Thinking About Getting Into: Painting
When I picked up a painted-over canvas at the thrift store with the full intention of covering it with my own creation, I was quick to correct the cashier who chattily asked, "Oh, you paint?" No, I said, but I would try.
If you think that you will one day run out of ideas, you will almost certainly do so. This is something I have had to tell myself; instead of the firm belief that ideas and creativity are finite, I have instilled within myself a fear of the finite that forces me to evade it with whatever measure it must take. I find myself catching my breath, sometimes lying awake at night thinking, thinking simply so that I can go to bed with a reassurance: I've had another idea. Surely it won't be the last. This is why, recently, I found myself painting.
I've long had the ambition to be artistic, but natural talent and effort have never quite combined to help me to produce the things I envision. Sewing attempts revealed sloppy seam work, and drawings never quite made it past amateur. I had always been focused on other key practices—ballet, and later writing—so I never chose to actually devote myself to anything else. I fancy what it might be like to actually hone a visual craft, but each time, I abandon it quickly.
I've been listening to a lot of Frank Ocean lately (and always) and more than usual, I've wrapped my mind around the ending verse of "Seigfried."
Dreaming a thought that could dream about a thought that could think of the dreamer that thought that could think of dreaming and getting a glimmer of God...
The lyrics wrap around themselves, playing with the words that compose them and the meanings they habit. It's one of the lines that Timothée Chalamet, in his VMAN cover story, deigned quote to his interviewer, the lyricist himself. "Don't do that," Frank told him—allegedly, with a laugh.
It's only a recent development that I've gained a (relative) sense of ease heralding my writing ideas. In early intern days, I sought out direct assignments, before ultimately, slowly pitching concepts of my own. As for other types of writing—namely, fiction—it wasn't until the past year that I felt equipped to even finish a single short story. (Thanks largely to Novella for giving me the motivation to do so, years after I felt I wasn't creative enough to even apply for a fiction-based creative writing class in college).
When I write nonfiction pieces or personal essays, I feel as if I'm untangling a thread that can lead to a new discovery, or else a clarification. Fiction, it seemed to me, to be the stuff of world-building—and that was virtually insurmountable.
I had bought a canvas at the thrift store because I have been thinking more about color and design, and trolling my Instagram Explore page for interesting artworks, and in doing so, I've come across a number of contemporary artists whose work centers on splashes of colors. There are no figures or obvious subjects in the paintings; instead, there are unexpected patterns and lines, shadows and light. There are no obvious or strict rules. I realized, almost instantly upon finding them, that I had neglected a whole way of thinking. And then I started to question everything.
Equipped later with an already-covered canvas, a good amount of white paint to cover it over and a meager array of acrylic paints found in my parents' basement, I started to slather shapes together. I had been originally inspired by what I had found on Instagram, but over the course of two days, painted something I felt could be considered my own. And for once, the thing I created had no obvious initial meaning at all.
It's easy to fall into patterns and feels necessary, often, to follow rules. In writing, I've tried to avoid these pitfalls (causing, ahem, maybe one or two past English teachers to dislike me), but often, still, I've found myself shackled to them. Look at anything I wrote in my early teens and you'll see I was desperate to write something like Harry Potter. Then look at anything I wrote in my late teens and you'll see I was desperate to write something like John Green. Neither of these ventures were successful, original, or good in the slightest sense.
If you look at of the art journals I've amassed over my teenage years (in spite of, as previously mentioned, not being an artist), you will find many, many attempts at portraits and figure-drawing that are humorously bad: things that resemble the slightly off fan-made drawings that who-y celebrities post of themselves on occasion. Things that dwell in the uncanny valley—E. T. A. Hoffmann would be shook.
When I put my paint brush to paint, and then to canvas, I'll admit that I don't really have any truly complete ideas. Inspiration, sure, but I have no clear vision for how exactly this will turn out. There is no goal in mind other than the hope to create and complete something. I am making it up as I go.
I finished my first short story about seven months ago, and in three typed pages, it felt like a revelation. Not because I thought it was excessively good—the quality of work was beside the point—but for once, I had actually finished something. I had an idea, one that didn't spring, Athena-like, from my mind fully formed. The creation itself was laborious, and took time, and shifted, and altered its appearance as it happened. Then, when I returned to the initial result a few days later, it changed again. Writing rarely feels like it has a direct endpoint. I like writing things that have a cyclical feeling because it helps me put a bow on my work. But still—I read and reread, and I find a better word I could have used, a point that begged elaboration, and parts that, all-around, could have simply been better. The editing process does not cease in my mind.
Maybe that's why I'm drawn to an activity—a literal art—that I'm ill-practiced in. I see points that beg for improvement, but I don't have the skill set to act upon them, nor the urgent desire to, and for once, I can accept that. An artist surely adds to and changes their artwork plenty before releasing a final version. But I am not an artist, and this is not my art—it's something I'm allowing myself to have a casual interest in.
We (I) give up on a lot of our (my) hobbies simply because we're (I'm) not naturally, instantly gifted at them. That mandolin I begged for in high school? Never played—it was hard! The fake flowers I had stockpiled with the intention of cashing in on the then-booming flower crown business—ignored.
This painting, however, I completed, somehow. And all I had to do was paint.
The hardest thing about writing is writing: I have to actually do it in order to figure out where it will end up. I'm dreaming of a thought that can think of dreaming a thought—but those thoughts, I digress, are likely just snippets of things that must be dragged into fruition.
When I put my paint brushes away and tuck the painting in my bag to bring back to my apartment after Thanksgiving break, I look at the peaks and valleys I've unknowingly formed, the dark shadows that cast a sense of mystery over my pale pink base. I realize that an idea to paint without a true idea enabled me to form a different kind of world than I could have expected, and I open, after a month of procrastination, a word doc I've been avoiding. The ideas, I figure, will come as I go.