Feeling it.

We artists are emotional creatures. We dig and scratch and pick at old scabs and scars to find some truth. To put in words, or movement or expression how we really feel. How we felt at that specific moment, that one time. Hopefully how you feel. And sometimes those close to us fall victim to our process.

When I was younger every time I was upset my mom would tell me to write down how I felt, or whatever it was that upset so that I could use it. So that I would remember it. She would tell me that artists feel so much more than other people, and that’s why we can translate what we felt on the inside to something on the outside. Use it. So now I have a book of time capsules, or and album of snapshots of emotions that I felt. Sometimes I can’t help but be amused at my younger self and the things that upset her. Sometimes I can’t believe I ever stood up and carried on to reach this point.

Sometimes I remember the exact circumstances of an event. Sometimes I only wrote down how I felt and the event didn't really matter so much. When I read some of the entries in my books and diaries I only wrote down the event, but I still remember how I felt, although the memory of what I am reading has blurred somewhat and feels more like I movie I watched a long time ago than my own life.

I spent four years studying how to pull at my emotions, how to lay them flat and interrogate and examine everything I’ve felt. We did some of the good, but we all know that the true grit lies in the things that hurt. Sometimes you get pulled out of it and back into the real world. Sometimes the period ends and you walk of the class, your head filled with something raw that you spent years piling good things on top of it so you didn’t’ have to see it again.

But this is the nature of the arts, and is only once you’re in it that you realise what you truly do. And then there’s no more turning back.