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[FBT] on Anniversaries and Art

Maybe I’m ten

2025, eh? Here we are. I started writing this newsletter in 2015, so that’s a ten year anniversary. 2015 was the most traumatic year of my life. Something happened that shook hell and Earth for me, changed me permanently and made me privy to a kind of grief that most people will never have to experience. So that’s a ten year anniversary. 2015 was also the year I left Mozilla, a job I loved and had laced into my identity. That was a departure that hit the sides of the massive hole in my traumatised heart like the game Operation. The shockwaves from such destabilisation ripped into me, only 4 months into a recovery process that will continue until I die. No one gets over what I have not gotten over. So that’s a ten year anniversary. I started at Greenpeace in 2015. I still work with them from time to time, though not so much recently. Still, that’s a ten year anniversary. 

I’ve been reading a few pages a day of Faith, Hope and Carnage, a conversation between Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan. It’s a tough read because if the format and because of Nick Cave’s reflections on his own (similar to my) traumas. This morning I read a bit of their conversation about how our memories shape us and how unreliable our memory is. The stories we tell to protect ourselves are often not the reality of our path. We are too harsh to our past selves, and too forgiving. We are catastrophes of inexplicable fallacy in how we perceive ourselves. We remember so much incorrectly.

“… maybe the traumatic events, the sharp, horrific pictures that live in our bodies, that leap up at us in the middle of the night, are the only authentic memories we have. The memories that are so devastating that they refused to be adjusted. The rest of our memories are a smattering of tall stories that exist to give our lives shape.” Nick Cave, page 91, Faith, hope and carnage.

2015 is the year that immortals died. Ten years. It’s not nostalgia or reminiscence, it is a deep sadness and a fresh wound that seems to be festering because a decade is only a decade.

Maybe I’m ADAD

A Doodle a Day Lesson 1: Don’t be judgemental, just do the doodle. cc-by-sa Laura Hilliger

In the 2023 winter holidays, I told myself to get serious about making art again. I overcommitted to doing A Doodle a Day (ADAD) and failed wildly with keeping that up. I did, however, do a number of doodles last year, each with a lesson for myself. You can have some of them this year.

Over the last few months I spent my Monday evenings at an oil painting class. I spent money as an attempt to force myself to paint again. It worked. My painting teacher was adorable, fresh out of art school and wildly wrong about how I should go about my painting. That’s ok though, the point was to start painting again, and I did. My first painting in 15+ years is A) Not finished and B) Absolutely horrible. The thing is, I’m ok with it.

If you recall, last year I received an AI premonition, so I have to get to work. I finished an installation piece, which I still haven’t photographed, and have another in the works. This year, I’ll concentrate more on actually sharing some of these creative endeavours.

Maybe I need help?

I’ve tinkered a bit with the way this newsletter works. Maybe you notice something different, maybe not. In any case, I’m always at the other side of the reply button, so hit that if you feel something is awry. Or, you know, just to say hello. Happy new year to you and here are some random links:

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