Why are we so attached to it all?
Convince ourselves it’s a reflection of our virtue and merit. Proof of our prominence and imperishability.
Words on a page.
Maybe we were kids, told we were going to be great by someone much taller, with spittle in their teeth, knuckles curled around a crumpled piece of junior writing. ‘You read years ahead of your age’. ‘You’re prolific.’ ‘You could be great.’ Said, always, with that deep golden appreciation you spend the first ten years of your life chasing. What do you hear, with little kids ears? ‘I love you,’ I think, is how it sounds.
Black on white is all.
They say old habits die hard. And those are the oldest habits of them all. The stuff you learned in your spongiest and most absorbent years. When the art gets wrung out of you that's the dirt that comes out with the soap suds.
How can we make bad art (and thus any art at all) if we convince ourselves the continuation of our legacy, and our worthiness as humans hangs in the balance?
This reminds me of how I felt, just a week ago, looking at my first post on this blog. When I’d woken up that morning, a blog had been just a twinkle in my eye, a dream caught by the side of my bed, but I was looking at the whole page come to sparkling life before me. Why was I so unsatisfied?
‘But it doesn't sound like insert-the-greatest-american-novelier-here.’
It truly is just ink on paper.
I sometimes think kids' ears are still tucked into the adult ones that grow. You run your tongue along baby teeth when you least expect to. I read my article with little kids eyes, and all that little girl could hear were the ‘I love you’s’. Except they sounded a lot more like: ‘Why have we never read any of your stuff?’ ‘When can we hear what you’ve been working on?’
I saw all my failings.
I saw the difference between where I was, and where I should be.
The gap between what I read like and what I wish it read like was glaringly apparent. ‘Why are you not there yet?’ (and it’s Shakespeare or Donna Tartt or Ocean Vuong).
This project is not about managing anyone else’s expectations. It was supposed to be, truly, the antithesis of expectation. A blank canvas is too scary, so to facilitate the first wiggle it’s washed with ochre across the whole sheet. And yet, now I’ve been sitting on this posted piece of unsatisfactory nonsense, feeling the familiar pinpricks of self doubt. I’m left wondering if the colour wash helped at all.
There is no should be, but that should is baked into those baby teeth.
It’s just me, talking to the void. There are no listeners. Posting this, despite all reservations, will be proof of that. A working colour wash. You have to make your work exist first. You can make it better later. The truth is, although it might feel like you have to make something to make your lineage proud, or shock the entire generation into awe and adoration, your worth is in no way mitigated by what you put out. It’s just if you have something stuck in your head, and you hear it all the time. The silence might appreciate the company of noise.
It’s just you and the words.
It’s only the words.
Never stop never being perfect,
H.G. Lightly x
This week I have been inspired by some brilliant animators on tiktok. I'm unsure about putting any of their work up on here, even though I dont think it goes against copyright or anything. If anyone knows anything about that let me know.
Each persons personal style makes me feel better about my work not looking or sounding like anyone else's.
Creation Station
Welcome to the creation station! This is were i share some of my work, if any, that I have made this week.
Already, before the first piece of work I’ve made has EVER come out, I’m worried it’s unacceptable! Despite my belief that no one will read these pages - not at least already, with only one article out thus far - I still have that fear.
But here it is, anyway.
I was lucky enough to get an ipad over the weekend last week, and so drew my own background for it, above.
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