I don't really do 2D anymore, not like I did as a teenager (and art major, before I focused on sculpture)... and I wasn't ever good enough, anyway. At least... not to me (and undoubtedly, not to anyone else). I've tried to get back to that... but it's not jelling. Maybe I just need to set aside my expectations of the style I once drew in, and do something different.
But yes... clay is freeing for me without the ego nonsense all tied up in it. I think it's a side-effect of working in a breakable medium - I can't get attached to a piece, it's ludicrous... at any point in the process it could break. It's not my identity like being a historian was my identity - it's something I do, not something I am. And for that reason I'll never live off it, do it professionally as a production potter with a big workshop and assistants... but you know... that's really OK.
Words are harder for me to disengage from, because they are rooted in my heart (as well as head), but after years of being the over-sensitive kid, the never-good-enough-keep-working grad student, always having to damper my emotional response to everything... I had to put up some walls to hide behind (I imagined unending negative reviews, the doubt was strangling), but I needed them to be short enough that I could interact with readers (and other writers), to engage and be engaged... but still, a barrier (even if the wall eventually shrunk in height to become so short no one could see it, but me) so I felt a wee bit safer exposing myself. The difference between being naked... and being NAKED.
A story is like a filmy negligee... you can still see everything, but we all agree to pretend it's armor with a wink and a nod.
Or, to put it a different way using a different set of symbols: I am a Cancer Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars. They are clustered together at my Midheaven (Sun/Moon conjunct). The only personal planet I have that isn't in the stellium is my Venus in Leo (prettehs! oh, aesthetics and beauty and everything from a Pre-Raphaelite painting and more!)
I feel. No, I don't feel... I FEEL. Crabs need shells or the die from exposure to their environment, they need protection from that which would eat them alive.
Being eaten alive? It really, really effing SUCKS. Been there, done that (many, many times over).
Fearing being seen is why I don't really (publicly, academi-)blog anymore. I was being read. I mean... by a LOT of people. THAT is NAKED.
ETA: Something just occurred to me:
Although I freaked out at being seen--read--by a LOT of people when I blogged (so much so that I backed off blogging anything of substance almost completely)... it was (four years?) after that, at Terminus, when I again faced being seen--when Annie told me that people not only read TLoF, but told other people to read it... but somehow I managed to get through the distress and not stop writing.
I'm not sure what this says, precisely, but I noticed the parallel.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-08-29 02:54 pm (UTC)But yes... clay is freeing for me without the ego nonsense all tied up in it. I think it's a side-effect of working in a breakable medium - I can't get attached to a piece, it's ludicrous... at any point in the process it could break. It's not my identity like being a historian was my identity - it's something I do, not something I am. And for that reason I'll never live off it, do it professionally as a production potter with a big workshop and assistants... but you know... that's really OK.
Words are harder for me to disengage from, because they are rooted in my heart (as well as head), but after years of being the over-sensitive kid, the never-good-enough-keep-working grad student, always having to damper my emotional response to everything... I had to put up some walls to hide behind (I imagined unending negative reviews, the doubt was strangling), but I needed them to be short enough that I could interact with readers (and other writers), to engage and be engaged... but still, a barrier (even if the wall eventually shrunk in height to become so short no one could see it, but me) so I felt a wee bit safer exposing myself. The difference between being naked... and being NAKED.
A story is like a filmy negligee... you can still see everything, but we all agree to pretend it's armor with a wink and a nod.
Or, to put it a different way using a different set of symbols: I am a Cancer Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars. They are clustered together at my Midheaven (Sun/Moon conjunct). The only personal planet I have that isn't in the stellium is my Venus in Leo (prettehs! oh, aesthetics and beauty and everything from a Pre-Raphaelite painting and more!)
I feel. No, I don't feel... I FEEL. Crabs need shells or the die from exposure to their environment, they need protection from that which would eat them alive.
Being eaten alive? It really, really effing SUCKS. Been there, done that (many, many times over).
Fearing being seen is why I don't really (publicly, academi-)blog anymore. I was being read. I mean... by a LOT of people. THAT is NAKED.
ETA: Something just occurred to me:
Although I freaked out at being seen--read--by a LOT of people when I blogged (so much so that I backed off blogging anything of substance almost completely)... it was (four years?) after that, at Terminus, when I again faced being seen--when Annie told me that people not only read TLoF, but told other people to read it... but somehow I managed to get through the distress and not stop writing.
I'm not sure what this says, precisely, but I noticed the parallel.