Friday, July 19, 2013

Exquisite rapture.

From the time I was in highschool, every 4-5 years I'd shave my head.

Originally, it grew out of the fact that I liked to mess with my hair color. Sometimes this worked out very well, and I looked awesome. However sometimes this did not work out very well and the powers that be, (my mother, my principle and church) found my method of self expression "troubling". I would then get suspended, or grounded or excommunicated and chased by short fat women with pitchforks.

CONFORM

So shortly after somebody cried "It's a witch! May we burn him?!", I would get myself hauled off to a barber and get the whole thing chopped down to the nub, where the white/purple/red/ whatever remnants of color I still sported would slowly fade into memory.

As I grew this eventually this got to be habit. I stopped dying my hair very shortly after graduating high school, and still, every few years I would get the urge to to completely remove whatever was happening on top and start fresh.

But now that I'm older, I'm beginning to appreciate every follicle that holds onto its tiny existence on my head and I don't feel that accelerating my progress to total chromdomary is beneficial to my self esteem. The wife isn't a fan either. But the need for a refocusing every 5-6 years still exists and its roots go deep into my psyche. The head shaving was really a way for my take off everything that I had been attached to before (because your hair is important when your in high school) and start from ground zero. To really ask myself, "enough of what I as before. What do I want to be now?"

lol

In ten years I went from living in a flat in London to being a unemployed aspiring artist in Southern California. I've since been trained in painting and drawing, taught other people to draw and paint, gotten married, moved, adopted 5 rabbits and a puppy, bought a house, started playing world of warcraft, quit playing world of warcraft, started and quit again. I've painting nearly 200 2 inch soldiers, become an accomplished Tromp l'oeil painter, exhibited my work all over the United States and very soon now will be a father. Considering the amount of changes I've left out, the amount of flux and accomplishment is staggering.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you used to take a magnifying glass and adjust it so that all the sunlight condensed into a single spot? About 10 years ago I was writing my masters thesis. It remains the time in my life that I was the most focused. In last ten year years, changes and the need to accommodate new situations, new demands on my time and new frustrations with people who don't know their ass from their elbow has gradually, and ever so slowly, caused the magnifying glass of my attention to grow. Because of that I feel dispersed and my attention no longer has that laser-like focus.

Might wannna check that lens out....

Creativity for my has always come in waves. And out flowing of work and then a pull back and refocusing. It's time for a pull back. I'm back to writing. I'm back to painting. So that once again:

Every morning when I wake up
I experience an exquisite joy.

The joy of being Frank Krifka.

And I ask myself in rapture,
What amazing thing
will this Frank Krifka
Do today?

Watch this space.

-F