Perhaps it’s coming back to me.
I have been away from my own work, film work, since my life changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I was burning out for a few years before, and then suddenly I lost my commuting and bit of home time to be alone.
I have a good book by Julie Phillips called The Baby On The Fire Escape. It is all about some women artists who became known despite the very engulfing nature of family life. That includes one’s S.O.
The strange thing is that nurturing those who matter to me is as much a part of me as the solitude I need in order to create. I am just not a tunnel vision person. And honestly, despite the fact that in the contemporary American society I live in, the – very male privileged p.o.v. – “ideal” vision of life, a tunnel vision of life, is held up as THE ultimate way to live. Well I’m sorry to say, but it is not actually the kind that takes the most determination to live. Nor really, the kind that to me, at least, yields the deepest take on life. There is a reason why getting to enlightenment takes numerous incarnations, otherwise known as a broad experience of life, rather than a very narrow one.
The life of an artist may be intermittent, but I will say that the life of an artist who is also committed to more than their own work is extremely so. This does NOT take away from the depth of their work, but rather adds to it, because their experience of life is not the equivalent of an echo chamber. Narcissism may be fascinating, but then, zzzzzz, let’s get to a bigger vista. And I’ll further add, if the concept of the Renaissance person is not currently hip, it remains relevant and powerful in real life, in spite of the stentorian one move man lifestyle fads currently in circulation.
For now and for some reason, at 55, while fighting breast cancer and continuing to deal with the incurable and exhausting existence of having Type 1 diabetes, raising a family and working full time, I’m experiencing the urgency of making films again.
Yay.
Odilonvert 