Ta Da! What the F*ck
Done with a steamy shower in my new apartment, I turned on the kettle and picked a packet of nettle tea. The front of the tea box read, “Organic. Earthy & Fresh. Everyday Wellness + Joint Support.”
I thought about Jetsun Milarepa, the Tibetan murderer turned Buddhist disciple. He ate nothing but nettles when he isolated himself from society in the Himalayas, and carried only a clay pot to boil his nettles. He ate so much of this plant that he turned green.
One cup from strong joints and spiritual enlightenment away, I sat down on a matted piece of cardboard in my largely unfurnished living room.
As with writing this piece, I felt the weight of grand expectations. I wanted to make something good - stellar, really - to make the time spent commuting and the money spent on paint materials worthwhile.
Unlike illustrating, painting feels distant and ambiguous. I don’t know how to move my hands, how to clutch the brush, where and in what order colors ought to go. I try to tune in, as I did this time around, and follow wherever my heart and hands are inclined to move. I resisted planning any final composition, and encouraged myself that, perhaps, I was the undiscovered reincarnation of Van Gogh, Dali, Monet, or, at the very least, Bob Ross, and all that was needed to awaken any one of these slumbering spirits was a little more time with the canvas.
I gave it two hours. Two hours to confirm that I was, in fact, just myself.
I’m not displeased and I’m not elated, but I do feel…different. From nothing came something, and an unexpected form took shape. A human figure stared at me (or was it through me?) with an avalanche of color clouding above their head. Their gaze carried suspicion, questioning why they were summoned. Maybe it’s my over-eager imagination or maybe it’s the nettle tea, but I nearly whispered, “I don’t know” in return.
The oven clock read 9:30PM and the inky sky in the window confirmed it was so. I felt tired of sitting and itched to put paints away, wash brushes, and tuck the cardboard beneath my couch. My ta da! moment had exhausted itself and the often uninvited, yet tirelessly punctual, feeling of what the f*ck came over me.
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I don’t know where my impulses to make anything come from, but I follow them fervently, determined to bring them into fruition. And when I do, at times, I wonder why I did it in the first place or, really, THAT was what I’d been fixated on for hours?
Sometimes, the confusion comes from the disparity between how strong my feelings and visions are at the onset of creative impulse, and the meekness of what I end up making. Other times, it’s because hours of intense concentration on, say, a drawing, makes me realize I’ve only scratched the surface and there is more work to be done.
As I wrote this last sentence, Chasing Shadows started playing - Santigold knows the feeling. Running into the void, certain there is something, but really there is nothing, but that nothing is the very something (that was Milarepa speaking, not me).
I look forward to the next time I surprise myself with whatever I make, be it delightful, disappointing, final, or still sprouting.
