Thoughts on yesterday

What's going on in this picture? A deer in a starched landscape, with brittle antlers, the palette pallid and wan. This picture came from Portland and I love its oddity. A few weeks ago I biked home from the studio late and when I rolled in front of the house there was a lot of foot traffic happening in front of the house next door, strange for our Holly Park home. I learned that the wife of the elderly Chinese couple living next door had perished in her backyard from heat exhaustion after trying to tar and seal her roof on one of the hottest afternoons of SF late-summer. She was 82, and had been supporting her husband who had ailed from senility for years. From everything I've heard this was one tough cookie. When I went upstairs to my room I looked out my window and was greeted by the tableau of her undoing-- a rickety aluminum ladder leaning against the house, two cans of sealant (one still open), and the roof half-sealed. I had already been doing a lot of research about San Francisco history and its hauntings, so I've been hyper-aware of ghost activity outside my window.
Yesterday I had a really unproductive crit with one of my classes. I'm sure that it's at least partially because I was hungry and tired and sick-- I've been having earaches for days and I feel like I'm three again. But I also felt like I was not being listened to-- I was trying to talk about what I want to do and people kept projecting new ideas on me-- telling me what they thought I should do. Here's what I think about that: if someone tells me to do something, I won't do it. The whole point of art-making for me is the personal lens and the joy of genuine expression-- feeling like what I make is of me. If an idea gets told to me, it will always feel tainted by the fact that someone else came up with it-- it could never feel genuine. Maybe I'll change my mind about this down the road, but for now, I like my persistance-- it's part of what makes me me. It's what makes and 82 year old climb up onto her roof against the waning bend of her health and why makers make things they havent before even if it will be difficult, potentially unyielding and impossible to finish.