6 years sober; I Can Still Tap the Well

 

“But I have come to believe that you can escape your demons and still tap the well.”                                                                                    -David Byrne in "How Music Works"

I celebrate 6 years sober today. The improvements in my life keep coming year by year.  I've become a regular audiobook listener. I alternate between self-help/learning and just entertaining. Currently I'm finishing David Byrne's "How Music Works." I've been scribbling down a lot of inspiring quotes from this book but the above one really struck me. 

I had finally found my artistic voice by dumping my emotions into my work, consciously or unconsciously, I had a stride. And then I got sober. I have been weeding out the drama in my life making for less extreme emotional responses. I worried that without drinking I may not be as "inspired" or be able to respond to the world with my artwork the same way. 

It's the exact opposite. I have just as many emotions, I'm just handling them differently and I'm much more self-aware. It still gets dumped into my artwork and I'm far more productive to boot. I'm still "tapping the well" and that has actually shown this year with 2 of my pieces, one I finished and the other is on my loom. "Playing with Fire" started with a sketch of matches I had drawn when I was going through my divorce. I recall sitting at the bar and doodling. I liked this particular doodle of matches. I had scanned it into my computer files so I could easily track it down later, instead of digging through pages of sketchbooks. I found it and used it one of the sample warps for "Yes, And" and it turned out to be a nice little finished piece. I may revisit these matches in a larger work later. The divorce is coming up on it's 10 year anniversary and some similar themes in other personal relationships are arising so I tapped that old well. Luckily it's nothing I have to pour a drink over anymore, I just set sturdier boundaries. 

The current weaving I'm working on also comes from that era of divorce drama. What was real and not real was really spinning out of control, how things were perceived from various parties had completely different stories and recollections. I had never been sure how to tackle the design for this piece because I didn't want to hand draw it, I wanted to play with various fonts like I usually do, but I didn't have the computer skills to do so. Well, when I started working on "Yes, And" it was requested by the church's art board that the words have more movement than my usual designs. So I taught myself what I needed on Inkscape, a vector based program, and was able to move the words for "Yes, And" and then was able to manipulate words for this new weaving. I needed a real, paying, reason to learn that program, and the Universe handed it to me.

This year has been ups and downs but as I'm looking back on it today, mostly ups. This year so far we have taken 2 trips out of state to see concerts (Madness in Seattle and Riot Fest in Chicago), I took a solo trip to see a reunion concert (I Voted for Kodos!) and I also taught again at the Handweavers Guild of America Convergence Conference in Wichita ....so that's 2 trips flying, 1 train and one road trip. I still love my day job, I have a support system in place like I've never experienced before, I have an amazing, kind, understanding huband/partner in a relationship that keeps getting better as we grow together (rather than how they always used to get worse the longer I was stuck with someone). Life is so good, here's to 6 years and one more day....one day at a time.