8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Category: [17] Late & Ready

What late-bloomer artists might teach us about persistence.

Chapter List

  • Patient Portals 

    As I write this I’m preparing for a little end of summer vacation. We’re jetting off for a week for a family adventure. And I’m bringing my sketchbook, of course.

    I came back from Japan last year with a dozen urban sketches in a notebook, and it has become one of my favourite souvenirs. And yet, invariably, when I show anyone their first question is always: how long do these take you?

    Sketching isn’t a camera, obviously.

    It’s not fast, and so saying that I can draw pretty fast is a relative expression of time investment. I can draw pretty fast, but that means I usually spend less than thirty minutes with my pen sketching out the details of a scene.

    Again, it’s not a click and go. It’s find a place to sit, out of the way of the bustle, and then work through the scene, chewing out the shapes and shadows, poking in the details, and trying to get as much as I can before either I attract an audience or annoy my ever-patient wife.

    Urban sketching is the opposite of urgency.

    I may have enjoyed it in my youth, and maybe even been pretty good at such forms, but I think my patience would have been less available to the pages.  Sitting somewhere with no pressure to keep exploring the bigger place but instead soaking in the details of just one spot, one scene, one moment… that’s the persistence of maturity, I think.

  • Late Ready

    Everyone starts somewhere, but some of us start later than others.

    There are a few hard realities of learning a new craft after a certain age. Heck, like almost anything there is a ticking clock for greatness. Me picking away at the piano at nearly fifty is almost certainly not going to open up a spot at The Juilliard School any more than my dabbling in urban sketching this late in life it going to give me the time and energy to pursue a scholarship at Emily Carr University.

    The reality is that after certain doors in life, close most of the world will almost certainly regard your pursuits of artistic and creative skill as little more than a retirement hobby.

    And maybe that’s fair.

    …but it also isn’t.

    Art, fiction, music, all of it is as much about translating life experience into something outside of our memories. Fine whiskeys are aged to make them better, so why not artists, too?

    I am on the fringes of an age category transition myself, looking at much of middle age as something I’ve been through and starting to think about not just age, but the general idea of starting on a creative path as a late entrant.

    I got into watercolour when I was older than my first instructor.

    I took up the violin at forty.

    I didn’t start seriously trying to play the piano until just a year ago.  

    And something tells me that my flailing sense of urgency about aging might be a wee bit overblown. 

    Under the category of Late & Ready I’ll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Memory Waned

    If I ever need a better reminder that age plays nasty tricks on us all (oh, and that I should keep a notebook or my notes app with me at all times) is sitting here for five minutes trying to trigger the second half of a lost memory.

    I remember that last night I had a great idea for an article, but this morning sitting here to write said article I can’t remember a thing about it.

    Is that getting older, or just bad idea management overall?

    I think we all probably encounter empty places where we thought we left our creative car keys the night before, and maybe such as it was in my youth I’m just more frustrated by this thinking organ in my skull that I feel like I should have more control over as I approach fifty.

    Online analysts will tell you that technology has allowed us to offload our memories to external devices and this has made the tools in our brains dull and fragile. On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with leaning into a notebook to keep track of fleeting ideas when you don’t have time or inclination to open the laptop and immediately start working on them.

  • Afternoon Nap

    Maybe it’s getting older (or maybe it’s because I gave up caffeine six months ago) but I find my batteries drain shortly after lunch and a thirty minute nap is in order.

    I admit it. I’m going to be fifty this year. Yikes.

    (Not that you couldn’t tell from guy still writing a blog in twenty-twenty six, but  I ain’t a teenager anymore.)

    I spend a good chunk of my mornings working on creative brain work, getting the important stuff off my plate, and being all professional. 

    Then I eat a (usually) healthy lunch.

    And by one-thirty. Ugh. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open.  If life allows, I’ll close the lid of the computer and close my eyes, too. 

    I suppose it’s a universal truth of a sort, but if you can swing a nap to recharge your batteries in the middle of the day then do it. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t begrudge the sleepyheads. Don’t frown at someone who can use an extra half hour of rest. 

    Sleep is not wasted time. It is how our brains rejuvenate. 

    I always knew I’d get older some day. Heck, as they say, aging is a privilege and a monument to surviving this crazy universe.  And if I can experience it a little more clearly after a few extra winks then all the better, right?

  • Confidence Boosts

    I bought yet another book of sheet music recently.

    That’s what musicians probably do, right? I assume so myself. Going to the music store makes me feel like how I used to feel going to the bookstore or the record store (way back when that was a thing) and I spent hours browsing through the stacked pages of a million potential adventures through grand ideas or creative expression.  Sheet music still seems to hold that grip on me.

    I bought a book of sheet music that is probably too hard for me to play.

    Precisely, it was a thick book of classical standards, two and a half centimetres of paper bound up with literally hundreds of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt and a couple dozen more mostly-famous composers. Intermediate piano music.

    Don’t get me wrong.  I can read music. I’ve been playing some form of instrument for about forty-five years, most recently going on a music journey with the violin.  But having delved in a serious attempt to learn how to play the piano this past year I would still neatly categorize myself as a beginner. 

    And now I have this sheath of music for intermediate players. It’s probably, almost certainly, too hard for me to play… right now.

    Confidence is many things, often immeasurable things, but sometimes I need to remind myself that I must have a least a little bit of it: I invested in my future self this week and I bought a book of music that is aspirational, too difficult for me today, but some part of me must believe that tomorrow will be better, huh?