And for the Millionth Time. Reflections on Finding my Song

We are gonna try this again. For the millionth time I am going to attempt this archaic version of communication called blogging. I don’t know if I will be successful. I don’t know what I will write. But for now it will be something.

Because as you can probably guess I am not a writer, I am just a painter

I’ve collected words my whole life. Scribbling quotes, song lyrics that I love, making lists and general documentation.  I cannot for the life of me finish a notebook however at any given time Im working in at least three. What I am is a compulsive list maker, a doodler, and a dreamer.  As my own creative process has developed over time I have realized that I get rather impatient with too much writing. In an attempt to tame the disconnected thoughts and random scribbles  I have narrowed down my writing to contemplating my daily tarot pulls and making lists of what I shall attempt to accomplish for the day.  Part of this reigning in has has accomplished the creation of daily routine. Starting with reading my tarot while eating my breakfast and having my coffee. Then I added reading 1-3 poems by Mary Oliver from her Devotions collection and just recently I have added experts from Leonard Cohens The Flame. 

You see I’ve loved Leonard Cohen since I was a child. My second mother Marti introduced me to his music and from there I’ve followed his career along, enjoying the depth of voice but most of all his writing calls me in.  I have only just started The Flame and already I have cried twice. What is it about his life that calls me in?  Maybe it is his darkness and maybe it is his light. However I had never encountered a more poetic description of my relationship with painting until I read his Acceptance Address for The Prince Of Asturias Award.  In his speech Leonard tells the story of finding his song. But first he tells us of finding his voice, his poetry.  In this speech Leonard writes this

“To find a voice, to locate a voice, that is, to locate a self, a self that is not fixed, a self that struggles for its own existence.”

Yet again Leonard words speak so distinctly of my own experience. My own voice. Finding my voice was extremely difficult. As a child I was an over emotional being.  In retrospect I see that I was experiencing such extreme beauty and awe in the world that I simply had no words to express.  Art has given me that voice.   Yet like Leonard also wrote

“And so I had a voice, but I did not have an instrument. I did not have a song”

It wasn’t until I finished school, studying sculptural installation that I began the journey to find my song.  3-d work was simply not my song. Graduating and leaving the expansive studios at the University of Oregon left me without a way to create. I did not have the studio or the tools or the money to purchase these things. I picked up painting as a way to continue my creative practice while I worked to get these things. Finding painting is when I found my song.

Nothing feels as calming, as grounding as the feeling of paint moving from my brush to canvas.  Nowhere do I see as clearly as I do when I’m looking at an empty page. And somehow, perhaps merely by sheer grit alone, I’ve made this my career. Will this pandmeic destroy me or make me is still yet to be determined. But for now I can still sing.