selfportraits.

I was feeling really low.

Like a saying in hungarian: under the frogs ass. Because how much lower could you possibly get?

Anyways I had that annoying critic babbling away in my mind: nothing you do is valuable, you are a fake and a fraud, nobody cares about you or what you do on and on.

So what?!

So what if nobody cares? I care.

So what if what I do has no value for anybody else? It is important to me.

And if I'm a fake and a fraud, than ok, that's what I am then. I'll be a good one :).


And I felt an urge to just capture myself as me, the one I am in this (and this and this and this...) instant. No more no less. Confused, happy, fragmented, sad, philosophing, empty, full of love.

We are all so much.

There is no such thing as a fixed I. We are all made up of millions of fragments, shimmering and dancing, like the sun's reflections on moving water.

Everything changes. All the time. And that is frightening and wonderful at the same time.

And so that was me yesterday.

Who are you right now? How would you picture yourself? How would you like to see yourself?

Love!

Week four of Project Playground.

It is evening again, and I sit again sweating a bit because I want to make this week's prompt tempting. I have so many other things on my mind.  Not only confusion about the future and stress. Also very nice things such as this: 

I have also been digging and planting in my elotment. I hope to get a little bit more order and growth there this year than last year. Last year was the first year I got to use it after it had been unused for quite a number of years, so I think it will take a while before it gives really good crops. If it ever does. It doesn't really matter. Not much anyway. What matters is the happiness I feel while being there. And to see my daughter dig her hands down in the earth, and my son run around it laughing, helping pull weeds and put seeds in the ground. I forgot my camera today, but hope to get some pictures tomorrow.

Now. To the project.

I have been enjoying the sun so much that I feel a tribute is in order. So that is what the project for this week is - to make a tribute to the sun. There are many to be inspired by in all kinds of media (maybe make a collage?). You can of course make a drawing or painting, you can write a poem, but also write a lovesong or other musical piece! Anything can be used. I ran out of paper one day, but found paper plates from a birthday some years ago and drew on that (terrible photo again, sorry about that, hehe):

Love!

The sentence I picked and how I continued it.

Today I went to the library. We had an appointment at the doctors, but had to wait for over an hour (hooray for my doctor who gives you a time estimate when you get in line!). So I took baby L across the street to have a cup of coffee at the library café and she fell asleep on the way.

In the café there was a sale of books that had been sorted out from the library and I found a book by one of my favorite authors. Naturally I bought it. I closed my eyes, flipped the pages and put my finger down on a sentence (the book is in swedish, and I wrote it in swedish, here is my attempt to translate it):

But Jenny came and sang...


She sang so the evening sky paled. The blackbird who always filled our early evenings with his homey chirrups and twirrels sat down by the rail of the verandah to listen. His black suit floated out into the dark shadows around him, but the lights from inside made his eye twinkle. His shiny eye and my dry eyes met and fell into eachother until I no longer knew who was the observer and who was the observed. The I in the tale. All that happened that evening - was it my or the blackbird's story?

The others were watching Jenny of course. Actually she was rather inconsiderable. The hair of no particular colour and her skin was sensitive and therefore filled with blushes and dry spots. The eyes were filled with some sort of light, I guess, but they weren't more beautiful than average. Besides, her lips were thin and pale. But when those lips parted, and she sang - then everybody forgot how inconsiderable she was. Like tiny lit candles they all sat turned towards her, shining. Their faces full of glow and wonder. Some were smiling. Some closed their eyes. Some cried. Only my heart closed. Filled with blackbird feathers.

Maybe it was my hatred that made her fall on the stairs. Maybe my slippery kindness found it's way under her petite shoes and made her lose foothold. I don't know. Strangely enough neither of the shoes fell of. She lay there with her skirts spred out like a fan, a growing shadow around her hair. The beautiful tiny slippers still both on their foot.


Also, I played around with my image from week two a bit. Not great, but here it is :).

Week one of Robin's Playground.

Hoooooraay! Today we start! I am both excited and a little disapointed. Excited, because it is going to be great, and disapointed because I have suffered a humongous video failure this morning. I had recorded a video so I could talk to you, but I can not get the audio and the visual to sync. And there is no way that I can figure out now to only upload the audio. So we shall have to do with my writing instead.

And so here goes. Welcome all you lovely souls to this project!!! Once a week I will post a prompt, or excersise or theme that I will and you are welcome to create during the week. I will post what I have done as soon as I'm finished, and you are all welcome to post photos or texts in the comment section. If you prefere you can post a link to your flickraccount our some other place where we can go see what you do.

My aim for this is to create a playarea - hence Playground name - where we can create things for the mere fun of it. I was inspired by Julia Cameron's Artist dates (if you haven't read Artist's way, and you are an artist, then by all means - read it!). I figured out, why not do something like that, but in a group where we can inspire and learn from eachother?! So here it is: Robin's Playground. I would like for this to be a warm, welcoming and positive area, where there is no right and wrong in creating, no good or bad, no goals to be met or failed at. Just the play and the fun that creating can be. Just the exploration.

You can follow by popping in here whenever you like, or sign up for the newsletter and get the prompts in your mailbox. Whatever is best for you!

And now let's get to it:

This weeks theme is: My Hand.
Why on earth this? Simply because one of the great masters of painting (I think it was Leonardo da Vinci, can not be sure though...) started up every day be drawing his own hand. So I figured it could be a good first excersise. Now, you can do exactly that - draw your hand as it looks. Or you can draw it symbolically - what is your hand to you? Or you can write down what ever pops up in your mind when you think of your hand and then make a poem or a word collage. If you are very pressed for time: here are some really quick tips:

Draw the outline of your hand on a piece of paper:

If you have time you can fill it in with colours, collage it...
Or do it many times:

Dip your hand in paint (feels good!):

Lovely feeling indeed, so do it many times:

I was aiming for tree, but I don't know.... Hehe.
Ok. Let's get to it! Hooray again! Let me know how you are doing.

Oh, I just realized it is not possible to leave a photo in the comments here :(. How about keeping that exchange in the Facebook area? I have a page there too:
http://www.facebook.com/RobinHasADream?ref=tn_tnmn

Or if you have any better suggestions that I, as the very analogue person I am, don't know of , just let me know ;).

Love!

I remind myself 2.

When I was somewhere around twenty years old I went to an exhibition of Miró. I was blasted away.

It changed my way of looking, not only at art, but life itself. First because I was so happy (read stomach full of bubbles popping and bouncing, giggly, biiiig smile on face) that art could look like that, and people would respect it, like it and even put it in a gallery. It was so funfilled, surprising, sometimes "simple" (probably just to the uneducated eye - how simple it is will probably reveal itself quickly once one tries to do something similar oneself. As I discovered. = actually not simple at all, hehe). And then there was this quote. When asked about inspiration, he simply said that he got inspired by everything. That inspiration is everywhere. Everything can be turned into art, if one only knows how to look at it.

I think this is one of the most positive things I have ever heard anyone say. To see the world like that - an immense treasurebox. Everything can be wonderful. Everything is valuable. Our perspective can change any dull thing into a masterpiece. And so when I feel low or the drudge of the everyday threatens to drag med down into feelings of hopelessness and such I try to remember this:

Love!