Dennis Hollingsworth

Scrapin'

I'm painting and scraping. This is the fourth day since we returned from the trip out West and I'm stretching out this phlegmatic phase a little too long.

I don't like what I've done so far. I've got a little headache that doesn't go away... for days. This must be a mild depression. I've got a circut breaker inside me that flips when I don't feel the thread of a good painting coming this way. I can't paint just because I should or that the clock says so. I refuse to repeat myself. I can't do what I've done before unless I feel I've got hold of something interesting. I'm like a mule sitting flat on his ass, ears back, stubborn and fixated, a little cross. I don't expect every moment of painting to be impassioned and inspired, and most times I can tolerate being lost in the woods because the next turn can be exciting, in fact, I want to be thrown off... but I won't enter the forest without a mission, a quest. I won't just move paint around mechanically just because I'm supposed to be a painter. I've got to have that sense of where to go, call it inspiration, that idea/feeling that enlivens, that makes movement bouyant, that thread of anticipation that overcomes dead gravity.

So I stare. I used to tell my students that you aren't working if it doesn't hurt. It hurts. I paint in my head like a chess player forecasting moves into the game. I've tried distracting myself hoping that the dwell has to broken, but I can't shake the feeling that every moment I don't dwell is progress lost, as if I could split concrete by sheer intention.

I looked for the image of Coppola's "Apocalypse Now", the screenshot of Martin Sheen's Captain Willard, in his hotel room before he goes upriver into Cambodia. That's how I feel now. Broken glass, slobbering, butt naked, tear stained self indulgence, flat on my ass...

...or something like that. Don't worry. It'll get better. It usually does.