62. Now
How we are. Watercolors, mental health, the art of being present.
Recently, I was startled to see a “Memory” pop up on my iPhone. It was of Christmas day last year, when I had quietly taken a photo of my mother walking in her backyard with my sister. Our father had just died, and Mom, who had disappeared into psychosis over the summer and fall, was still unstable and violent.
I’m struck by such a feature, which assumes that captured moments are happy, and that re-contextualizing the highly personal and private in such an abrupt and out-of-context way, would be broadly welcome, if not benign.
The holiday season is upon us. For my family, it also means the anniversary of Dad’s death and everything else that happened last winter. The past is rising up around us, muted and translucent, a shadowy replay.
One thing I’ve been doing to take care of myself is to anchor in the present. The physical ways to do this are relatively easy: run, breathe into the gut, yoga slowly. Their mental counterparts, less so. As someone who’s always lived in the past or the future, being here, now, is an elusive skill. One that I’m working hard to hone.
OK, an update on music rights for my latest short film (trailer): turns out, I lied.
The U.S. side of licensing has been supremely slow. Apparently they’re still gathering paperwork, and I’ve yet to make payments. I imagine this being end of November, with people out of the office, traveling, checked out, may also have something to do with how long it’s taking to wrap this up.
That’s OK, plenty to do.
Doing a test run of the initial 26 frames, I love the imprecise subtlety of these paintings in motion:
But I did want a dark background as is in the placeholder:
I could mask out the hand, but that will likely result in a loss of organic feel at the line. Another thing I could do is to paint in inverse:
then invert again in Photoshop. Something haunting about this vibe that feels right:
I could also just leave the placeholder and deal with it being stylistically out of place. I’ll probably paint the rest of the frames out inverted and see how it looks. It’s not that many frames, so I feel it’s a reasonable use of time to vet this direction.
Next we meet I hope to have this sequence finalized one way or the other, with music rights finally squared away. Until then, a photo of pre-Thanksgiving dinner with friends:
and one of Thanksgiving proper with another set of friends:
For many of us, December can be tough with the stresses of travel, work, family, and the heft and responsibility of another year about to close. (I had no idea how much I needed this four-day weekend.)
I’m grateful for my family, my privilege, my health. My beautiful friends, NYC. I had a phenomenal Thanksgiving, and I’ll have a warm hearth to gather around with people who love me. It’s been an eventful year with lots of change.
Here’s to continuing growth, perspective, and being here, now. May the upcoming months, and year, be as abundant and nourishing as the tables above.
Happy holidays. See you on the other side.
P.S. I love Robin Sloan’s annual gift guide. Fun fact: before he was famous we were coworkers back at Twitter in happier times.
P.P.S. Holy shit Procreate Dreams is out—it’s some mind-blowing, pioneering stuff (the record feature at 12:52, wtf). The design is insane, super impressed as usual by that team. Here’s their preview video from a few months ago, and the early reveal by their CEO at a conference keynote. It’s also available for $20 as a one time purchase, no subscription. They are truly beautiful people