I went out yesterday and indulged myself. New clothes. I needed a new belt. Pants. Socks. I haven’t been to a mall in over a year. I used to enjoy them quite a bit. They sprouted like mushrooms for a time, though, and like the gas station wars (which, yes, I remember) they undercut each other until there was an inevitable collapse. The few that have survived, well.
I was amused a couple weeks ago when I had occasion to drive past one of the first in the greater St. Louis area, Crestwood Plaza. In my childhood, we used to run out there. I don’t think they called them strip malls then, but that’s what it was. Then, beginning in the early 70s, it grew and was covered over. The outdoor strip was joined to a roofed-over extension and then later the original strip was enclosed until the whole vast thing was a small town with lots of cool stuff. It was one of the first ones to fall on hard times. Efforts were made to preserve it and for a short while it became an enclave of independent artists. Alas, it wasn’t really close to the wealthier parts of the area to sustain that and it was shut down. Then torn down. Plans for redevelopment followed, many quite grandiose. I hadn’t seen it in a long while. As I drove by I saw that there was a new line of stores…a strip mall. What goes around…
Anyway, I spent too much money on too few things but for a brief moment I felt good. Last week I stopped by an art supply store and bought pencils, pens, and a small sketch pad. I keep intending to start drawing again, maybe even get back into painting (though I was never huge into that). All that stuff is sitting there, waiting. Between my music, photography, and writing, along with the other things I try to keep up on, I honestly don’t know where I’m going fit one more project.
See, it took years to acquire all the skills I have, such as they are. I don’t want to walk away from any of them. But the fact is, I was never really good at most of them, just good enough to show off, as it were, but not good enough to satisfy my own estimates of what that means. And that was fine since for many of those years I hadn’t settled on what I wanted to do. When the writing turned out to be the primary project, all the rest receded and time was reallocated.
You don’t realize how you lose things when you don’t pay due attention to them. It may be that I’m inwardly dreading trying to draw anything anymore, because it’s been so long that I’m sure I’ll suck at it.
And I really can’t stand being bad at the things I like to do.
Now, you might think, reading that, that I had gotten very good at those things at one time. And as far as it goes, I think I was. Drawing and painting, back in my youth, yeah, if I took my time, I was fairly good. But it came “naturally” so I didn’t consider how practice might be necessary. The music? That was….different. And I have over the last several years developed an improvisational method which serves to impress even as it isn’t exactly “good.” I’ve recently set myself to learning actual pieces, but the discipline of practice is a hard one to recover once abandoned. Photography I did for so long that it just seems innate now, and I don’t walk away from it for very long, so while I could certainly be better, I’m not bad,
Writing is the only thing I do with serious intent, and it seems to take up the largest chunk of time.
I don’t seem to be organizing my time very well, especially if I want to start up a new project. I don’t know where I’m going to fit all the things I want to do. That did not used to be an issue. I just did whatever appealed to me that day. It was all so organic.
Subsequently, questions of goals emerge. And I am brought up against a fact about myself that has always been an issue. I do very little just for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Almost nothing. All that I do I have certain intentions, even if only wishes. I started drawing again many years ago when it was pointed out to me that I needed an outlet that had nothing to do with career paths. I pursued it for a while until I found myself looking at the work and thinking, I could sell some of this… At which point it ceased being an outlet and became one more thing with a goal.
I suppose I write these blog posts as outlets. I don’t sell them. They’re like a shopping trip. Wander through the mall, see what’s new, maybe buy something just for the hell of it.
Anyway, these are some of things occupying my thoughts of late.