September 13, 2003 :: 2:28 a.m.
sleepless (and restless) in Pennsylvania
It's 2:30. When did 2:30 happen? Damn. To say that I'm easily distracted would be an understatement of titanic proportions. It's more like I'm perpetually distracted, and sometimes I manage to pull my attention back to actual reality. Occasionally. Maybe.
I dropped Glass today. I sort of feel bad about it, but it's better in the long run. It's more work than I can handle right now, especially since it won't transfer as anything but a weird elective. I have electives coming out of my ass. I do not need more electives. I should be taking maths and sciences and other unpleasant things, but... eh, no. Also, I was thinking today that I am perhaps in the wrong line of studies. I've considered this before, but really, what else can I do? I do art. It's what I do. Whether or not I'm good enough at it to make it my career is negligible - it's just my thing. It's my embedded in concrete, soul-bonded, inescapable fucking THING. Sometimes I don't like this. It's scary to be so associated with something, to have parts of you believe that what little talent you have lies in this one area and only this one area, forever and ever amen. I do have other interests - quite a few, actually. A lot of them I enjoy more than art, if only because the demand to produce something tangible, presentable, and "artistic" to show the public isn't so high. But here I am, in college, doing art stuff. As predicted. Hell, as desired. But am I happy?
What a question. I'm never really happy, so right away you have to understand that the scale is a bit different for me. And it's not even so much about being happy as it is about being interested, being captivated, being content with spending hours outside of class concentrating on something. Art? Not so much. Not the stuff we're doing, anyway. And maybe it's just the professors, or maybe it's just the class atmosphere, but maybe it's not. I don't like art people. I don't really consider myself an artist, or and art person, or whatever. I draw sometimes. I like to do it. But I don't think what I do is good enough to sell, and I don't know if I'd be happy selling it for the rest of my life.
Of all the (admittedly meager) collegiate classes I've taken, the art classes haven't been my favorites. Anthropology, creative writing, histories... those make me want to learn, and more than that they make me want to DO something with that knowledge. I've had two Creative Writing classes. Two. When I came home from school this afternoon, I wrote a 5-page short story in 45 minutes. That's a big thing for me. I love to write, but I don't it often outside of this here online diary. And I really don't write stories, despite the wide and varied collection of ideas that I constantly have rattling around my in my skull. But it came to me, the very first line, and then another, and another, and I kept repeating them in my head to keep from forgetting. As soon as I got up into my room, I sat down and wrote. First the initial lines, and then everything just spiraled off from there. I stopped maybe twice, to fix spelling errors or change a word here and there. It wasn't hard, and it wasn't work. It felt good. Better than anything I've drawn or created art-wise lately, either in or out of class.
I think, when you get down to it, that I'm torn between words and pictures. I love words. I love sounds and sentences and letter and turns of phrase. I love grammar and proper usage and adding to my vocabulary. I love the way words look, alone or in a large block of text. It's beautiful and striking and carries so much visual meaning in addition to the actual textual meaning. But at the same time I find myself inexorably drawn to the basic components of artwork: color, texture, composition. I adore color. Every time I go into a craft store I end up standing in front of the big walls of embroidery thread, dumbstruck and enraptured by the sheer display of color. Color is wonderful and expressive and at its most basic a powerful aesthetic experience. Texture, feeling, touching - rust is beautiful. Dirt is beautiful. Fucking burlap is fucking beautiful, when you look at its texture. I am anal retentive about how things are arranged. It's very important. An object's position can speak volumes about its purpose and personality.
So where do I stand? Straddling a canyon, with art of one side and language on another? I don't like that. And I don't want to have to pick one, but it seems inevitable. Speaking in terms of college major and impending career path, anyway.
I need tests that will analyze my answers to meaningless questions and go "Hmmm." and then tell me what I'm supposed to do with my life. And if I get my results back and the sheet reads "42" I'm going to beat the living shit out of every fucking person on this planet, I swear to god.
back & forth
Wait, there's more!
I like pina coladas - March 30, 2005
must... finish... projects... - March 22, 2005
Mr. Postman delivers the good stuff - March 18, 2005
when everything is bad - March 16, 2005
of fruits and menstruation - March 15, 2005