Inconsistency Is Key

A major theme or motivation for making art in my life is reflection, and the need to explore memories. My most powerful memories come from personal relationships, and the most power of all from my romantic history. It isn’t really a riveting story, a simple one of a heartbreak that changed the essence of myself as a person, and the aftereffects of which influence almost every choice I seem to make. I oscillate betwixt and between every letter of ‘DABDA’ - the acronym of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance) and have added what feels like an entire additional alphabet to the lot - Worry, Irritation, Jealousy, Displacement, Skepticism, and Fear.

But the worst part of what has now become a Six Year long enigma, is a constantly rolling cassette tape in a cavern in my brain that plays the soundtrack of my life in Love.

At this point, when I give the memories my time and energy - I try to search for the truth of the words we said, the good ones and the hurtful ones, the brief and the long winded. And at the end of each session of reflection, I try to think of a way to cast each specific memory away, into a quieter place I can revisit in my own time.

This drawing with the caption “Do you remember when I sad ‘Groovy, Baby?’… Yeah I take that back” is a simple enough message. One of a similar melancholy character to the girl in ‘The Come Down,’ the girl here has moved beyond the present experience of a memory in the making, and is expressing the truth of her new present. In the case of memories as fleeting as pet names, I have found myself with a regular desire to take back the warmth I gave. Can I do that? No; and if I could, I’m sure it would be just as regrettable as burning photos of good memories just because the hurt was too great.

But the wish remains. To take back calling him my Groovy Baby, to take back the times I sacrificed things to provide color and kindness and use them on something better.

Though I cannot realistically take back a single moment of the history I’ve lived, I have every ability and right to express the desire to wipe my heart clean. Little by little, melancholy by melancholy, drawing by drawing, and day by day, the potential of a Me at a point of closure becomes more real - and I anxiously await that day