Lots of new painting plans made today. Transferred the underdrawing to the new Volcanism painting (I will change the title of this) and looked at a few older ideas, some from a few years ago, and three new ones from last night. It takes a flash to think of them, a day to draw them out but can takes weeks to paint them so it can be tempting to rush in with 'any old thing' rather than carefully considering, yet, any old thing is better than nothing and it's quite amazing how unpredictable the good paintings will turn out to be, sometimes even years after painting something, a painting that seemed minor or flawed at the time tends to be one that grows to be loved. I love a few of my oldest and, from a technical point of view, crudest paintings. Opposite my bed is a portait of film star Claire Luce which I painted in my first years as a painter. I looks amateruish in many ways, yet I've grown to love it and the expression is quite unique, its mood reflects mine when I look at it, so I can use it as a mirror. Perhaps I should repaint it.
In the evening I worked on the Dreams Of You song and changed the chords. I used the new time-import feature but it had a few teething problems so I've updated the program too.
It's been a week of extreme anxiety, mainly fear of anxiety because of the pain this causes me. Of course this a self-created cycle and it is this knowledge that can dissipate it. We are all composite beings, made of many cells, and many personalities and opinions. When we talk or think to ourselves then one self is communicating with another, and even which self is 'us', the dominant one, changes. In a dream, each character is another self. So health and happiness come down to handling relationships, they are matters of diplomacy; understanding, care, friendship, empathy with our different selves, all there with different hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions. We are teams, fellowships of friends shambling through the world together.
