Usually, the best way for me to organize my thoughts is to make a post here. Right now I’ve got a number of small projects that I’m trying to get underway, so I think it’s time for me to lay them all out in a list. These are in addition to my main goals for the year, which are to pay off my bills, and to learn Japanese.
- Block Printing
After seeing the charming work of Sachiko Takahashi, I’ve decided to get out the linoleum blocks I’ve had tucked away for ages and try my hand at my first block print. Just a simple botanical to start with, probably. If I don’t get in over my head like I usually do.
- Knitting
I need to either choose a new project or pick up an old one, but I’d like to work on a knitting project to completion soon. Something small, preferably.
- Writing
I started a short story while in Tokyo, and I’d like to finish that one. I think it needs some actual conflict of some sort before it will be interesting (obviously, but not so obvious when I’m in the middle of working on it.)
- Watercolor
Slightly more ambitious, I’d like to make a watercolor painting from a photograph I took at Tomioka Hachiman Shrine, since the photo itself has too many elements distracting from the subject.
- Reading
I just finished reading Darling is a Foreigner by OGURI Saori, so now I have to decide what to read next. I started Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld on the plane, so I might just finish that.
Recently, when I was looking for the extremely steep stairs leading to Atago Shrine in Atago, Tokyo, I happened upon a print shop counter displaying of some of the sweetest, most magical artwork I’d ever seen. Sachiko Takahashi is a woodblock artist whose many-colored scenes are full of fiddle-playing mantises, foxes in kimono, cat weddings, and rivers of stars. Her work is playful, but dark, too; not the darkness of death but the magical darkness of the forest at night.
Eventually I hope to be able to buy a real woodblock print by Takahashi-sensei, but for now, these postcards are cheaper and every bit as frameable!
Whenever I take those “Which Jane Austen Character are you?” quizzes online, I almost always get Marianne Dashwood as a result. In spite of that, I’ve always identified most with Emma. I’m not sure why; I’m not into matchmaking and I probably mind my own business a bit too much. I do think I see a lot of my own flaws in Emma; I’m not sure it’s a good thing that I like her more because of it.
Whatever the reason, Emma is my favorite Austen character, and when I was recently reading Emma, I smiled when I read this passage:
Emma wished to go to work directly, and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various attempts at portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished, that they might decide together on the best size for Harriet. Her many beginnings were displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole-lengths, pencil, crayon, and water-colours had been all tried in turn. She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to. She played and sang;—and drew in almost every style; but steadiness had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.
I’m afraid it sounds just like me. I’ve always had a lot of inspiration but not much patience for practice. In fact, apart from writing, I didn’t even realize that I could practice at art and improve until a few years ago; before then, when my projects didn’t turn out I just gave up. I guess I thought that I had a little talent, but only enough to be frustrated.
On the other hand, like Emma, there has always been the element of distraction keeping me back. I do want to do everything, to try every sort of creative pursuit. It makes progress difficult when you never stick with anything for more than a few months. Writing has held my interest over time, but everything else gets tossed aside and picked up again every so often. It’s not that I stop enjoying what I was doing before… it’s just that I want to do everything.
