Pre-Play Jitters

It's my pottery class tonight and I'm feeling like I don't want to do it. Which is really just a cover up for the fact that I'm feeling nervous and excited about it. I can't fool myself :)

I keep expecting bad things are gonna come out of the clay, deep, dark secrets that foretell doom and gloom. Nothing I have made from clay has done that. Last week at art therapy I began moulding clay with my intellect switched off. What came out was half a nut, cut in half. The middle of a nut is called a kernel. At the same time I kept seeing this shape as also being like a piece of furniture in some weird way. I kept imagining a figure reclining on it and something to do with seeds. Then it came to me later that night - a seedbed. This is a kernel and a seedbed and all these metaphors and alliterations and playful word puns come out effortlessly of the deeper, darker, excitinger, mysteriouser part of me, not the boring, stupid, pain in the arse that often controls my mind :)

She's doing it this morning. She's thinking that it's all her. I want to go on a word fast sometime soon where for 24 hours the only words allowed out of my mouth or my keyboard are poetry or metaphor or song :) I'm so tired of hearing myself think! But then the deeper, more mysteriouser part speaks and I am left gobsmacked again at how far I extend beyond consumer lines and familial lines and social networking lines and beyond my own conscious lines. And this is why making art is so important for me and look, here I go, swimming up into my own head, theorising about the importance of making art, and how boring it is and no wonder there are so many critics in the world 'cos it's always easier talking about it than doing it :)

And my inner eight year old starving artist girl is just waiting patiently for 6 o'clock. She switches off from all this intellectual theorising about everything. She's excited, thrilled, and can't wait to meet new people. Even while my inner cultural attache is nervous about meeting new people because people are sometimes yukky and because she's more concerned about getting around with a collapsed decolletage and horrid lines snaking across her delicate under eye area because it's not good for the brand. The inner artist sighs. It's tiring living with all these annoying people but it's just how it is, you know? And it's not all bad. There's some pretty interesting sorts living in here too. Quite partial to the Man with the child in his eyes. He gets about and talks to everyone. Keeps us all in line :)

The inner artist is sitting quiet. She's just waiting for 6 o'clock.

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PS: You may be pondering "mental illness" reading this post. Multiple personality disorder, maybe. Well, who's to say I don't veer over into mental illness from time to time? More's the point - who's to say that we all don't? Funnily enough, I have never felt more "together" than I do now even while I often feel like I could bust apart. It's all about becoming real, I think. And so while I may have some definite elements of mental disorder, multiple personalities aren't one of them. Those are simply creative devices :) Just sayin', just in case you're wonderin' :)