Well, Exit wasn't quite as good as last week, but I am physically more sore. While we were there we ran into another Cleveland person from Filament 38, a local band that opened for Slick Idiot a few weeks back, and hung out with him and his friends for the evening.

So I'm awake...and the icky blah feeling that's been hovering around me for the past week or so just won't go away. Feeling kinda out of place. Not sure what is up with me. Being doing my absolute best to try and take the negative energy and doing something constructive with it. Got inspired to draw...getting involved in a fully rendered piece for the first time in 3 years. Taking my time doing it, but also getting it done surprisingly fast. Unlike my friend Andy, who does comic art for a living, I haven't been living and breathing art and drawing. At times I think I'm not really much for drawing anymore, or tell myself that I'm no good at it. This particular sketch though, is turned out very, very well. I've put a lot into it already and it seems to be one of those drawings that when I look back on it later, I'll wonder how in the red hell I did it.

The drawing has been a place to put a lot of unwanted pain and frustration. There's nothing quite like taking negative emotions and putting them in a positive form. So, art can be therapy. And this raises a question...most artists, being more sensitive to emotions, are often troubled in some way. (I think it comes with the territory. ) With this is mind I wonder, do artists create because they are troubled? Or are they troubled because they create? Somehow I think the answer already lies in both questions: yes.

I am not the most emotionally stable person...I take little things to heart much too easily. I stomp on myself relentlessly for doing stupid things. And I believe that most of it is because I'm usually floating around on this weird creative plane, stuck in my daydreams and devising new ways to express all the crap that is driving me nuts. Many people, I've noticed, when they view me or attempt to communicate with me during these particular times, think I'm wacky. I make perfect sense to me. But other people view me as flighty, or juvenile, or ....I don't know. Something that should only be viewed behind thick plate glass.

And this can and has fucked up many first impressions of me if I get caught in one of these moods by someone who doesn't readily undertand what's going on. When that happens, and am aware of it, I then punish myself for my behavior, which simply feeds the cycle of crazy and results in the hours spent in front of the computer making MORE webpages.

Yes, I am freaky. But I am not a dangerous freak like some out there, I don't enjoy harming others or myself. The occasion self psychological torture just happens, I certainly don't enjoy that. But I am driven. Whether it be driven to create, which is the usual outcome, or driven to achieve a certain goal, things get intense. Creation is born from my obsession half the time. Unfortunately, it's part of how I work...it's always been there. I find something new; it could be a band, or an item of clothing or an idea and I obsess about it day and night to the point of ridiculousness. I have to live and breathe whatever it is so I can incorporate it into what i'm creating. I find it odd that obsession and inspiration work like that for me. It frightens me, to be truthful. I do worry that someday I'll go off the deep end.

But for now, I've figured out that this stupid, annoying behavior does have its place. I've had far more good than bad come of it. I know where it's taking me, even if others think that I'm a psycho in the process. With the end result in mind, it all makes sense.
Creation winds up making the thoughts a solid thing, and in taking a material form, the thoughts are physically put into a container where they can be observed and communicated properly, as opposed to floating around like a disembodied spirit and causing me to be wacky.

So on that train of thought...I must be possessed. That would explain some things. :)