I’ve decided that for the next month or so — however long I need — that when I journal here, I’m going to photojournal rather than communicate with words and text. Even that’s tough, posting a photo or a piece of artwork and not saying anything about it. I tell you, you’d think that my odd little mind is convinced that if I shut my yap, the world will stop turning.

One of the challenges I’ve always had when it comes to being creative in more than one medium is striking a balance. It’s fine that I have phases where one medium is the primary one, and the others more secondary. That’s not the issue, or at least not the issue when those phases are days, weeks, maybe even a couple months. But sometimes, any one way of communicating, of creating basically monopolizes all others. That one way will rudely shove every other medium into the closet and lock the door, only letting them out when they whine and say pretty, pretty please, and sometimes, refuses to open it at all, no matter the plaintive wailing, which gets softer and softer as time goes by until one can barely hear them at all.

I feel utterly steamrolled by my own words lately, both in writing and in talking. Not only is that not leaving room for anything else, they’ve been so fever pitch that managing them in the way any writer needs to has become far more difficult than it should be.

I’m missing visual imagery these days. While images certainly have things to say, they’re communicated in a silence which I find meditative. It helps me listen to the world with my eyes and my more intuitive senses. (That sounded both completely convoluted and cheeseball, but so be it.) I’m more observant of everything around me when I do photography or other visual artwork, and that’s an important meditation for someone who is a far better talker than she is a listener. (Being hyper and a bit ADD also is a factor in this.) Words tend to energize me and work me up, whereas the visual — and music, too — calms, stills, quiets and centers.

I may even just write for myself a bit in the interim. It’s been a long while since I’ve done that, sparing my to-do lists, which while they have a flavor all their own, and are occasionally amusing, aren’t exactly the deepest form of personal expression.

Of course, I can’t get away with not writing anything, nor without conversing, simply because for two out of three jobs, I need to do those things. But I think that even limiting it in one avenue will be the good news.

So, you get a piece from a full set I put up today, of Melissa (Happy birthday, gal!), which is apt, really, and not just because her setting and posture speak — as it were — to some of how I’m feeling at the moment. Even though we spent this day last October talkingtalkingtalking, there’s still that quiet, that calm, that observation and meditative focus I get when I take pictures sewn throughout.

And now you get me being quiet. Starting now. Here I am, quiet, quiet, quiety-quiet. La la la, wordless bliss. Okay, no really: right now. No, wait, I — now. Quiet. Hmm. This kind of reminds me of The Monster At The End of This Book. Fine, seriously. No more words.

(Oh, hush.)

filed under Heather Corinna | subconscious life | photography & art | wah
posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 9:05 pm

follow responses to this entry through the rss 2.0 feed
you can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.