Skip to main content

Soul Returns.

 

I dream that my soul returns from the underworld. I am at my parents’ house. The Black Dog returns but this time he has some semi-translucent fly/butterfly wings. I say that I am going to check his micro-chip.

It is the middle of summer, but it snows heavily. My neighbour is outside doing something. Eventually I go out to see what he is doing. He has cleared all the snow from my parents’ garden. It looks like it hasn’t snowed at all. I ask him where my sister is and he says she has gone camping with a friend. I say, “They will freeze their arses off.”

The dream was made up of the day’s residues. I had an e-mail asking me to check the information on my cat’s micro-chip. I have been drawing fly and butterfly wings. I was listening to The Cure and the last track was The Caterpillar, “The day I stall is the day you change and fly away from me.”

The dream seems to express worry that my creative episode will not last long. My soul returns in benign form with delicate wings. He is likely to fly away again so I check his micro-chip in case he gets lost. Despite his return it snows heavily but my neighbour clears the snow around the house, so it looks like it hasn’t snowed. I always associate snow with depression, a blanket of silence. I know it's still snowing as I am really worried about my sister camping out in it. It is as though I am in a clearing in the snow. Perhaps the answer is not to stall, to keep up the momentum?

After several weeks of making art, I have stalled. I knew this was inevitable. I tried to draw a cherry in the copy book but gave up as it simply wasn’t happening. I got a sweet potato out to draw, looked at it and put it away. Too much like hard work! The problem is that I have burnt myself out with weeks of non-stop drawing. Rather than pace myself, I try to get as much done as possible whilst the impetus is there. I then run out of steam. Keeping momentum going is not the answer, pacing myself is.

Image from copy book with a fly wing.

Drawing with butterfly wing.

Drawing with fly wing.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Unconscious, the Collective Unconscious and Symbols.

  Jung observed that the idea of the unconscious presented by Carus and von Hartman disappeared without a trace, it then re-emerged in medical psychology. [1] He noted that at first, the unconscious denoted forgotten or repressed contents of the psyche. [2] Jung suggested that it was the study of dreams that allowed psychologists to study the unconscious aspects of conscious events, ‘As a general rule, the unconscious aspect of any event is revealed to us in dreams, where it appears not as a rational thought but as a symbolic image.’ [3] Jung then noted that, ‘It is on such evidence that psychologists assume the existence of an unconscious psyche – though many scientists and philosophers deny its existence. They argue naively that such an assumption implies the existence of two “subjects,” or (to put it in a common phrase) two personalities within the same individual. But that is exactly what it does imply – quite correctly.’ [4] Sigmund Freud, despite being aware of the m...
Post a Comment
Read more

Metallic Watercolours.

  I don’t really understand my newfound fascination with watercolours. I have realised that there are a lot of interesting watercolour paints out there such as the Daniel Smith PrimaTek and A. Gallo watercolours which I have been hankering after. One of the points Julia Cameron makes in The Artists Way is that artists often deny themselves luxuries – things that artists like. We will spend money on other things but things that make the inner artist happy are deemed too frivolous. I decided that I will set up a fund that I will put a bit of money in every so often. I will then use this to buy the materials I really want, such as a set of A. Gallo watercolours or a nice pad of Arches or Saunders Waterford paper. This week I had a little tree production line going of trees in metallic watercolour on black watercolour postcards. They have the ghostly quality I mentioned before but this doesn’t come across in photographs. I remain frustrated by the whole tree carry on. I get the q...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ship of Life.

  ‘This sea of sleep, deep in the foundations of human nature, has its high tide at night: every slumber indicates only that it washes a shore from which it retreats in waking hours. What remains are the dreams; however marvellously they are formed, they are no more than the lifeless remains from the womb of the depths. The living remains in him and secure in him: the ship of waking life, and the fish as the silent booty in the nets of artists.’ Walter Benjamin, “Outline of the Psychophysical Problem.” In Walter Benjamin Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926, edited by M. Bullock and M. W. Jennings (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 399. Sometimes I have premonitions, dreams that alert me that something is about to happen. Often, I would prefer not to know. The rest of the time I try to divine the future through tarot cards or runes. This is a pointless exercise. I am on a journey, like everyone else, on our ships of life. Most of us are far from our desti...
Post a Comment
Read more