Sometimes, the writing can scare me.
There is a moment immediately after the creation of art, art in any medium, where one can notice the expanse of what has just emerged. Is that awe? Not fear. I guess I find that awe to be scary in a way.
Is that mine? Did I do that? Those questions are okay.
What does that piece say about me? This one is trickier. As the focus moves from art to artist, we risk losing sight of the art.
There are pieces, still unfinished, that I revisit from time to time, sometimes with an editor’s eye, tweaking a tense or an object or a verb, but not always.
There are times that the voice of the half hewn canvas speaks in its own voice, and when it does, the character asks to continue their tale. It is when a character like this feels so much alive that I cannot contain the thought of their existence being restricted to a folder on a drive, merely ones and zeros, bits arranged, ordered, stored, and mostly forgotten.
Maybe that entrained, daily ritual of the work deepens that entanglement of creator and created? Do the words become more than words? Animated? Enlivened?
Still, sometimes, revisiting unfinished work is intimidating. Did I back off because I felt intimidated by the scope? Did it cut so very close that I was revealing more of myself than I felt able to handle? Or did the rigors of daily life take me far enough from what I saw from within the piece that I could no longer hear the work speak?