Tuesday became Wednesday ten minutes ago - while brushing my teeth alongside my daughter in the downstairs bathroom. We have a weird synchronicity - we often meet at midnight with a toothbrush. We know how to live, obviously.
I’m certain tomorrow was at least an hour away when I looked five minutes ago.
Wilson Phillips are filling my headphones with memories of the early 1990s. Memories of the last glories of MTV Europe - when they still played music videos, and I had time to sit and watch them. Oh how I laughed at Ray Cokes antics, and adored Marijne van der Vlugt. I mentioned her in a similarly rose-tinted blog post a few years ago and received an unexpectedly wonderful comment the next day.
It’s nice to be reminded that the world isn’t as bad as many would have you believe.
The playlist goes on and I’m transported to the art class at college, and hours spent drawing pot plants, bundles of brick-a-brack, and half-dressed people. We always had the radio on - the only class where that ever happened. I can’t remember the last time I drew anybody. I learned early-on that if you’re good at anything during your school years it puts a pretty huge target on your back.
I tried to return to drawing a few years after leaving college. I’ve probably written about it somewhere in the annals of the blog.
I turned up with little or no materials and encountered “night class royalty” - the brigade of elderly “artists” sporting open shirt cuffs, neckerchiefs, and materials and equipment that had only existed in shop windows for me.
I can still remember the moment one of the most affable, charming, and popular men in the class took a look over my shoulder - no doubt to offer some sage advice - and murmured “I’m going to go home and shoot myself”. I remember the lady next to me craning over to look too, and whispering “Jesus”.
The target never really goes away for some.
When the children were little I walked a fine line while helping them draw. If I forgot myself and doodled a dinosaur in the corner of a page they would immediately compare and become downhearted.
And so I just stopped.
After a journey to “Hobbycraft” last weekend (a local crafting superstore), I returned with a plastic model kit - the likes of which I haven’t made since I was a teenager. It was a conscious decision to do something - anything - away from computers or work. Something to lose myself in for an hour here and there.
Building the model kit has been interesting - not because of what it is (it’s an aeroplane) - more because of how I value the time I spend time doing it. One of the reasons I stopped drawing, and I’m tempted to blame parenting for this, is that the end-product had no practical value. When you’re in the middle of bringing up children, your life tends to become compressed almost entirely towards that which needs to happen next.
For the longest time the first question when considering doing anything has been what practical value it might have.
Except writing.
For some reason the blog has always escaped the productivity purges. Throughout the chaos I’ve carried on writing. I’m not really sure why. I’ve held on to this last thing - this last thing “just for me”. The reasons have changed over time - from the noble “so the children might know who I was”, to “keeping me sane”, to “just because”.
I read a wonderful quote by Norah Ephron several years ago that I’ve shared before - about a blog being kind of like an exhale. I have it printed, and pinned on the cork-board above the desk. When lost for words it reminds me that while the world can be cold and abrasive, it can also be comforting - restorative.
Anyway. I’m rambling.
I haven’t written an “anyway” for a while. I wonder if that means anything? Probably not. Maybe it’s time I called it a night (he says, glancing nervously at 01:02 on the clock).