Hold On.

Had a very nice walk home through the West End via the quieter side streets last night. Felt like I hit a level of inner peace that I haven't felt in a long, long time.

Now as you may or may not know, the past year has been an incredibly tumultuous one for yours truly. Every couple months has been marked by another sea change - one dramatic shift in tone, content, mood, cast, dialogue, conflict, theme, plot, etc. after another. Bret Taylor circa August of 2011, for example, would be floored by the day-to-day (and especially night-to-night) life of the Bret Taylor from a mere month in the future.

And so it goes.

For a long time I got lost in all this, just struggling to keep my head above water. Maintaining any sense of perspective was an nice idea in the abstract sense, but an impossibility in practical terms. So I did what anyone would do: I tried to keep it on the path, and I adjusted my worldview as I went, based on the current day's data.

And ultimately? I failed.

You heard me. Failed. And miserably, at that - I lost my path altogether. Let some very (very) important people down, couldn't live up to heartfelt promises and blood oaths. I dropped the fucking ball altogether, if you must know. Paid an absurdly high price for that failure, too. And in the process lost more than I even knew I had to lose - more than I could ever handle losing again. But then, nobody said any of this was fair, right? I mean, fairness is great as a utopian ideal. But how many times have you actually seen it play out in front of you? Once? Twice?

Be honest.

So. This brings us to yesterday. The morning started out with disappointing news, albeit not the kind of news that could change a man's life (a cancelled date, if you must know). Yet that news hit me hard, out of all sense of proportion and in a way that left me off-kilter for most of the day. Even my old standby, paint therapy, absolutely could not snap me out of it (of course I publicly blamed paint therapy).

This has never, to my recollection, happened before. A real measure of how far adrift I am right now, you might correctly surmise. I had honestly thought the method to be infallible.

In the end I dragged my much-bruised and abused ego into the kitchen and focused my flagging energies on sustenance instead. Whipped up a mindblowing batch of meaty, chipotle-dominated chili. And when the bulk of that work was done and I was waiting for the mixture to reduce, I turned my attention back to the painting in question.

And goddamn, but everything flowed. Hit exactly the right marks when mixing my glazes - tone, saturation, volume. The highly-reflective silver bits (my trusty Tri-Art Liquid Mirror) drybrushed over the glass bead gel took the phthalo blue and alizarin crimson glazes perfectly. Ditto the more subtle highlights I'd carefully worked in over the past few days.

Then I went out to visit friends. Had a couple drinks, talked some things over, watched some TV. Y'know, everyday stuff.

And made that fateful walk home. And the rest you know. I guess the lesson here is, the therapy won't take when you're not receptive to it. But it'll work when you're ready.

Deep, I know.

Bret Taylor
May 6, 2012.
(Not to be confused with the Bret Taylors of September 2011 or January 2012.)

Soundtrack - "Hold On", by the Alabama Shakes.

Paint Therapy.

So I woke up too early this morning, after dreaming of better circumstances, to find myself at home. And outside in the hall, the building manager and the painters he hired were yelling at the tops of their lungs as long-awaited renovations finally took place. (A word of introduction: building management has done almost nothing in the way of upkeep on the building for the last couple years - a long-standing resident manager left under mysterious circumstances, then we had temporary relief managers, then we had a guy in his early twenties who was apparently too preoccupied with looking like a gangsta to actually do his goddamn job. Elevators sat broken for months at a time, lights in the common areas were burned out, homeless people were constantly trying to infiltrate the building, mailboxes and entrance doors and even apartments were vandalized, etc. etc.)

Anyhow, three guys standing five or six feet apart while they all yell to one another simultaneously makes for a hell of a ruckus. Literally a rude awakening after only four hours of sleep.

(In case you're wondering, this is actually going somewhere.)

On top of all this, there have been many, many changes in my life in the past few months, nearly all for the better, but with their own accompanying stresses, of course. Insomnia has come back for several extended visits, the forces of evil seem to be conspiring, money issues continue to rear their ugly heads, people I need answers from are being flakes, and there are days when it's all I can do to just roll with the punches.

Which brings us to today. I was jittery, bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived, and generally feeling like my entire emotional spectrum had been abraded with coarse-grit sandpaper.

And I took a look at some of the new metalflake paintings I've got on the go, and decided they needed a quick application of glass bead gel. Opened the jar, got out a palette knife, and started spreading the gel. Half an hour went by, and I realized a huge chunk of the stress had just... lifted off.

Paint therapy. You heard it here first, kids. I recommend it for everyone, even if you aren't a painter. And did I mention I've got 19 new paintings in the works? That's a lotta therapy.