I love Patty Smith. She is one of my idols. I like her poetry and writing even more than her music. This summer I listened to her memoir Just Kids while walking miles of sidewalks around Kitchener and got totally sucked into her world of being a young artist in New York in the 70s and 80s with Robert Mapplethorpe. I love the way she pronounces pillow as “pilla” which she does so consistently I know it can’t be an affectation.
I am currently working on a new stop motion music video for a beautiful song by Barzin. I love having a new project to be working on, but I'm getting creatively blocked by self-doubt, pandemic and political anxiety and malaise. I haven't touched my memoir in two weeks. It's very emotionally daunting work. It feels like giving birth. Part of my malaise is due to multiple recent attempts to get pregnant - years of spiritual energy, hope, time and money has gone into this - and have all been disappointments, in a way that makes me feel almost embarrassed for trying and hoping - for putting us all through it. Now we're starting to think that maybe the only way I'll ever give birth is through creative output - and I have to find a way to be okay with the finality of that. And I will. I've found ways to be okay with unthinkable things.
Sometimes when I get a block it helps to switch to something a little different. So I started working on another video project that has been in the hopper for a few years, and I'm also making little micro animations with outtakes from the videos on Tik Tok and Insta. I loved how this one turned out.