DEMONS (as inspired by the luscious Lynda Berry), or REASONS NOT TO WORK ON ART, or, LIES I TELL MYSELF

I've also realized more people read my blog when I put an unflattering picture on top... Social experiment, commence! 

"I have other things to do anyways! Like picking up my glasses, buying new trainers, i.e. spending money on stuff I probably shouldn't be spending them on while trying to make it as an artist."

"I need to walk my dog. I need to walk my dog thirteen times a day."

"Well, won't get a sixpack by sitting down and working on art! Besides, sitting still is unhealthy. Thirty minutes, way too much."

"Kind of hungry. Could do with a tea break. To think. And be inspired. Leafs in the cup... reminisce... A haiku, maybe?"

"Yes, I will cover all the math classes until the end of the semester. Yes, I'm "good" at math!"

"I need to be of use in society and repay my debts to the world. Let’s to presentations about UWC in every single tenth and eleventh grade in the nearby high schools! All separate. that makes about fourteen classes. Bo problem. Let’s also make individual presentations for each class, AND buy them presents! More shopping!"

"I need some other training apart from workouts and walking the dog and biking around. Should probably start a new martial art… It’s only like i’ll do it once a week..."

"My neck hurts. I’ll do 90 minutes of yoga. That should help. Need to stick in 40 minutes of shavasana too..."

"Now i’m hungry. Maybe I'll bake my own bread. Also, can’t concentrate while it rises… Oh, there’s A Dance With Dragons!"

Bizarro.

photo by me.

I don't know what I expected teaching would be like, but certainly not this. I did not expect qualms after every class and a thousand questions I don't know the answer to (what do I do about someone I think is dyslexic? what if someone confides in me, do I take it further? and the ones that are lagging behind? or way, way ahead, and bore out of their minds?), though I did expect hormones and some resistance and lots of good things. Unsure of how much I can or should disclose of my reflections regarding this new little job of mine, I suppose I'll keep it to a minimum, unless it's very general. But this will help me, I think, when looking back, because I will know better what I felt then and what I've learnt now. Or perhaps what I will have forgotten in one month, two months.

Neither did I expect to be so tired after one day. To feel like I failed and failed and succeeded a little bit, but that I'm at the mercy of thirty students and also at their service. It is for them that I am there, after all (which feels weird and pretentious, but they are my employers). 

At the same time I try to work and to make some things, and even to write a little bit. Just a page or two, something that isn't a student report or description of the essay-genre. Not long. And I'm beading and beading, but I don't know what's happening with that. Now that I'm no longer in school there is not much point to me making things but then at the same time there is ALL the point that I make these things. Nobody's telling me it's right or wrong, and that's weird and unusual. No censoring? No silence muddling discomfort and boredom in an airless critique? No awkward animal stuffed with acrylic paint on a pedestal? Strange freedom is also bizarre entrapment.

School-post-work-normalcy

I have been working. Well, not entirely true, but I've now worked one day as a teacher. Don't know how much I want or should say about that, except that I really, really enjoy it.

Also, finished some stuff. Started some stuff.

The remaining thoughts are somewhat connected, but only peripherally. In the last few days I've given a lot of thought to creative work and actively pursuing a passion that won't necessarily pay off for a long, long, looong time yet. Having gone to school for four year seems like such an incredibly long time, and I was getting increasingly more impatient as the end was drawing near. It was like this endless waiting-game where I couldn't enjoy most of my classes anymore; everything was a preparation for something else, and why do the preparation when you can simply go ahead and give it a go? That seems silly even now as I write about it, but it's somewhat been confirmed in the last few days since it became clear that I will have a part-time gig that allows me evenings and weekends "off" for working on art.

This might be a realization that I'm quite late for and others have already gotten, but it is tremendously strange not to be in school. All along we fear and anticipate what it's going to be like (all these "Life as an Artist"-lectures and classes about post-art school life... I never took any of them. Seems stupid now, though.), but we're never actually prepared for the reality of it until tried and tested. There was no way for me to seriously begin projects at home during vacations and breaks because I knew they would be temporary, and I knew I'd be going back to school. Now I don't. I mean, I have nothing now. It's not a bad thing. It's a really good thing. But it's also mind-numbingly strange to be a Regular Citizen after having gone to school CONTINUOUSLY since the age of 5. Most of my life I haven't done this! No wonder I'm so weird and semi-bad at it! 

Well, I don't know the exact purpose of what I just outlined. Maybe the moral is something like this:

It is weird and scary and a little bit bad and very liberating not to be in school and to actually Work For Money Whilst Making Art During Free Time (Trying Not To Check Blogs) + Eat Well And Work Out Regularly (though I'm only on Day One). And I'm so unused to it, because School Life is by now the norm, while Regular Adult Life is the strange fiction that I'm sort of skipping through while thinking about where to apply for grad school.

I guess I'm late to the party. Work for me is not a luxury, and I feel incredibly privileged to even have a job and to live in a country like Norway that actually supports artist. At the same time, though, school is the norm. Being in school. 

I don't know where to end this. Just ranty rant. 

Second Part: Post-graduation Reflections

If life post-graduation can be anything similar to another state of mind, it’s being in love. The burst of anger at yourself and your own silly notions; the sudden plunging down into doubt and extreme self-consciousness and -criticism; the dizzying heights of inspiration where you think you’ve made the right choice in either ignoring your beloved (because they OBVIOUSLY can’t be interested) or committing one hundred per cent to the cause of Being The Person You Think They Will Fall In Love With. It’s an emotional roller coaster, or at least it is for me once I’ve decided that I Will Make Art And Make It Well. Not only do I have a thousand little voices in my head telling me it’s all been made before, you will be poor forever (this particular one is also echoed in my surroundings, from concerned members of the extended family and childhood friends), who will want to marry you… Well, not that one, actually. 

Beading in progress and cont.

But it is true that the hardest thing—and excuse my cheesiness and being super late to the Self-Improvement Party and Accepting Yourself Maybelline L’Oreal—is to tell myself every single day that this is good enough although it isn’t measured in such regular terms such as resumes or seniority in a firm. There are those voices, naturally, that want me to become a doctor lawyer engineer, and the scariest thing about those ones is that they are so good, well at least being a doctor because you’re helping people, being unselfish &c &c. 

Then there are the voices that are even more alluring and disquieting; those are remarkably similar to the Art-voices named Confidence and Courage, but they are not them, because they tell me that I should instead take up something equally impractical but radically different like becoming a conservationist or perhaps theologist, because you are interested in these topics, but you’ll have a fresh start and do you even like Art?

My favorite of the Voices of Discouragement is the voice I often employ myself when I meet someone I don’t particularly want to impress. It usually takes three forms, and I 

have a special smile for each of them. 

Art things.

Form number one is the option to go into the Army. Now, you might say, isn’t that quite normal for a strapping young Norwegian lass like yerself? Why yes, it is, but I want to go into the Danish division that patrols Greenland on dog sleds. I know it’s impossible. This voice appeals to the Man in me and is just as impractical as Art, though more impressive.

Form number two is sort of a half-option, because it’s always there (whereas the Army is not, there’s an age limit), and it consists in—can you guess what it is!—donning a large robe and a heavy wooden cross and lying sprawled on the floor when initiated! Becoming a nun seems very appealing almost all of the time. Maybe I’m just waiting to get older.

Form number three is the funniest, scariest and most likely, and it is basically me going on social welfare. Writing that out somehow wasn’t as comforting as I thought it’d be…

A desk of sorts.

In either case, I’ve begun making something, I have a desk where I work, and a precariously constructed schedule for the day until I hopefully begin part-time work as a replacement art teacher at the local middle school or as a privatized slave at the airport.

Updates to follow, alternatively funny selfies of me if no progress reported.

Reflection post-graduation, Pt. I

I’ve come through the door and it’s a different opening this time. I don’t know from where or when I’m writing, but suffice to say, this is a strange and unfamiliar land to be in. I do not know how not to be in school, I do not know how not to succumb to laziness, indecisiveness and lack of confidence when it comes to taking risks. I don’t know how to look at myself anymore, and it’s scary. Coming back to Norway often feels like dropping off the face of the earth. It’s so peaceful and quiet, I notice, and then I’m scared it’s not real. How can it be? There’s no dust. The sunlight is clearly slanted through the crowns of the trees in cursive, and I notice fall is here. People smile when they give me the stamps (they could in the US also, but it’s different here). It’s another place than the place I have inside of me, and I don’t know if it’s unnaturally quiet outside or absurdly loud on the inside. I don’t know if this is an essay or a blog post or the beginnings of my personal memoirs, but it’s sorting-out-ness, in one way or another. I tell myself I know what things to want, and what I simply will not do. I got upset the other day because someone suggested I become a teacher, but now I might become a replacement at the local middle school for arts and crafts. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Will I have time to write applications, scour the internet for residencies, work on my portfolio? The real question is not this. The real question is this: will I have the guts to do so? Will I think that it’s easier to get a regular job, it’s simpler, more straightforward, and it will be enough for me? Will I chose to sleep longer rather than waking up before work to bead, or to write, or to weave, or to draw? Am I doing this on my own?