War and Peace shall be my next book, following the four I am in the middle of now. I choose this title because I believe that reading it will place a lot of later literature into context. It’s like the spore of the fiction world’s mycelium. Currently, I am on part three of The Warmth Of Other Suns, which is 553 words, so I am learning how to pace a long novel. It feels like an important lesson in slowing down.
I am so tired from work this week and I only work 3 days a week. Do great creators ever get tired? Did Francis Picabia take breaks or ever feel down and lost? He reinvented his work countless times. I want to buy the MoMA book about him and make this book #5 in my rotation, to find kinship in his many, many, many phases.
I snapped a photo of a spider web in the stairwell of my workplace today because it reminded me of a Vermeer painting. You know those days when you are at a job and feel that your soul is not present or being exercised during these passing hours and you do or see something that gives you a glimmer of yourself and your capabilities (as an artist or whatever)?
Tomorrow morning will bring a new day, and four days of painting. When I take breaks from painting, like if the oil makes my head feel light, I play piano. I think my vocal chords make pretty sounds, but they are a bit lost right now. They don’t know where to direct their energies. So I’m letting my fingers take over for a while. I am composing a piano piece for my next short film, ‘Anita’s Walk’ which exists as a script, and images/tones/compositions in my head. The piano composition may also work as a sound track or theme to the painting I am working on right now. And another piano melody popped into my head today for my next painting, which will have a lighter value than the dark one I am finishing. I wish I could say I have synesthesia, but I do not. It makes me want to cry because it’s such a beautiful thing that I hope those who have it don’t feel inhibited by, if maybe it can feel like a problem or handicapped to have the sensation of color with sound.
I grew up in a beach town where women are tan year round, and looking good in a bathing suit is life or deathly important. I don’t want skin cancer, ‘a leather handbag’ as my friend RyRy would say, but I still hold true that instinct of looking good in a bikini. SO YEAH I BOUGHT A NEW BIKINI IN MARCH. And I exercise. I splurged on a rash guard for when I start to feel my skin burning. I can’t wait to wear it on the beach with my hair up in my matching red scrunchie. I will blog about trivial things to illustrate the spectrum of thoughts that pass through a person’s mind, which are apart of the whole. However, the line is drawn at stream-of-consciousness, because that is boring, like someone telling you about their dream.
Last night we watched Beau Travail (1999, Claire Denis). Remarkable! Poetic. War porn for suuuure. The final dance sequence by Denis Lavant is transcendent, though based on reviews I’ve read today, I totally misunderstood the scene’s meaning, but that’s ok, because I’m a viewer and I can perceive or misperceive however my lived experience informs me to.
