The Muscle Memory of Making Art

If a girl doesn't write in her diary, does she even exist?

Can I admit something, here in the tiny space that is this newsletter?

I haven’t been writing. I’ve hardly journaled in the last 10 months, not even on my honeymoon on the train ride we took from Lisbon to Porto. (Which is like, prime journaling time.) Not only have I not been writing, I haven’t been reading much either. And not only have I not been reading, but I haven’t been cataloguing the few books I have read into the spreadsheet where I typically log the books I read. In addition to my lack of writing and reading, I also haven’t been taking photographs. That’s not an entirely new absence, it’s something that I’ve experienced for the last few years. I used to carry a camera with me everywhere and take photos of everything, even things that weren’t remotely special or “worthy” of being frozen forever on film.

These things—writing, reading, photographing—are things that I consider foundational to my identity. Of course, thinking about identity having a “foundation” doesn’t really leave a lot of room for the shifty fluidity of real life. Regardless, I miss the parts of me that exist when I’m scrawling semi-legible words into my tiny notebooks or putting a camera lens to my eye. And I know I’ll miss the record of things.

Yesterday morning I got into the studio and journaled for the first time in two months. I tried my best to remember the details of the last few weeks—getting married, traveling, packaging July and then August and then Septembers poems for Poem Club. Later in the day I had a tiny blip of motivation to shoot a self portrait with a magenta cosmo R had left on my desk. Instead of ignoring this blip, I took the lens cap off my camera and stood in front of it.

I’m not really interested in why I haven’t been doing these things. I can come up with lots of reasons, but it doesn’t change anything. Instead I’m trying my best to trust that no matter how much time passes I’ll return to myself. The muscle memory of putting words on the paper or framing an image is so deeply ingrained in me that I’ll always be able to pick up where I left off.

For now, here are a few of the images I made yesterday, and a list of some I haven’t made.

Recent things I haven’t photographed

Robbie and I standing at a crosswalk before getting married.

My bouquet propped on a column outside the art museum.

The sky leaving the studio every night.

Local marigolds on the dining room table.

The cat curled in the crook of my arm when I woke up.

Ali laying in my bed while I did my makeup.

Standing in the pitched window of our Lisbon hotel.

Butternut squash soup R made for dinner.

Brand new sheets on our bed, with a freshly washed quilt.

Pink roses growing beneath the plastic covering of a church sign.

Tomatoes in baskets at the farmers market.

Every dish we ate at Pizzeria Beddia.

Pink forget-me-nots, tiny jar of sweet peas, ruffled double cosmo.

Water droplets on R’s warm shoulders.

The leaves on the trees already starting to shift.

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Xo,

B