these texts are an archive of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area from march 2007 - march 2015. it stands as a record of close to a decade of my life, charting the struggles i faced as an artist, daughter, and lover. messy and chaotic at times, eloquent and poetic at others, these texts are an index i am proud of. it was here in this electric box that i learned how to be honest about my experiences and the person i needed to become. it was here that i first learned the truism that words make the world and how to trust such a beautiful, rife, hard fact.

thank you for meeting me here in such tall grass.


my artist website is here.

Aug 10, 2009

life...

sorry for the interruption in the regularly scheduled program folks- i felt i needed to step away from the computer for a couple days. i even took the weekend off from painting. i threw myself in to the mundane things of a life- cleaning, re-arranging, discarding. i've neglected certain things too long and now i feel this huge need to literally throw away everything i own and start fresh. no relics from the past. none. i've only ever felt this way once before that i can remember. and i was so frenzied about it, so over-zealous, that later i missed some of the little, insignificant things i threw out. so i'm trying to be a bit more thoughtful this time. a bit more considerate.

anyway, now that i've begun i have to finish because our little home is currently in a complete state of chaos. it's stupid messy right now. boxes of papers and poems and old drawings and nic-nacs that i dredged up from the back of the closet are scattered everywhere. i've made 'yes', 'no' , and 'maybe' piles. my neurosis is showing. ha! and the neighbor even accused me of being pregnant saying that this was my nesting instinct taking over. hahaha! i assure you, this is not the case, no way. just a very basic need to refresh my life... and feel a bit more in control of it, i suppose. sometimes i feel a bit directionless... more than a bit lost. i have a strange profession, a life's work that there really aren't any maps for. no boss to go to and ask for a raise or vacation pay or better insurance. there's no summer or winter break. there's rarely even a weekend i take off from work. i live with it and cater to it and run to it whenever it calls. everything i do somehow fits back in to my practice. every conversation, every evening jog, every word i read eventually finds its way on to the canvas. 'what you put in is what you get out' is definitely the case in art. all the arts. so it's hard to find a balance sometimes. it's easy to over-look things, to ignore the laundry piling up, to be happy in your tunnel vision and say 'it can wait'. this is part of that dreaded artist ego- we make value judgements. nothing is as important as art. nothing. sometimes we get negligent of the rest of our life.

but it's monday and i will get some painting done in spite of having backed myself in to a corner with the need to re-arrange and sort and discard and clean. i have no choice but to tend to the mess i've made. still, the canvasses are waiting and so is a little hand-painted book and this, this, that, and that.

6 comments:

Joetta M. said...

o how i empathize. the forever moving forward with your work never stopping fully. always thinking about it. it is a strange life. but a good one:)

Heather Jerdee said...

I've been kinda at this lost feeling right now too or maybe it's a ideas are just scattered right now feeling. Need to reign things in. There certainly aint no map.

Yes I can identify with this too, pretty soon I'll be on a first name basis with the boys at Good Will :)

I read and copied this quote once when I was reading a interview with Thom Yorke. His wife had this quote by her bed if I remember right from what I was reading "Remain orderly in your life so you can remain chaotic and free in your work." I need inspiration all the time, even for cleaning my house. Oh wait, especially for cleaning my house!!! hee-hee :)

Like the book lots!

angela simione said...

joetta, YOU my dear are a WORK HORSE! ha! and i definitely take inspiration from your practice and busy, bust life.

it is a good one. :) a very good one. it sometimes drives me crazy but i'd have it no other way. i am a lucky, lucky girl for sure.

angela simione said...

heather, that quote is great! i'm gonna have to make myself another sign i suppose. ha! and put it on the fridge so that every morning when i reach for the coffee cream i see it. i need all the help i can get when it comes to the home arts. :)

Lucy Harvey said...

It's nice to read this because I have been putting off this day for at least 6 months now and still haven't built any way near the courage it'll take me to start. But maybe it needs more time in order to become fully cathartic.
And funnilly the everything eventually feeding back into the art thing is something I thought about yesterday on the bus. I noticed something on the street and was struck with a slight sense of panic about if I wasn't an artist where would all this input and reflection go? Would I stop noticing little mundanities because all I did when I got home was watch TV and make my dinner?! It was a scary thought!

angela simione said...

hi lucy!

oh, it's so hard and the house is still in complete disarray but i'll get there. one day. i hope. ha!

yes, what a scary thought indeed! we are lucky to have paint and ink and charcoal and twigs and strings to store our ideas in, an outlet to deal with the things we see and experience. i'm so glad you said it. i needed to hear it. :)