saying the beast's name to befriend it
i promise myself i will draw. i promise myself i will draw. i promise myself i w
hey— I'm jess. welcome to dessin. as my final year of undergrad kicks off I've decided to similarly kick off my twenties with trying to find the joy in making art again. consider this my online studio — or sketchbook. I'd like to test whether or not, in noticing the beautiful things about life, life becomes more beautiful itself. hope you'll join me for some of the ride :)
this week I've been thinking a lot about the big question: how to get started on making art a big part of my life again.
the studio
like most folks, I loved to draw when I was younger. I kept it up in high school, and it was only when I started university where I started to really feel this deep fear of creating art. a real aversion to it. it's a culmination of a lot of things but I think it's mostly to do my obsession with wanting to do everything. I realize, in starting business school, I've started to become very aware of time and structure and productivity. how to structure my time in the most effective way possible. the most logical approach in solving a problem. using frameworks to conduct my life. a common thought we share as twenty year olds is the myth of unlimited productivity— that by getting more efficient at doing something, we'll eventually squeeze out time for the things that matter. but we spend the majority of our lives selling our hours just to live. how can these things coexist?
so that's where the fear is from. in university (i’m about to go into my final year! what’s up with that??) I started thinking about the gap between where I was, where I wanted to be, and how to create a program that would help me bridge that gap. it's me trying to cheat the system — in programming my days to be the most 'effective' days possible. but for whom? for what benefit, ultimately? and is this still living?
there's an excerpt from ocean vuong's interview in prac crit that I want to share with you:
There’s a legend about a Chinese painter who was asked by the emperor to paint a landscape so pristine that the emperor can enter it. He didn’t do a good job, so the emperor was preparing to assassinate him. But because it was his painting, legend goes, he stepped inside and vanished, saving himself. I always loved that little allegory as an artist. Even when it is not enough for others, if it is enough for you, you can live inside it.
I keep coming back to it when I think about my own relationship with art, which changes depending on the medium. music has always been somewhere I can live inside. maybe because I never had expectations around it like I did for drawing. it grew with me. for graphic design, which I have always used for business purposes, and is closer to visual art, the relationship is still far less fraught than drawing. perhaps because I stumbled into it by accident, and found myself accountable to what I signed myself up for. for design, there was always an external deliverable to work towards. for drawing, there was not. and then there's poetry, which I started when I was ending high school, stopped, and then picked it up 2 years later halfway through undergrad. words, as a medium, is also different. poetry and drawing have technically gone through the same trajectory in my life — my obsession as a little girl culminating into abandonment in university when I started to worry about things like career and economic independence. but I managed to pick up poetry again thanks to a creative writing course and an extremely kind professor, and now it's become a serious part of my career considerations. in that vein I suppose taking up this newsletter is me trying to take my drawing back into my own hands. to make something in it worth living in.
it's hard to admit I won't be able to do everything I want to do. it feels like giving up. but as I write this I feel like there's also a ripe power in it. I hope that, in saying these things out loud and giving shape to their ugliness I, too, can notice their worth. that in admitting what I had imagined for myself is impossible means I open myself up to the possibility that what I do discover, instead, in this moment of honesty and truth, is more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.
gallery
this week has been an interesting week. here's the roundup and some thoughts:
blue period by tsubasa yamaguchi — a sport-style manga but for art. really beautiful and a big reason why I decided to start this newsletter & to rekindle my love for drawing. like sport manga it really makes you feel Known. ahhaa… can I get an ahahha lol ahaha lol
panel from tsubasa yamaguchi’s blue period. i was truly obsessed with this for 2 days i couldn’t stop it’s so beautiful!! i really enjoyed it :) I'm thinking of ending things by iain reid — thriller / horror that has great tension in the middle. was very spooked reading this at night. whats up with that
billy-ray belcourt on queerness and gender in week 9 of the indigenous canada course
art and fear by ted orland and david bayles — just started reading this today and I feel like it's a very timely book for how I'm currently feeling lol
this profile on r.f. kuang — writer of the poppy war trilogy, which I love
this profile on james baldwin — love it
staring at this list of NPR's 2021 summer poll of favourite sci-fi and fantasy books — I want to read all of these so badly !?!?!?
this article about the sameness of internet culture — another one of my fave topics haha!!!! enjoy
china in ten words by yu hua — famous chinese novelist's look at china's rapid growth through 10 personal essays
jannabi's entire discography but especially hong kong — just love it. started learning guitar about a month ago and maybe the college band dreams are not all lost !!!
this interview with ocean vuong on prac crit — ocean vuong is my favourite writer and I have found a lot of comfort & reasons to keep going in his words
a reason why life is beautiful
because the tips of my fingers on my left have started to firm up, as proof of my labour. of practice. of trying to coax a song with my crappy guitar skills for my mom. because my co-worker bought me a copy of the book she was really enjoying and mailed it to my house. because the book itself is very beautiful and in opening it to smell the pages I fit my hand to them like they were a particularly warm rock, like I was a cat sunning myself on the words, or something. because writing with a nice pen in a nice journal feels like I am making myself exist ten times over. because peaches have always and will always be delicious. because I still think of my friend telling me about her father's kale harvest. because some beetles can swim. because despite thinking multiple times that there is so much to be afraid of and to dread life continues to prove me wrong by showing me it is beautiful.
i love this so much!!