the cassandra pages

Looking In, Looking Out

We've had a week of truly warm weather, at long last. The lilacs and honeysuckle are in bloom, the tulips fading, the trees in full leaf: I think most Montrealers are ready to declare that summer has arrived.

I've been picking flowers from my garden and as usual they've been making their way into my sketchbook - even the last of these tulips, just before the petals fell.

And when I haven't had sculptural plant forms to draw, there's always my desk and its array of objects.

This morning I went out onto the terrace with my coffee, and did this sketch on the final page of my current sketchbook. I've been anxious to finish it (the book, that is.) Looking through, I find the pages filled with the interiority of winter and "home", both in the focus on still life and everyday objects, and the accompanying mental state. I've learned a lot in keeping up this practice, and it was good for me in the same way as a written journal: a practice of observing and setting-down that helped me feel grounded and centered, absorbed in the task and the moment, even on days when it was the only thing that felt that way. I think there was also a desire to maintain a certain tone and theme in that particular sketchbook, which I began a year and a half ago. But now I'm ready to begin a new one, moving outward for a while into the streets and parks, the botanical garden, and maybe some figurative explorations. We'll see!

Not Forgetting

 

Remembering my mother today, on the tenth anniversary of her death.

There are people who sweep onto the stage of our lives, and show us something grand, impress us with their brilliance, magnificence, charisma, power. We always remember them, and even try to emulate them, but they may disappear from our lives just as quickly as they came. Then there are other people whose presence is much quieter and steadier, who teach us how to actually live a life, day by day.

My mother never traveled much; she had asthma and it was difficult for her to be in strange environments, but she was also fairly shy, and happier to stay in familiar surroundings - her home, the lake and woods - which she loved deeply and knew in detail. She loved the beauty and peace of simple things, and never complained about her life being boring or mundane - how could it be, when it was filled with family and friends, books, plants and animals, a natural world that changed not only with the seasons but daily, for she observed all its minutiae. She bore life's inevitable difficulties with stoicism and grace, and far more equanimity than her daughter, who seems to have taken a much longer and circuitous route to learning those lessons - I should have just observed the Zen-master qualities of my mother, but when we're young, we can't see our parents clearly, nor their wisdom.

Each year, when the lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom, I make one of these drawings for her; I think she would like this one, the first to include color, and some other flowers: the purple violets she loved, and the forget-me-nots that always filled our gardens. I'm happy today, remembering her, grateful for so much that she gave me, including this love of art, and her gentle, steady encouragement about everything I tried to do.

I look at the painting, closer, closer, searching for her, for myself.

And I decide that the underlying emotion is captured best in the drawing rather than the painting that it became. There's something in that horizon line that stops short of the edge of the page; it was a deliberate but subconscious gesture, if that makes any sense: our relationship is not finished, cannot be squared up; something continues, or is left open. I don't mean that in terms of "meeting again," but rather that I continue to discover her, and myself in relationship with her. A gift I've only understood well after the passage of an entire decade.

Will we see a return to blogging, and other content-rich internet forms?

Patricia Bralley, a friend who I met through blogging, recently tagged me on Facebook, asking what I thought of a recent article in the International Business Times by Hossein Derakhshan calling Mark Zuckerberg a hypocrite for claiming that Facebook encourages a global, interconnected society. Derakhshan was imprisoned for his own web activism in Iran between 2008 and 2014; the stakes of using the internet were considerably greater for him than for most of us. Let me first quote a few bits of his article; my own reply to Patricia is below.

"While Zuckerberg laments at walls and admires bridges, the fact is that his Facebook algorithms have created billions of these comfort bubbles that are more isolating than walls. Also, he has destroyed the most powerful bridges that perhaps ever existed in the human history, the hyperlinks...Facebook's desire to keep users inside of it all the time is why it can generate so much advertising money. But that means it provides less and less reasons for anyone to leave its environment, in order to read an article or watch a video.

"It is heart-breaking to see how Facebook has changed the internet into little more than a portal for entertainment."

"Blogs were the best thing that had ever happened on the internet. They democratised writing and publishing – at least in many parts of the world. They gave a voice to many silenced groups and minorities. They connected friends, families, communities, and nations around the world. They encouraged discussions and debates...The World Wide Web was founded on the links, and without links, there won't be a web. Without links the experience of being on the internet will become one of a centralised, linear, passive, inward-looking and homogeneous kind. This is happening already, and despite Zuckerberg's sermon, it is largely Facebook and Instagram who are to be blame for the demise of links, and thereby the death of the open web and all its potentials for a more peaceful world."

 

Patricia, I'm on Facebook, basically, under protest. I use it for letting people know what's going on with Phoenicia Publishing, and to keep in touch with family and friends who aren't anywhere else, or those who simply don't use email anymore, but it is no substitute for what our blogs used to be. Facebook, in my opinion, has impoverished content, and impoverished community, thoughtfulness, and connection. I keep my blog going, but often wonder if I'm just doing it for myself. I always post a link on FB to a new blogpost, but question whether many readers even leave FB to go to the blog and actually read it or look at the images before "liking" or commenting below the FB post.

Back in March, when The Cassandra Pages turned 13, there were 13 comments on my blog. On the FB link to the same post, there were 12 comments and 60 "likes." Three years earlier, almost all the comments -- 40 or so -- were on my blog itself. I appreciate those "likes" and comments very much, but these statistics represent a big shift in terms of where people are reading, and what they see as their place of communication.

One of my biggest objections is that FB encourages our natural laziness (my own included, unfortunately) - it's so much easier to just hit "like" than to actually engage when we are all inundated with internet information. It also plays into our anxiety about isolation through the falsity of quantitative reassurance. I think, frankly, it's time to start resisting this and to engage more seriously again with the people we care about - yourself included - even if that means fewer "friends," and dealing with the radical concept of less actually being more.

I'd like to add that while my FB interactions are fairly minimal, I have started posting longer-form content on Instagram in connection with certain images. Other people are doing this as well, and we seem to be forming a loose community that reminds me somewhat of blogging. I don't think social media is necessarily devoid of creativity or content, but it takes time and effort to use it differently.

Thanks for asking.

--

Readers, what do you think? Is it worth keeping a blog like this going? What about your own? If you've stopped blogging, why was that, and are you happy with social media as a substitute? Do you think there will be a swing back to longer-form content in other places on the web, and a reaction to social media - as some have predicted - or do you think the die is cast?

 

...and one more

Inspired by the Springtime Table

Finally, spring has arrived in Montreal. Not all our trees have leaves yet, but many do. The magnolias are on bloom, and flowering pears, and there are daffodils and tulips. I picked the first from my garden a few days ago, and they've found their way onto our table along with a basil plant left by friends who've gone on vacation. I'd been drawing the tulips alone, before (see below) but the addition of the basil set up a more complex still life that begged to be put on paper. I like the tilted perspective of the tabletop here, and the flatness of the picture plane. I'm glad I added the background of books and sideboard. In the end, it isn't a drawing of tulips but an arrangement of shapes and positive/negative space that creates tension and release, with the many types of curves leading the eye through the picture, balanced by the verticality of the books and vase handle. It doesn't matter a bit to me whether the objects are identifiable or "realistic."

Here's a fast sketch that was an earlier version from a few days before - not nearly as interesting as a finished drawing, with the two blooms so symmetrically arranged on either side of the vase, but making it served to instill the shapes in my brain, so that when I looked at the objects again, in conjunction with other things, it was easier to see what I wanted to emphasize and how to work with the shapes.

I put some color on this drawing afterwards, but liked a cropped version of the right-hand side better than the whole image. It helps to photograph the image and play around with it in a photo editor, but I used to do the same thing with a couple of cropping covers cut from mat board. I always ask myself, where is the liveliness in this picture? What cropping makes it the most dynamic? What do I like the most in it? What sings? Sometimes there's not much! But it really helps to zoom in, move around, crop different areas, copy it and cut it up: artists are fortunate now to have tools that allow us to do this non-destructively.

I've almost finished this sketchbook! Looking through it last night, I was contented and grateful to see it as a journey and journal through the year, rather than being critical of the drawings.