No. 68 - It's been Noted that I like Notes

It is known.

Sep 01, 2023

Welcome to the latest issue of Feed the Monster, a monthly art journal for the creative and imperfect. Come as you are.

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The Notebooks

This post is dedicated to Jillian Hess of Noted, who inspired me to look back at the notebooks I keep for ideas and ongoing projects. She wrote a post recently about commonplace books and how she organizes quotations. I commented on the post “maybe I should post pages from my idea books as a cautionary tale of how *not* to organize your notes.” She responded, “I'd love to see more of your notes—I bet they are gorgeous. Please write that post!”

Well, they are not gorgeous. But Jillian’s comment sent me on a voyage of (re)discovery of how a project can go from vague, half-baked thoughts and ideas to a fully realized multi-media art show out in the world for people to see.

For those new to this newsletter, last year I had an exhibit called Life’s Work: A Visual Memoir. It was about the last five years of my mother’s life, after she’d been diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia, and it was also about my relationship with her. The show incorporated paintings, sketchbook work, large-scale graphic memoir pieces, and an installation. I worked on the project for two years, and at some point along the way decided I wanted to write and paint a graphic memoir using the same material. So while I was kind of haphazardly creating graphic memoir pieces for the show, I was also starting to think about fleshing out the story, writing the memoir, and producing all new paintings. All of the ideas for both the show and the future graphic memoir were worked out in my notebooks.

I’ve revisited my journals more than once, but looking back on the notebooks was different. I was astounded to see the evidence of my explorations, of me following my nose and actually getting somewhere. That I was writing things down rather than leaving the ideas to percolate in my mind is key. I wouldn’t have made the same progress if my thoughts had stayed in my head.

The Creative Life

I used to gaze at certain windows and imagine people behind those windows doing indeterminate “creative work”. When I lived in Montreal in my twenties there was a block of picturesque turn-of-the-century apartment buildings along the west side of Parc La Fontaine that always stirred my imagination. I’d fantasize about living a rich, generative life of creativity behind one of those windows. I didn’t know what that life would be, or how I’d get there. I just wanted it. Whatever “it” was.

A couple of years ago, I suddenly realized I was living the life I used to dream about. Not that I live in a beautiful apartment across from Parc la Fontaine, or am even creative a lot of the time, especially looking back on this past year. But I am doing it—living that life—in a way I definitely wasn’t when I was in my twenties (or thirties, or forties). I’ve always been creative in lots of different ways, but I now allow myself to be… myself. And my art to be whatever it wants to be. However that may manifest. I think that’s the life I was looking for.

I had an unconscious belief that the people behind those windows had something that I didn’t. They possessed some mysterious key to living the creative life that I hadn’t been given. Looking back through the last few years of my notebooks underscored for me the fact that there’s no one correct way to approach your work, or creativity in general. There’s no one way to be an artist or a writer, there’s no secret formula. You don’t need particular credentials in order to have the authority to produce good work. You give yourself authority. And you do it however the hell you want.

Artists and writers also aren’t just one kind of person. Maybe you already knew this, but once upon a time I apparently didn’t. People have strange ideas about artists in particular. Artists are apparently hard to understand, capricious, and don’t live in the real world with everyone else. Like… Björk, haha. At University I had an academic-minded friend earnestly explain to me what the Dean’s List was. “Yes, I know.” I said. “I’m on the Dean’s List.”

Annoying.

Some Random Notebook Pages

I’ve never taken an English class past high school, let alone a writing class. So in preparation for writing the memoir, I read a stack of books on writing, and memoir writing in particular. This first picture is a page of notes written while reading Marion Roach Smith’s The Memoir Project. These notes may seem obvious, but the books I read helped me to narrow my focus and not feel so overwhelmed by my task.

This next page shows me exploring the possibility of using the house I grew up in as a way to structure the memoir. I didn’t end up using that idea, but every idea I entertained was important.

The top half of the next page shows me spitballing ideas, themes, and dream images— just throwing things at the wall to see what would stick. The bottom section is a list of possible scenes to depict or themes to explore.

More random notes and ideas below:

In June of 2020 I took an online workshop on memoir writing called The Surprising Power of Vulnerability with Claire Dederer (notes from the class below in red). Dederer used a scene from a David Sedaris essay to demonstrate what she called “building a shelter for your reader”. She showed us how Sedaris—by not making any effort to make himself look good in the scene he’s describing—does a service for the reader by allowing us to see and relate to his fallibility.

Below is the section of Sedaris’s essay “The Spirit World” (from the book Calypso) in question:

The last time I saw my sister Tiffany was at the stage door at Symphony Hall in Boston. I’d just finished a show and was getting ready to sign books when I heard her say, “David. David, it’s me.”
We hadn’t spoken in four years at that point, and I was shocked by her appearance. Tiffany always looked like my mother when she was young. Now she looked like my mother when she was old, though at the time she couldn’t have been more than forty-five. “It’s me, Tiffany.” She held up a paper bag with the Starbucks logo on it. Her shoes looked like she’d found them in the trash can. “I have something for you.”
There was a security guard holding the stage door open, and I said to him, “Will you close that, please?” I had filled the house that night. I was in charge—Mr. Sedaris. “The door,” I repeated. “I’d like for you to close it now.”
And so the man did. He shut the door in my sister’s face, and I never saw her or spoke to her again. Not when she was evicted from her apartment. Not when she was raped. Not when she was hospitalized after her first suicide attempt. She was, I told myself, someone else’s problem. I couldn’t deal with her anymore.

Ouch.

A shelter was built, by golly by gum.

At the beginning of the pandemic I joined Tom Hart’s SAW (Sequential Artists Workshop) graphic memoir group for a few months. During that time a few members posted videos of themselves working out the structure of their memoirs with sticky notes on the wall, so I gave it a try. Later I stuck them into my notebook, more as a memento than anything else.

Putting the sticky notes on the wall didn’t give me the structure for the memoir, but I think it was an important step toward understanding what I was dealing with, and toward taming the beast in general.

Below is the short video I made to contribute to the SAW group discussion:

The Life’s Work memoir is largely finished, and has been through a developmental edit with Jill Margo of The Creative Good. Unfortunately, work on the graphic memoir is on hold for reasons that I mention later in this post.

Below is the largest graphic memoir piece I painted for the show: You Think You’re Better Than Me (ink on paper, 40 x 78 inches). I don’t remember how it germinated exactly, but I do remember it was a turning point for me in terms of letting go both artistically and narratively. Following that are the notes that led to the piece.

The page below? I’m really not sure where it came from or what it has to do with the Life’s Work project. I guess I was just thinking about the randomness of the circumstances into which we’re born.

Below is a list of chapter headings for the memoir, which have changed more than once:

These last two pages are notes for a wall piece that was hung next to the installation at the exhibit.

It was quite incredible to see the evolution from amorphous ideas, to the mounting of the show, to dozens of comments in the guest book that blew my mind. It also made me a bit sad, as our lives changed abruptly before the show was even over. More on that below.

Yes, more about me

My life circumstances are changing soon and I’m on the hunt for new sources of income, or revenue streams as they’re known. I haven’t been completely forthcoming here about what’s been going on: the short explanation is that my husband and I run a small business and it has suffered a lot the past year due to rising supply costs, the labour shortage, and so much more.

My fondest wish for the future would be to focus on Feed the Monster and eventually make it my living somehow, in conjunction with work on Life’s Work: The Graphic Memoir and the journal writing workshop I’m creating. I’ve thought about serializing the graphic memoir here, and also about making journaling work more intrinsic to the newsletter. I’m also formulating ideas for an eventual book on journal writing. As it happens, these past months I’ve struggled just to produce this newsletter each month.

This past year has been about survival, and this has meant less energy and focus for this newsletter, or for anything generative or creative. Unfortunately this state of affairs is due to continue for a while yet. But when it’s over… BAM! Mama’s gonna set this world on fire!

I know that I have so much to be thankful for, and that millions experience so much worse than I can even conceive of. Mine is but one tiny story in the city of dreams. Yes, that’s right—Victoria BC is the city of dreams.

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SOME STUFF

I inadvertently stole the title Three Things for the links I share from Megan Adam of Comfort for the Apocalypse, which I didn’t realize until I got her latest newsletter. DOH! Of course! How could I have thought of something so classy all on my own!

My next idea was to call my list of links Items of Interest, but then I received Anne Kadet’s latest Café Anne newsletter and saw that I’d stolen that name, too. Wow. I guess I have none of my own thoughts.

So… Some Stuff? Can I safely call it SOME STUFF???

Okay here’s some stuff:

A newsletter by ND Stevenson called I’m fine I’m fine Just Understand, where they post comics about gender, mental health, and getting older. It’s consistently good.
I’ve never read a Stephen King novel, but I did read his book On Writing and it was excellent.
A 1969 performance by Stevie Wonder that I unaccountably go back to again and again.

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