The Sapling Song

This tiny doodle and the piece following (‘The Cave (Grievance Flowstate)’) came about in a total of a single afternoon, along with a half dozen other explorations of nude postures and poses. Though the majority of the work I do is absent of human forms, the pieces I create with people as subjects - nearly without fail - are of delicate, vulnerable, naked people. This doodle, the Sapling Song, rolled off the tip of my brain and through the ink of my pens in a gentle and silent moment in bed the first night in my high school house. 

The fall semester leading up to the journey home was one of the most difficult time periods in my experience so far. Understanding content in classes was far from the intuitive process I’d had until then; the days of passport stamps and a revolving door of new acquaintances were over as far as I could see. I felt like despite all of the things I had done and experienced - that because school made little sense to me, I was ultimately worthless. I was drinking too much wine, wasting too much gas, and spending too much time staring blankly at the walls of my room, or looking at the ceiling from my pruned shell of a body in the bathtub. I was far from living. In late October, I visited the school counselor with a desire to feel better and know why I wasn’t living up to the world’s idea of me.

I had prepared a long, thorough explanation of my theories as to why the semester was so difficult: a life history of being a fairly well liked oddball, and a plea for a way to “better,” really better, not the temporary kind that comes from running away or inebriation. Before we even arrived at ADHD a few sessions into the process, the first words she finally got out in response to my Epic Poem of Despair were “Is there anything you can think of that comes naturally to you? Anything you do that makes you feel proud of yourself?” For a moment I was ashamed - I had explained my entire, fairly eventful, and definitely special life story to this woman… And I had only complained about it being the most awful infliction of all time. As I thought about the question and shifted in my chair I knew the answer. I knew the answer was art. But I even felt shame about that.

“Well I’m pretty creative - I can play a lot of instruments, and people like my art when I do it…” I said with my eyes fixed on the carpet.

“From your life story I would have had no idea - our time is up for this week, but think about that.. You don’t have to do anything about the thought - but think about it.”

Over that weekend I thought, and ordered a surfboard building kit that became the starting point for the pursuit of 'better.'

5 weeks later, 5 sessions later, I arrived home full of apprehension for having to answer the end of college questions: “What are you going to do when you graduate? Are you going to go on any trips soon? Have you met any boys you like? How were your grades last semester? Are you excited to be so close?” Curled in my unfamiliar bed in my unfamiliar home, I thought about that first session weeks before, and the Sapling Song appeared - just a small girl unaware of someone seeing her, and beginning to sprout a little blue cloud of potential… (see the rest of the story in 'The Cave' !!)