The topic I was given was something related to drawing, but I'm gonna expand out on it a
 bit, into all of the various creative things I've delved in to.

I've always had a creative streak that I got from both sides of my family.  As such, I've dabbled in a lot of different things over the course of my life.  I vaguely recall being taught how to play the violin at around age 4 or 5.  I don't know if I was any good at it, as I don't really recall much beyond a few mental snapshots.  It's not anything that lasted in my life.

Sometime around the age of 5 or 6, I was introduced to BASIC, which I mention only because I'm walking down memory lane and this is vaguely creative.  Yeah, I was a nerdy little kid who was figuring out basic logic and coding if/then statements before I had entered elementary school.
 
At around the age of 7 or 8, my folks got a video camera that had the ability to shoot video frame by frame.  I translated that into a handful of claymation videos.  I think they're still floating around my folks place on VHS.  There was no direction to any of them, but they were fun to play around with.  That led to my being enrolled in a couple of animation classes at the local arts institute, which wasn't that great of an experience for me.  The other kids in the class all knew one another from previous classes and I was the outsider, so I was picked on and teased.  Whatever project I was working on would be messed and I'd generally just feel kinda frustrated and helpless.  I enjoyed doing this stuff on my own and don't think I got much of anything out of the classes.  I stopped playing around with the animation stuff at around age 10 or so.


At around the age of 11 or so, I decided that I wanted to play the flute.  I went for private lessons for around 2 years, but despite this, I was never good at playing.  Being able to competently produce notes on an instrument is not the same as being able to play music.  I could do the former, but I wasn't good at the latter.

From the age of 4 until I turned 18, I sang in a church choir.  I missed one year at around age 13 or so due to...personal issues.  I'd like to think I was pretty good at the whole singing thing.  I certainly developed an ear for harmony and suchlike, but I'm under no illusion that I was/am anything other than a middling singer, and only really competent at it when I have the support of a group of other people.


At various points, between the ages of 12 and 15, I would audition for various theater roles and actually perform on stage.  I had fun.  I enjoyed acting, and from time to time, I'd consider getting involved in local theater.  I haven't thought about doing that for a long time now.

At around the age of 16, I decided that I wanted to learn how to play the piano, so my parents got me signed up for lessons.  That lasted for about a year before my interest petered out and I figured out that I really didn't have much ability with playing.  I don't think my hands are big enough to really pull it off well.

All throughout my life though, I would, from time to time, find myself sitting at a player piano that my folks had and just improvising music.  Later on, I would play on a Korg-1 that my dad bought, just kinda losing myself in the notes I was playing.  At some point, my folks got me a copy of Cakewalk, which is a piece of music composing software, and I would spend a fair amount of time composing odd bits of music.  I always did enjoy the process of creating music, even if it wasn't particularly good music.

See, for me, the point wasn't the music.  It was the stories that I told myself about the relationship between the different harmonies and notes.  It's hard to explain, but every time I set down to create music, there would always be a story that would play out in my mind about it.  Not like a literal story, but odd abstracted stories, moods and suchlike.  I mention this because this notion of storytelling is a common theme in my thinking and plays a role in how I draw.

Ahh, drawing.  While growing up, I would always be drawing stuff.  I think my mom has some drawings I did when I was like 4 years old, of dragons and dinosaurs and stuff like that.  But until just recently - like 4 years ago recently - I never sat down to draw an actual picture.  The stuff I would draw would always be these weird line squiggles that I would refer to as maps.  Basically I would draw landforms and sometimes color them in.  I turned one of these I drew in like 15 minutes into an interesting abstract silkscreen print, something that actually made it into a juried gallery show.

When I sit down to draw stuff, it would play out in a similar manner to how I created music.  I'd start scribbling, and then just let my mind tell me the story of the relationship between the lines.  Then I'd let eyes wander over the scribbles and pick out figures or scenes and concentrate on those.  I'd watch scenes rise and fall over the course of the drawing, each successive rise and fall refining the picture more and more.

A lot of the time, I'll impose rules on different parts that I'm working on:  The lines will all be shaped like this, this area will be filled with circles with a squiggle, that section will be curvy but also accented with spikey bits.  Characters will suggest themselves to me out of the randomness, and I'll spend time pulling them out against the chaotic backdrop.  Sometimes, the character just doesn't fit any more and I'll draw a line over and through them, and they'll be gone or turned into something else.  Once a drawing really starts taking shape and I concentrate on something that other people can identify as being something, I'll start developing the background for whatever it is that I'm creating.

And for each drawing, I'll remember the whole story.  All the characters that contributed to the final image, the scenery that changed, everything.  I suspect that everybody who creates does similar things.

Anyway, I asked, you replied, and this is my blog post.

I picked up an odd bit of a philosophical outlook from, of all places, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy text game. At one point, there you are, Arthur Dent, strapped to some chair/torture device, listening to Vogon poetry. It is the most awful, horrible, painful experience that you/he has ever experienced. You want it to stop. You'll do anything, just to make it stop.

Yet, the solution to the puzzle demands that you type in the phrase "enjoy poetry". Then you hit enter. Then you/Arthur Dent, enjoys the poetry.

Years later, after I grew up and became more worldly and experienced and educated or whatever, I came to realize that that little bit of game text right there was Sartre's absurdist Sisyphus in miniature. Confined to Hell, condemned to a pointless pursuit by a vengeful Zeus, King Sisyphus found comfort or hope or satisfaction (or whatever) in the struggle of pushing that damn boulder up the slope. It didn't matter if it ever reached the top.