Category: Artist’s Statements

• Brief Thoughts on David Lynch

  After David Lynch passed, my social media flooded with tributes, memories, and stories about his art and his spirit. The same sentiment I saw when greats like Ursula K. LeGuin and David Bowie passed: Why do we lose these artists right when it seems like we need them the most?

  I scrolled social media, hearing David’s voice, seeing his work, taking in his wisdom. The collective remembering and honoring was very powerful. I don’t think we’ve lost David Lynch. He hasn’t gone anywhere. His body died, but who he is, what he is, is still here.

  I’ve yet to come across someone who could articulate the concept of the unified field or the collective unconscious so clearly as David.

  I think, what happened, and what I witnessed, am witnessing, is this.

  As we learned about David Lynch’s passing, we remembered him. We remembered the effect he’s had on us, and that his work will continue to have. We remembered the things about his presence that speak to us. And in that remembering, sparks of his energy wakened in each of us. We hold them. We hold him.

  Who will be David Lynch now?

  I think we all will.

  He’s dispersed, now, among us. It’s up to us to nurture those things we find important and hold dear that are connected to David.

  For me, that means prioritizing the work, as he called it. Focusing with intensity. Regular idea fishing. Remembering to take breaks and enjoy life. Being as particularly and unapologetically myself as possible. Loving what I love. Refusing to explain. More mystery. More dreaming. More consciousness. More art.

  That’s what he would have wanted, I think.

  January 18, 2025

  art, artist, collective unconscious, David Lynch, director, film, filmmaker, Lynch, lynchian, movies, mulholland-drive, tribute, Twin Peaks, unified field

  ---

• Artist Update: I’m a Poet?

  In a plot twist I didn’t see coming, I have two poems scheduled for publication in June and July 2024.

  “Step 1: Sand, Clay, Fire” will appear in ONE ART.

  “The Body of God” will appear in Thimble Literary Magazine.

  …and there’s more where that came from!

  Doing everything in my power not to utter the cliche, but it would not be false to say, “I was a poet and was not previously aware of my status as such.”

  These two poems belong to a chapbook/collection in development that I hope to publish someday.

  Why this shift into poetry? Where did all these poems come from?

  These are great questions. I have some answers, but probably not all. The creative process is a spiritual, mysterious experience.

  There were things I needed, desperately, to process through writing. I thought maybe I’d write a memoir or a set of personal essays. I even thought it could be a series of blog posts for this platform. But every time I tried, it was like the ouroboros (the snake eating its own tail). I couldn’t find a starting point. The material wouldn’t let me in. It was like trying to jump onto a merry-go-round already in motion. All of it felt connected in a way that didn’t lend it self to the linearity of voice or prose.

  Then, without even meaning to, I put one little piece into a poem. That poem was quickly joined by two, three, five, ten more. It felt like the Muse saw someone was accepting poetry, and She poured them out to me. Writing poetry feels like channeling something (an idea, a strong emotion), and the goal is to present it in its most sublime form.

  The collage of a poetry collection also offered the scope I needed while giving me permission to abandon that linear sense of plot or storytelling that would be expected in memoir.

  After sharing these poems with some trusted friends and writers, and after a bit of tidying up, I started sending them out. Why not? I had a good rhythm established for submitting fiction. I did have a bit of a learning curve, researching places to send poems, but it wasn’t too difficult.

  I started submitting poems January 23, 2024, and had my first acceptance February 10, 2024. The second came on April 1, 2024 (no fooling!), and I have other poems out on submission as we speak.

  Receiving positive feedback on poetry felt especially poignant. In fiction, there are shields between the words and the writer: point of view, character, voice, plot, etc. In poetry, no such shield exists. At least, not in the poetry I am writing.

  And this is what I’ve been dancing around, if you couldn’t tell: the subject matter I needed to express. These poems hold parts of who I am and my experience that I have not addressed openly, directly. The prospective collection’s title is The Cup and Other Abominations: Queer Deconstruction Poems. In it, there are poems about menstruation and communion, the struggle for belonging, and the liberating power of sexual desire (see also: Poor Things). There are poems that give voice to Biblical women whose words were never recorded. There are poems that reclaim my own strength and goodness from a dogma that taught me helplessness and worthlessness. These are poems about finding life and divinity in my own right-now experience, not offloading it onto some other being or future time.

  These poems explore the transformational process of deconstructing from evangelical fundamental Christianity and the queer awakening that was only possible after. Deconstruction, sexuality, and the feminine divine: the most unholy trinity.

  Specifically, “Step 1: Clay, Sand, Fire” describes deconstruction as I experienced it in a tactile, sensory way. “The Body of God” yearns to reclaim the female body as Divine, and traces some of the damage, some of the things lost, since the rise of patriarchy over the last millennia.

  I am ready to share the parts of myself contained in these poems. I hope they are met with goodwill and celebration.

  But as anyone knows who has deconstructed or explored their gender and sexuality and come to non-heteronormative conclusions, there are people who will not be happy for me about this. There are people who remember old versions of me, versions that were so heavily masked they didn’t know themselves. This may not sit well with them.

  That’s fine.

  I don’t exist to fit in or to placate. The Autistic wiring of my brain and nervous system have made that very clear to me. I exist to experience authentically. I exist to liberate myself from the cobwebs, ropes, and chains of Expectation, and to live, without restriction, as myself.

  So this is me, taking up space, as a deconstructed, queer, Autistic person.

  There will be two poems this summer, and hopefully more in the future. I hope you read them, and I hope whatever I channeled into them, consciously or un-, reaches you.

  And if you’re thinking about writing poetry, watch out! I already have a second collection brewing about reclaiming my Autistic self through the spiritual experience of being in the natural world and feeling the thrill of perfect connection.

  Once the poems know where you live, they just keep coming…

  April 23, 2024

  artist, artist update, Christianity, deconstruction, feminism, feminist, LGBT, nature, ONE ART, poet, poetry, poetry publication, publication, queer, reading, sexuality, spirituality, Thimble Literary Magazine, update

  ---

• You Think You’re ‘Finished’?

  A friend recently informed me that I have “finished so many things,” referring to the short stories and novels I’ve written. I argued fiercely that I have never finished anything in my life. And, in fact, I petition that we throw out the concept of “finishing” altogether.

  In my day job, I work with post-graduate writers in academia. The concept of perfection plagues some of these students. They could edit their work forever. Yet, they need to turn it in, in order to pass their courses and receive their degrees. So how do they know when their work is “finished”?

  I tell them: Well, that’s what deadlines are for.

  This advice is less useful for those of us outside of academia’s structure. We don’t have professors giving due dates. We might have a submission deadline we’re writing toward, but that won’t be a constant.

  I propose we take a more Zappa-esque stance. Art isn’t something you finish. It’s something you work on, or that you stop working on, or that you start working on again, as you see fit.

  This is tricky, though, because when do we know a piece is ready to submit for publication? How do we know when to present the art we’ve made?

  I don’t look at older pieces I’ve placed, because I know I’ll find thirty-odd things I wish I could change. Those pieces, to me, are definitely not “finished.” I just stopped working on them, and editors and readers thought they were good enough to share.

  I think working with the goal of finishing something implies a level of finality, a type of perfection, that we just aren’t going to attain. Our work on the page is not something to be perfected. It is an artifact from a version of ourselves.

  I think the goal should rather be one of alignment.

  In the present moment, this version of myself is satisfied with this version of the work. They line up. It’s a feeling of synchronicity, of, yes, this is what I meant to do. It’s a sign to stop.

  We don’t finish; we just stop, and the piece becomes an artifact. It’s not a definitive, sublime form of anything. It’s just something we were satisfied with at some point–satisfied enough that we decided to stop working on it.

  We could work on a single piece for our whole lives. It would evolve alongside us, because as we change, the art would also change, so that our satisfaction with it is maintained. Not everybody decides to stop. There’s nothing wrong with this! It’s down to the artist’s choice. Creating is a series of choices, whether those choices result in one thing or myriad. Marcel Proust worked on a single, massive novel, and I’ve never read a more beautiful opening chapter than that of In Search of Lost Time.

  It’s up to us to decide what we want to work on.

  I have a lot of ideas. There’s so much I want to do, so many things I want to try, and I am changing and deepening as a person at what feels like an exponentially increasing rate. I want to get to those other ideas. I want to leave a trail of artifacts behind, as many as I can. That means I have to stop working on projects at some point. I’m not finishing; I’m getting to that moment of alignment, where I’m satisfied with what’s on the page in the present, and I’m stopping. I’m not going to be satisfied with it in a month, in a year, in ten years, whatever. But right now, I am satisfied, so I’m going to stop. That moment of alignment tells me when to set something down and reach for the next.

  I’ve been working on a short story this week that I had set aside a year ago. I sent it out, and nobody wanted it. So I started working on it again. I revamped and rewrote the ending. It now feels more complete, more correct. I’m excited to start sending it out again.

  So, when we set something down, it doesn’t have to be forever. Because it’s not finished, we can always pick it up again. Sometimes the work needs to be set down in order to develop further at a later time. I wouldn’t have gotten to this better ending if I thought of the piece as “finished.”

  The concept of “finished” cuts both ways–it can keep us from moving on to new work, and it can keep us from picking up old work.

  “Finishing” something is an artificial concept, cold and dead, without roots in the natural world. It smells like factories and oil, like cardboard boxes and garbage dumps. It denies the inherent interconnectedness of existence. It denies the spiral of creation, and substitutes that ridiculously straight line.

  Nothing is a straight line. Nothing is ever finished.

  Happy creating.

  July 11, 2023

  creative writing, essay, fiction, finishing, poetry, process, publishing, writing, writing life, writing process

  ---

• 2022 in Review: Publications

  This year, I focused on writing short fiction. I had just finished a very long and emotionally demanding novel, and writing short fiction was a healthy shift for me in terms of creative rhythm.

  The great thing about short fiction is that it’s SHORT. It’s entirely possible to write, edit, and submit in a matter of weeks. The turnaround time and the gratification of finishing something is refreshing, especially after years of sitting alone with novels only a handful of people have read.

  I decided, too, that I would try to get my short fiction published. I was partly inspired by a talk I heard, where a poet was explaining her strategy to the staggering number of acceptances she had. She treated it like a numbers game: she submitted as many pieces to as many publications as possible. I took on this mentality…

  …and I had seven acceptances in 2022! Some are available now (hyperlinked), and others have upcoming publication dates.

  • Crawling Back, Well, This is Tense, Bag of Bones *Contest Winner!*
  • The God of Liminal Spaces, NonBinary Review, Zoetic Press
  • The Seams in Your Skin, Rewired: Divergent Perspectives in Horror, Ghost Orchid Press
  • Bought at a Price, The Dark Side of Purity, vol. 3, Band of Bards
  • Fairy Tale for an Acorn, lavender bones
  • Baba Yaga Goes North, Breath & Shadow
  • Remnant, Gothic Romance Anthology, Brigids Gate Press

  I am so proud of this result! I love every single piece so much, and I’m so glad they’re finding resonance with others.

  But submitting isn’t just acceptances (unfortunately). Here are my stats for this year…

  Pieces written: 10

  Total submissions: 101

  Acceptances: 7

  Rejections: 60

  Withdrawals: 30

  Anybody who wants to take on a similar goal absolutely can and should! It’s extremely possible to write and publish short fiction (and poetry and essay, though I know less about those). Here are a couple of tips based on what I found helpful this past year.

  Write for specific submission calls.

  In January 2022, I wasn’t confident in my ability to write short stories, which is hilarious, looking back on the success I’ve had this year. One trick I found to overcome that mental block was to write for specific submission calls. For example, my flash piece The God of Liminal Spaces came from a call for submissions from Apparition Literary Magazine with a Wanderlust theme. Apparition didn’t end up taking the piece, but the NonBinary Review did–and they even recorded a podcast episode of it!

  Writing for submission calls is a great way to get inspired, break through writer’s block, and to broaden your repertoire.

  Find as many markets as possible.

  There are so many amazing journals and publishers out there! Any piece you can conceptualize has a perfect market. But how do you find it? And how do you find submission calls to write for, if you want to try that?

  1. The Submission Grinder. This is a free database of markets (places that accept submissions for publication) and submission histories. There is a search function so you can sift through the markets they have on record. However, it’s hard to get a full sense of the market’s vibe without visiting its website. Several times I had about a million tabs open, and narrowed that down to only one or two viable submission options.
  2. Authors Publish. This was the best tool I had for finding new markets. It’s a free, weekly-ish email newsletter with curated lists of markets to submit to. It includes a description of the market, submission windows, and payment details. This saved me a lot of time, as I didn’t have to sift through more general descriptions to find markets that actually fit my work.
  3. Submittable. Many publications use Submittable as a submissions portal. However, the website also allows publications to list calls for submission. I found one or two homes for pieces this way. I would warn, though, that this is a very incomplete list of markets. It doesn’t seem like many/most journals take the time to list via Submittable.
  4. Social media. Journals and publishers follow other journals and publishers. If you sift through Twitter follower/following lists (or the Instagram/TikTok/etc. equivalent), you will likely find some new markets. You can also use other authors’ publication announcements. If someone was accepted at a place that seems cool to you, check it out and submit yourself!

  Have a plan for tracking submissions.

  I used The Submission Grinder, which is a free database of creative writing markets, along with a tracker function that allows you to keep record of where you submitted, when, and the result. They aggregate that data, too, so you have a general idea of when a market might get back to you.

  Tracking submissions is crucial if you are going to submit the same piece simultaneously to multiple markets (otherwise known as “simultaneous submissions”). That way, when a piece does get accepted, you have a list of the other places you need to withdraw it from, and can do that fairly easily.

  Simultaneous submissions are a point of contention. Some markets forbid them; they want to know that a piece they’re reading is still available until they decide if they want it or not. However, this system doesn’t work in the author’s favor, especially when wait times are months long. Here’s a secret: there’s no way for those markets to know if you’re submitting elsewhere or not. Do with that information what you will. All I’ll add is, I wouldn’t have gotten 7 acceptances in one year if I hadn’t submitted simultaneously.

  Don’t take rejections personally.

  This may feel impossible, because creation is personal. I don’t mean don’t take your work or your craft personally. I don’t mean submit everywhere, even places you don’t want your work to be. Send to places where it will be respected and loved. Be discerning.

  What I mean is, within the numbers game of submitting, rejections are just data. The goal is to submit to as many places as possible, and rejections are a sign that you’re accomplishing that goal!

  I don’t get excited about rejections. I’m not that kind of masochistic. But rejections shouldn’t be taken personally, because they are personal–to the editor who wrote them. They are subjective to the extreme.

  The journey of my piece Fairy Tale for an Acorn is a great example of this. One editor personally rejected it by describing it, as though elements of fairy tales were fundamentally bad storytelling, and told me me it “wasn’t a story.” Another editor personally rejected it, but described my prose as “glistening” and said they loved its “storybook texture.”

  Wildly contradictory reactions…!

  It’s important for me to note that personal rejections that feel vindictive are few and far between. In fact, this is the only one I’ve gotten. I did get mad about it. And then I submitted it to about 15 more places out of spite.

  Fairy Tale for an Acorn was accepted for publication at lavender bones, and the editors commented that they were honored to be including my work. And lavender bones is such a good fit for this piece, I can’t wait to see it there!

  My point is, every reader and editor has an opinion. They aren’t always right. In fact, opinions, by definition, can’t be right or wrong. It’s a matter of preference and taste, and those vary. We all have writers we love and writers we love…less. That’s part of it. Not every story is for every person. That’s okay.

  –

  I don’t know if I will have the same creative goals in 2023, but I will say, getting acceptances is VERY addictive…

  I hope your artistic and creative goals for the new year inspire you, that you succeed in all of them, and that your work finds a home in the world!

  December 19, 2022

  artist, artistic, creative writing, creativity, fiction, publication, publish, publishing, short story, submission, submitting, writing

  ---

• What Magic We Make

  When I was a kid, magic was essential to my inner world. I read fantasy books full of witches and magicians and children with innate powers over the elements. I read about magic rings and wishing stones. I read about fairies and their glamours, about dragons and djinns.

  In The Real World, there was no such thing as magic, unless it was black magic and sorcery, which was evil and must be avoided at all costs. Or so I was told.

  But magic isn’t like that. And it isn’t a flashy, sparks-flying wand duel. It’s not turning into an animal or flying on a broom. It’s more like alchemy.

  Alchemy, in the medieval sense, isn’t something I was familiar with as a kid, and I’m by no means an expert now. The loose-ish way I’m using it here is combining disparate elements to make something new and valuable. The medieval alchemists sought to make gold out of baser materials. Carl Jung interpreted alchemy as the steps toward individuation, or wholeness of the self.

  I think art is alchemy. Or maybe I should say, art can be alchemy.

  I didn’t truly begin to practice art as magic until I found my Material. I was writing long before that. But the pieces I wrote weren’t necessarily alchemy. I was honing craft, I was learning, but I wasn’t transforming. And that’s what alchemy is: transformation.

  By Material, I mean those themes and ideas that are the closest and deepest heart of the artist’s lived experience. The places that are the most in need of exploration and healing. Maureen Murdock wrote about the Heroine’s Journey as not an external experience, but an internal one: journeying ever deeper within to recover the parts of ourselves we have discarded to survive in hostile environments.

  The trick is, we can’t know our Material unless we know (1) who we are and (2) what has happened to us.

  Maybe this seems elementary. Silly. “I lived my life; I know what happened to me!” But do you? Do you really know what happened, and the significance of those events? Do you know what parts you have buried deep down in the dark of your subconscious?

  Who we are is at the root of our actions and reactions. Who we are is shaped by what we has happened to us. That is our Material. Until we find it out, we cannot use it.

  There are so many reasons we might not know ourselves.

  The mind protects us from pain. It hides memories. It shades the past with rose-gold sparkle. It denies that we have suffered, that we could have suffered at the hands of friends or family, because those people love us and would never hurt us. It conceals identities that are unsafe to live outwardly.

  Capitalism rushes us ever onward without a moment to rest or reflect. And if we do have moments, the endless data stream that is the internet clamors for attention. We have families, children, spouses. We have jobs, households, obligations.

  I think a lot of people might find their Material sooner than I found mine. Some people probably find it even later in life.

  Once I found my Material, I put it into my alchemical chalice: into words on the page. Blending, my Material and my skill flowed together into writing that was urgent, aware, responsive, authentic. I had something to say. I had a perspective. I wasn’t writing just to tell a story. I needed to write this.

  The story on the page was big and beautiful and upsetting and terrible and glorious. The story made demands. I had to explore deep, difficult emotions. I had to take parts of myself and infuse them into the story: alchemy. In using my Material, I was creating the most true thing I had ever written. In using my Material, I was healing myself.

  That is the second alchemy, the second magic. That when artists use their Material to create, brokenness in them begins to become whole. We make ourselves when we make our art.

  Then, perhaps, we present the creation, the byproduct of our alchemy, to others. Our creations can engage them in an alchemical process of their own. And this is the third alchemy.

  I think alchemical art sings louder, shines brighter in general. But it doesn’t necessarily speak to all people. I’ve read a lot of books. There are plenty out there that are not magic. And by that I mean, in which I do not find myself, in which I do not make myself more whole. That doesn’t make them bad art or even bad books. The artist may have found magic. Someone else may find magic. But paths to wholeness, though they may overlap, are not identical. This also is beautiful.

  The northern hemisphere turns to autumn, transforming itself in preparation for the long dark of winter. If we live with the rhythm of the seasons, we prepare to turn inward toward our own inner dark. What will we find there? What parts of ourselves will we recover? What alchemy will we perform?

  What magic we make will also make us.

  Happy Halloween.

  October 31, 2022

  alchemy, art, artist, creative writing, halloween, magic, samhain, writer, writing

  ---

• The Millennial Coping Skill Other Generations Should Pay Attention To

  The social science of generational divide is contentious. The supposed characteristics or values of a generation don’t apply to every single individual within that generation. People don’t like to be pigeon-holed into traits they don’t identify with. But also, and more recently, there’s been a growing distaste for generational labels because too often, a generation’s characteristics are leveraged against them to devalue their opinions and goals.

  Millennials are such snowflakes.

  Okay, Boomer.

  I’m a Millennial. (Could you tell?) My generation has been gaslit across every sector of society. I’ve personally seen it in mainstream media and in conversation with acquaintances, colleagues, relatives, etc.

  We get so wrapped up in putting down generational traits or in fighting back against the generation that put us down that we forget there are actually generational strengths.

  I want to take a little space to talk about one particular strength of Millennials.

  I’m calling it: Reveling in the Ridiculous.

  Millennials have been through events that have seen the America we thought we knew rewrite itself around us. 9/11 and “the War on Terror” are perhaps the most salient examples from our childhoods.

  We’ve seen wild technological innovation. We made the transition from no internet, to internet; from corded handhelds bolted to the wall, to smart phones with bluetooth.

  We’ve been through some extremely difficult economic situations. The housing crisis of the late ’00s (which seems to be ongoing) set us back, just as we were young adults, trying to establish ourselves in the working world. Many of us lost or weren’t able to find jobs, so we went on to upper-level education, and now, we are overeducated and still underemployed.

  We’ve realized capitalism isn’t necessarily set up for health, happiness, or a satisfying life.

  As experienced adults, we watched an unhinged political administration do a ton of damage, here and internationally.

  We watched the world be devastated by a pandemic that (again) changed how the world worked.

  We watched the birth of a new Civil Rights movement erupt in protests across the nation.

  We watched the only attack on our Capitol since 1814.

  There comes a point when a Millennial can’t take one more natural disaster, one more oil spill, one more piece of bad news.

  Millennials invented the internet meme. We cut our teeth on I Can Haz Cheezburger and I Don’t Always…, But When I Do… But now, to deal with the layers of instability, disappointment, and trauma, our sense of humor has evolved into a coping skill.

  We deal with the absurdity of this post-post modern, post-capitalistic, pandemic-devastated dystopia by Reveling in the Ridiculous.

  Austin Archer’s content is what inspired this essay. Here is an obviously talented musician, composer, and artist, working in multiple media, who is using his skill and intelligence to create well-written, well-mixed, songs that revel in the ridiculousness of social and political situations.

  Isn’t this song kind of…mean, though? Petty? What’s the point of calling out Tucker Carlson like this?

  The answer lies in the sheer powerlessness Millennials have felt over extremely important situations (fear mongering, misinformation, overtly hostile pictures of their generation painted in the media, wars, etc.).

  What is an underemployed, overeducated Millennial supposed to do when they’ve stored up a lifetime of disillusionment, and then they hear one…more…stupid…thing…

  Where does that energy go? I mean, we can’t all be as lucky (or bold) as that guy in Montana.

  For Austin Archer, and for many other Millennial internet users and content creators, they cope by Reveling in the Ridiculous. By making something to laugh at. Because laughing at something is still safer than attempting to burn it to the ground.

  At least for now.

  5 Easy Steps to Practice Reveling in the Ridiculous

  1. Notice that bubbling feeling of “it’s all too much-ness.” It’s usually characterized by anxiety, anger, helplessness, the desire to drop-kick your phone/tablet/laptop into the sun, and experienced after hearing bad news of some kind.
  2. Dissociate from your emotions. Don’t engage in destruction. Subvert it. Ninja-dodge it.
  3. Tap into a deeply ironic sense of humor. Don’t look on the Bright Side. Look on the Dark Side. Specifically, how could this be worse (ex., Godzilla reincarnated, asteroid strike, robot apocalypse)? The more specific the details, the better. What’s the most childish response you can think of? Lean into it. Push it even farther.
  4. Make something. Record your Ridiculous Revel by drawing, writing, photographing, composing, etc. Use an existing meme structure or create a new meme.
  5. Share it to your socials. Because you have a responsibility to your Fellow Millennial to help them Get Through This. After all (cues High School Musical soundtrack), “WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.”

  July 27, 2021

  austin archer, boomers, coping skill, generation y, generation z, humor, millennial, nobody cool likes tucker carlson, tucker carlson

  ---

• Why I Write: Through a Neurodiverse Lens

  My recent autism and ADHD diagnoses have prompted some intense reprocessing of my own memories and lived experiences. It’s like sitting in the chair at the eye doctor, and a new lens is flipped down. Suddenly, everything is clearer. Through the lens of neurodiversity, many things about me and my life make a lot more sense. Understanding myself as neurodiverse is by no means a magical key that’s unlocked all self-knowledge, but my self-knowledge is deepening.

  Writing is integral to my life. Which is the same thing as saying I am a writer. It is part of my identity, it is a title I strive to deserve, and it is how I want to spend my time. But what on earth possesses me to sit alone in a room, thinking deep and involved thoughts, and spending hours and hours writing them down? Why do I do that? And why do I feel like I have to?

  Writers tend to think about this a lot. They compose Artist’s Statements that deal with their motivations and intentions, if for no other reason than to explain themselves to people who just can’t understand why someone would want to be a writer. I’ve done the same thing. But now, I am looking at this question again, through the lens of my neurodiversity.

  This is all new territory. In 2018, I self-identified as an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), which means my central nervous system processes stimuli more deeply than 80% of the population. In November 2020, I also found out I am Autistic (Asperger’s) and also have Inattentive ADHD. (I wrote a blog post about my journey to assessment and meeting the DSM-5 criteria for these neurodiversities; you can read it here.)

  I grew up without this self-knowledge. When I was a kid, I really struggled with school. I did fine as far as grades went. I taught myself to read before kindergarten, and the work itself was easy… But everything related to the logistics of the school day and social interaction was overwhelming. Making friends was confusing, the school day was exhausting, and the thought of going to school often left me with anxiety. I found participating in the world to be very difficult, if not impossible. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know how to express this. And–worst of all–no one else seemed to feel the same way.

  The greatest conflicts and unhappinesses in my childhood revolved around school and social situations. The greatest happinesses came from reading. In books, and fiction in particular, I found a safe way to explore and experience a sense of belonging. A way that didn’t overwhelm or exhaust me. A way that allowed me to dissolve into strange new worlds and forget about the stresses of the day.

  I read immensely and voraciously. I took home stacks of books from the library too tall to carry. I read for hours alone in my bedroom after school, coming out in a daze for dinner, and rushing right back to my book to read all night. I always had a book with me at school, too, and when I inevitably finished my desk work before my classmates, out it came.

  I realize now that I was likely learning about people. In books, I could learn about the way people interact, how they live their lives, people’s motivations, how wanting certain things made them act, what the “rules” of given situations were, how friends acted together, and so forth. Then, if I found myself in a similar situation, I had an idea of what might happen, a sort of pre-uploaded guidebook to the situation. I was gathering and cataloging human social scenarios.

  It’s funny. I have a vivid and active imagination. I can create entire worlds on the page. But in my own life, it’s very difficult for me to imagine an outcome or an option that I haven’t seen or experienced before. Books likely helped me expand my understanding of the world around me and its possibilities.

  Books spoke to me. I wanted to speak back. So, writing followed naturally as a way I could express myself within and contribute to the literary worlds from which I gained so much.

  Story is the structure through which I understand the experience of living. The creative discipline of writing is the action through which I process my own experiences and gain understanding. I can try out scenarios, watch what happens if my characters want certain things, and deal with the frustrations and joys of living in the laboratory of the paragraph.

  Writing also fits the kind of life I want to live: a quiet one, maybe even a solitary one, or at least, one with space to sit alone and think.

  I think all forms of art have to do with finding connection. Art begins with a person creating, using their experience and paint or ink or the lines of their own body. When they put that piece of art out there, they’re declaring their experience, but they’re also asking a question: “Does anyone else think this too? Do you connect with me?” Every piece of art is message in a bottle cast out into the infinite sea of humanity, a question, an invitation, a potential point of connection.

  Being autistic has impacted me most in social interaction and participation. So maybe in the end, I’m writing as a means to connect with people. I’m throwing out my little bottles, hoping I’m not alone up here on my bottle-throwing rock, and hoping I can help someone else feel less alone.

  December 5, 2020

  ADHD, ASD, Autism, creative writing, Neurodiversity, reading, writing

  ---

• Finding Inspiration in the Artist’s Statement: Matsuo Bashō

  I love a good artist’s statement. Hearing from others about why they pursue their craft is inspirational and thought-provoking. It also helps me clarify and understand my own motivation. I feel a connection with the artist in question, and usually hit the keyboard with a great deal more energy.

  I’m currently reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, which is a collection of Japanese haiku master Matsuo Bashō’s travel journals. In them, Bashō writes in haibun style, which means prose reflections and poetry stand side by side. At the beginning of “The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel,” Bashō includes what seems to be his own artist’s statement.

  In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly.

  Matsuo Bashō, from The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)

  I love Bashō’s romantic, and perhaps somewhat humorous, description of his own soul, and his view of it as something with its own agency. In another poem, he writes:

  On to a bridge
  Suspended over a precipice
  Clings an ivy vine,
  Body and soul together.

  Matsuo Bashō, from A Visit to Sarashina Village (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)

  His description of his own journey as an artist dedicating himself to his craft is very valuable. The fact that one of Japan’s most accomplished haiku poets struggled with the same push and pull I and many other artists describe is encouraging: there is nothing wrong with me/us; we simply need to forge ahead.

  These words of Matsuo Bashō are fascinating in themselves, but also totally fascinating is the fact that they were written down in 1687, almost four hundred years ago. Yet the connection I feel when reading Bashō is immediate. There is no time lag, no misunderstanding. Words written down and preserved are extremely powerful.

  Bashō’s soul clings to the letters of a language he never spoke, never heard, and now, to this screen, to this technology he would never have imagined, like ivy to a bridge.

  May 28, 2020

  artist, artist statement, Basho, haiku, inspiration, Matsuo Basho, poetry, reading, writer, writing

  ---