The Process

The tune of a blues guitarist from Niger plays on repeat all day and i tap in through a long headphone cable through my shirt connecting ear to pocket.  I stare upon various boats and watch them turn from neglect into shine and let my mind slip away into both nothingness and somethingness.  I sip on an ice tea that I made the night before of herbs and fruit while discussing pre-colombian history for hours with one of my best friends.


tea recipe:

black tea

ginger

mint

sage

lime juice

cinnamon

a blended slurry of pineapple and blueberries.

..and I have all this time to think.  My mind pieces itself together and makes rearrangements, stews as I call them.  I have many plans but I'm not sure whats going to happen next.  This gives me comfort somehow as Uncertainty has never been a stranger.  

two paintings so far:

Turkish fez-wearing rabbit with a mustache

Salty man of the sea holding a dead fish.

The suburbs are wild (whereas 'wild' has always been a word I misuse whenever I can think of no other fit adjective) and I really just lose myself in them.  It is really bizarre to hear English and even more bizarre to say things like "it is really bizarre to hear English".  I find that I tend to eavesdrop to the most meaningless conversations in public which is actually quite rude however I have been living in countries which do not speak English during the last four years.  It is amazing how wild that really is.

I paint and I lose myself in the little bits of freedom I can finally withdraw from the ether above and my mind begins to create a map.  I want to go to Africa and by now I thought I would have known specifically where.  I'm listening to the callings and the feathers of inspiration that have taken me around the world many times and I know that soon I will be stretching my wings again.  Home is good for that.  Detroit is good for that.  Yesterday I sat on the rooftop with two of my closest friends sipping Rep Stripe, my favorite beer, and watching the chilly sky turn pink.  A soft hum echoes from the generators and I feel like I can actually hear the click of the traffic lights below turning from red to green.

When you begin a painting you feel this tingle the moment the paint touches the canvas and I love to feel that sensation soak through my skin.  I'm not a good painter, in fact I often find myself treating the paint brush like a pen, something I'm more accustomed to, yet I feel myself getting better.  I never studied art because I have always believed that self-taught artists have an incredible amount of freedom, perhaps the envy of graphic designers and wedding photographers.  Strangely.. very very strangely I feel this taking me closer to Africa.

A friend once told me that all of your ambitions begin with making your bed in the morning.  Let everything you do be a small step towards a greater goal and I feel that losing myself in art is helping to prepare my mind for something really special.  I cannot explain that very well I just confide in myself that every day I am getting closer.

Soon I will buy a ticket to Istanbul, where I have declared to be my new home.  It is my center and in many ways the center of the world.  The city has been good to me and by the time I return it will have been one year away from home.  I will work and I will stretch my energy into a new apartment, one that is nice and conducive to the creative process.  I've never felt so conscious.