Today is the first day of August, and in all honesty I think this may be the most important month of my life, or like, a defining month of my life that I will remember for a long time to come. For me to be speaking at the Writer's Festival is just such a massive thing (personally, anyway), as is Tavi coming to visit. I feel as though it makes all my work at Rookie Mag feel more real, and it validates it as something really important, right here in my home town. This makes me feel really proud. It's like when singers have been on the road for ages and then they go back and perform in the town they grew up in and they like cry and stuff. That's what I feel like it will be like but I don't want to cry obviously and yeah like it's not THAT big of a deal, but again - for me it is. S'all relative.
I am feeling a bit anxious because I need to get my act together and write something that I am really proud of, and that I think will hopefully be 'inspiring'. The more I think about how good it has to be, the harder it is to write. The more I think about how I have to write it really soon, so I can spend hours and hours memorizing it so it looks effortless and relaxed, the harder it is to write. That's the case with anything I have to make when I have an idea of what I want to be or look like in the end. That's the hardest way to make something I think because you end up inevitably disappointed. I would get so frustrated with myself in high school because I would have all these visions of really specific things I wanted to make or draw and they never, ever translated directly from my brain into reality. During my time at VCA I definitely learnt a more successful way of making, for me personally, where I don't have any idea of what the finished product is going to look or be. My way of making is really emotional, and *intuitive* (a word that I think is really daggy, although necessary here) it comes from the heart and not the head. In my mind I separate artists who make from the head and artists who make from the heart. I find it fascinating. Each way is neither right or wrong obviously, just different.
I always think my best writing comes when I get carried away, when it's late and I'm sad or daydreaming pretending I'm in some movie, but as I just discussed, I can't FORCE it to come from there. Woe!
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| Gettin sunburnt indoors in winter |
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| ALL MINE, FINALLY THEY'RE ALL MINE |
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| Mermaid curtain in my studio ;) |
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| I know I'm not even a teenager anymore just having a mid-life crisis okay |
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| Recent illustration for Rookie :D |
Okay I just realised I also wanted to quickly talk about something else which is mildly freaking me out. My friends and I got African again last night (yes, that is all I ever do socially) and we actually almost spent the whole night reminiscing. And these are my *new* friends from Art School. But we were all equally bewildered when we realised that this is our fifth year of knowing each other, and when we first met we were all teenagers so young and excited and still *discovering ourselves*, now we're just a bunch of old stinking adults who never do anything. Ha. I'm half joking with the stinking but it is weird to think that Art School is an experience I've HAD, and can't have again and it's over, and I have these amazing, OLD friends who I met there, and we grew up together, and as usual I struggle with comprehending how time slips away. Do you know that song by Fairport Convention called
Who Knows Where The Time Goes? That's been coming up a lot lately.
