53. Anchors

How we counterbalance the tyranny of time and other things. Lines for Chasm, a motif.

“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”
—Doris Lessing

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As many of you know, I’ve been working on a film for a group exhibit in September. I’ve been jamming to get it to, what we call in the tech world, an MVP (“minimum viable product”), while also consulting and trying to be meaningfully present in relationships.

I wake, crank, look up, and somehow it’s already the next day 🫠 (I know, boo hoo, welcome to adult life.)

I’ve been staying sane by brutally prioritizing. I set an agenda for the week on Sunday nights, a schedule for the day each morning. I have to be flexible enough to deal with curve balls and new knowledge, but overall I don’t deviate. And though I’m trying to feel more think less, it’s getting down to the wire and I need to execute, context-switch, deliver.

Regardless of constantly feeling behind, I anchor by always doing the dishes, tidying the studio before turning in, making the bed when I get up. I do some form of exercise daily, even if it’s just a short walk. I make a salad around 2pm. Last but not least, perspective has been a powerful guard against burnout, which hovers at the periphery like a diffuse, silent spectre. Find ways to make it fun, because pleasure is the purest fuel. And if I begin my days with brutal prioritization, I’d say that I end them with brutal acceptance. I push hard all day, but at the end of it I try to let go.

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Last two weeks I worked on six different vignettes for the film; I’ll focus on just one here, Chasm. Two women wearing hanbok (traditional Korean dress), gazing at each other over a divide.

Chasm, digital charcoal. From 2017, first shared in Issue 23:

This image has surfaced many times in different forms over the years:

Digital sketch, 2017. Concept for animation but I lacked the skills back then.

Motherland. Watercolor on paper. Also 2017.

My guess is this is 2017 too (I was in North Korea relatively recently, in 2015).

My usual chicken-scratch sketches for the latest incarnation of this:

Finally, animated:

I need to paint this (and a bunch of other sequences) now for a rough cut of the film, wish me luck 🤪