Art and creation and other things
So what am I supposed to do in the dark but dream of other worlds where fantastical people meet to do incredible things? Is it so far fetched to wonder if other people think about the loneliness of writing? If I had friends, would I need to invent them? If I lived a great life, would I craft this one? Wondering has me sick and silly. Maybe you'd join me.
The urge to create has bitten my subconscious since birth, and since birth I have created many things. I was told the earliest work of mine involved shit and a wall. I painted a flower with my own poop as a baby or a toddler. Whatever age diapers were worn. My poor parents.
Then later on, my grandmother taught me to paint using strawberries on water colour paper. I imagine I was a sticky child. One of those whose fingers were grubby and faces looked like sugar. Rotten to the core, and spoiled as all hell. I played in beds of dirt and laid in tall grass with the insects. I snacked on wild onions and stank up our cabin. But I was a kid, and nobody told me my breath was foul. I chewed gum that my dad gave me like candy. At night I created a man who led me into the woods after dark. He had my father's voice and he vanished when the sun fell down. My imagination frightened me.
Into my school years, I was a sculptor of clay. Polymer clay- the kind that bakes into shiny little things. We used a pasta roller to turn it into sheets of glitter maroon and made little men with big noses and buttons for eyes. Coraline scared me, but my clay men would protect me. Their buttons were lost some time in the spring when I tossed their misshapen bodies into a bin with my other toys. I got a Bionicle for Easter that year, and then it was time for trouble.
The sets took too long to build but I wanted to have battles and fight. Instruction booklets had tears on them when I finished and red ink seeped from the Lego logos. We played Yugioh and I made my own rules since my brother couldn't read. He always lost and I was amazing. It wasn't fun when he got older, so I had to hide my cards from him. When I stopped playing, I gave them to him and he was upset that he didn't have the same luck I did.
Anxiety and moodiness crept up like a spiky cat. There was a time I was depressed and a time I was in summer camp. No girls liked me and no friends wanted to hang. My camp counselor asked why I was sad and I invented a story where my parents were divorcing and my girlfriend dumped me. He wrote a letter after the year finished and my mother read it before it got to me. Divorce would never happen between them and there weren't any girls to date to dump me. There must have been another Chase at the camp, I said.
My grandmother again taught me to do art, this time in a school setting. Eyes and faces from the side were the first subjects. It was fun, but pointillism and roses stuck out to me after all of that. Tiny dots coming together to form a beautiful image. It was time consuming, mind numbing, and therapeutic. Hundreds of thousands of stabs, just to make it nice. Isn't that life?
I moved into abstract portraits, then just portraits, then logos and designs. I was never a good designer but I knew faces like my own. Unevenness is what makes a good face. Don't let instagram tell you otherwise; beauty comes from nature, not a syringe or filter.
Drawing and skateboarding were my two methods of expression for a while, but then I turned eighteen and turned to drugs to feel things. Fake feelings, fake fun. I hung around fake people and told lies and faked just about every part of my life. My plastic life melted away and I forgot how to be a person. Then I moved and kept the components of a bad life running while inventing a reality in which it wasn't so bad. It was that bad, or worse. But then it got better.
The lockdown happened and I needed a hobby other than wanking and gaming. I'd seen painting as some inaccessible artform that took time and money and skill and patience. I had none, but I drove to Walmart in the snow and bought the basics; canvas, blue, red, yellow, black, white, and a set of brushes. It cost me around fifty dollars and I got home and realized I had nothing to prop it on. No easel. I sat next to my table with the three foot canvas on my lap and painted a flower. My Canadian grandma has it hanging in her living room now.
With painting came patience and a surge of creativity I hadn't felt since a dubious play through of Minecraft. I slept just to wake and paint. I painted just to get to the next painting. Some kind of spark reignited from those cheap acrylics. I did a skull and a landscape of a fictional land and a self portrait and an abstract and all the things I imagined. My favourite painting at the time was of my girlfriend but we broke up so I cut through it with a razor and dumped it into a trash can.
Months of art and reconciliation with my lost self went by. Dozens of paintings, hundreds of hours. I relapsed and started smoking weed to paint, then drinking to paint, and then I painted to drink and painted to smoke. Then I smoked to smoke and drank to drank and my new easel sat with an unfinished painting for who knows how long. I know how long; four years and counting. I haven't painted since.
But; I got a laptop since I put the brushes down. It was a gift from my father in 2022 with the intention of learning how to code. I bought into the program, took a few courses, read a few books. Then guess what happened? ChatGPT came out and I realized that my intention of becoming a coder was not realistic. I gave up on it because A: I'm not mathematically gifted and B: It's too late. Say what you want about that attitude; I know deep down it was just a blitz hobby turned hopeful.
I still had the laptop. In high school, one of my teachers named Mickey told me that I wrote well. I was in a special class of one because I was a bad kid with bad behaviour. Me and her spent a lot of time together and she had me write music reviews and short creative works. I was accused by another teacher of plagiarism because my book report of Jurassic Park was so well written. I didn't write a word after school until 2022. Four years later I started writing stuff on a cracked copy of MS Word- the same cracked copy I use today.
I thought my ideas were amazing and my prose was divine. I wrote dozens of first chapters about imaginary worlds where people party and get involved in drama and kill people or get killed or hit deer in the snow or crack a cold case. None of it was good. None of it. Not a single drop of prose reads well. I checked.
But I kept writing, and then this year I started a book and finished the first draft. The first half reads like a first draft but the second half is really good. I'm rewriting it now- as well as another novel that's coming along smoother than the first. It's been amazing. The painting in my attic hasn't turned into anything but a dusty memory of my creative journey. A friend asked to buy an old painting of mine and I gave two to him, as well as some blank canvasses in hopes he uses them. I was surprised to get a text a month later of his dead cat. The cat was in acrylic and it looked very nice. It inspired me.
Something clicked with writing compared to the other mediums of my life. Shit stinks, strawberries are sticky, and everything costs so much it's hard to justify my rampant behaviour. MS Word is cheap- free, even if you know a guy. I have a space in my spare room with a stack of paintings. Many I've thrown away to save space. My computer has a million documents that take no space and cost no money. There's no product loss and it's fantastic. Endless drafts, infinite ideas.
Now I'm writing all the time and I meet with people every week about writing. We talk and compare notes and I learn all about their worlds and they learn about mine. Every time I leave a meeting I go home and write. I think they do the same. I hope they do, at least. I feel so new but people ask me questions like I have the answers. Maybe I do. I'm a good bullshitter- as all writers are.
All this to say, if you're struggling to create, I urge you to try again. Maybe you'll want to write and maybe you'll want to paint. If you're a musician, god help you. If you do woodwork, I hope you keep all your fingers. Find friends, make stories, invent reasons to have that coffee and sit down. This was a ramble and it's late, but I think it was worth it for me to put this out there. If you're struggling to find people to help your mission, reach out. I need more creative energy. I feed off of yours.
With love,
C. A. Winter
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