A Life Stitched From Creativity and the Frozen Bits

"What was there to begin with. That got covered up and faded with time. And then like a startling jolt, a reckoning, a visitation, a premonition in reverse."

From the corner of my life I sit, watching, reading Substacks. I love this platform and have been participating from a distance. I have been on this platform since 2023, and finally wrote my first two posts the end of last year. I toiled over them, editing, polishing. I’m not a writer but would like to be or at least be comfortable calling myself one. And I didn’t post them. Why? I didn’t want to be sucked into my own induced stress of having to post on a schedule. I didn’t want to charge for something I wasn’t sure I could commit to and I’m still trying to figure things out. Sometimes realizations are there in front of you/me and I concluded that I’m not going to figure things out in the way I would like. At least for now. So, this morning after reading several posts and going through old sketch books, I decided - with a resounding ‘fuck it’! I’m going to post something that is not super polished. Something that’s authentic about where I’m at in my life. And so here goes…

The name of my Substack, Behind the Door, is about my life. As a coping mechanism I have put many things “behind the door” and didn’t even know it until now. I am also obsessed with the subconscious and a lot of my previous artwork came from that. You could say I’m a surrealist of sorts. My Substack is a window into my journey as I sift through the debris, the surprises, the revelations I am finding behind the door. For the time being this Substack will be free but that could change going forward.

I consider myself an artist. I see as an artist. I think like an artist. I study the tiniest veins in leaves that have fallen to the ground. I am astonished as to how many colors of green there are in nature. I’ve had art training, I’ve taken a boat load of creative writing classes yet currently I’m not creating. Whaaat? Yeah, I discovered that I’m in a paralysis mode that makes it extremely difficult to create consistently. And it’s not with everything. I can creatively think about things. Graphic design doesn’t seem to be affected. But writing and fine art are. I’ve read a ton of articles about how to work through creative blocks. I’ve followed folks who talk about creativity, I followed and listened to the experts who post articles on becoming unblocked. And so far I’m still feeling a bit stuck.

I began a technique of writing inside of sketching years ago which is where the image came from that I am posting today. There is a restraining nature to this that I Iike. The fitting of desired words inside a contained space. Saying what wants to be said and then running out of room and it’s complete, whether I like it or not.

Here is the excerpted writing extracted from the container of the sketch.

This is how it starts.

Simple in the beginning, then the longer you look the more you see.

It’s the nature of the thing to just be there on the surface yet do you really see?

This is a practice. A meditation. A glimse into the underworld of words, ideas, notions.

Putting it back, pulling it forward until all is exhausted and the only thing that remains is what is. What was there always. What was there to begin with. That got covered up and faded with time. And then like a startling jolt, a reckoning, a visitation, a premonition in reverse.

Like it’s always been and will continue for here and ever after that makes you think and wonder and scratch your head. Will it happen again or never again quite this way. Enamel exposed.

All this open space to explore. Deep. A deep dive into an ending of radical mishaps.

A life stitched from,

From…