little echo voice

remember that quote i brought up from e.l.a.i.c.? about feeling more feelings? i am thinking about it again today. (most days, really. such a great quote.)

today my heart broke a little reading about a blogger who is quitting blogging (for a while, for forever... who knows) because her marriage is ending. i don't know her. not really. not at all, really. but i look at photos of her life all the time. i know about what she thinks about every monday. i know her daughters' clameyes. and her goodbye post made me mega sads.

and sometimes i wonder about how heavily i feel things. how completely i can be taken over by other people's experiences. and i worry. it is easy to go around hurting all the time for everyone because there is always something happening that is bad or sad or unfair. and it is hard for me not to. go along. the bonus is, though, that i also get to steal the best bits of feelings. the happiest, sparklingest bits. i get to feel those too. like they are my very own.

and i bet that's better than not. at least that is what i tell myself. i wonder what it is like for the people who can just go around feeling their own feelings and that's that. i wonder if i'd like it...

{ranunculus by irving penn, photo from artnet}

while i'm on this sort of thoughtful-achey-heart track, i also had some questions i have been thinking about. for my artstuff. for so long i have made art about relationships, the spaces around and between people, the connections. you know i haven't been making much art for a while now. a drawing here and there, sure, but nothing substantial. and at first it was because i couldn't. i needed to not. for a while. but now i would like to again. but i don't yet have a language to go along with the kinds of things i want to be 'talking' about in my work. blah blah. here, art-friends, are some questions. and if you have any wisdom at all for me, i would be grateful for it. (in the comments, or in the email. ekhooper@telus.net)

* how do you make something about

• nothingness
• a void
• a loss
• movement

* how do you make something about this very moment and all that it is and is not

* how do you make something about things that have ceased to be

* how do you make something about a lack of action or a thing that was not done

????

if i can begin to consider answers for those questions, i think i can begin to make 'art' again. i think. i hope.