking and ability to complete even simple sentences, my fear at making an appearence in terms of textual discourse. It seems significant that that piece of work gained me the marks of a first class degree, even though my visual work did not.
I am moved to write at present, not to make visual work; the lack of desire in this respect is an indicator; I need to rest, during this difficult period in my life I need to lay aside any thought of visual work and instead concentrate my efforts elsewhere. Perhaps it is not helpful to worry at the question of how I define myself; it is only profound insecurity that makes me do so, an insecurity that may well be relieved at least in part by the act of commiting words to this diary, and, or, my notebook.
I am aware of a lightening of my mood, a sense of relief; I can write, even if, for the moment, I cannot draw. I shall end the day with a feeling of accomplishment, a blessed gift that I shall carry with me until I close my eyes in slumber.
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