I consider myself, as part of Bumbershoots Writers Society, the only full-time completely non-writing member of the group. Although, here I am writing. Dictating, actually, because I do some of my best (or only, to be honest) thinking while driving. The guy in the Honda I just cut off can blame Cyndy for making me promise to contribute to the BWS blog.
I’m a visual artist, but my tie to BWS goes beyond the fact that I’m married to an actual writer. I DO use words in my artwork. But not in any sort of planned manner in most cases, which you may have already surmised based on this weird stream of consciousness post. And often the only way that I actually makes sense to anyone, in fact, even to myself, is if I speak out loud. I talk to myself. ALOT. I was once walking through a park and passed a woman who was talking to herself, and I had to chuckle, saying to myself “ha! that woman is talking to herself.” And then I realized I said that out loud.
Sometimes I HAVE to talk to myself to get through the noise in my head from my ADHD. For me, attention deficit is like having 12 television sets going on at the same time. It’s very hard to focus on any one thing. So to cut through the noise, I often speak my thoughts out loud. So I guess I have a special relationship with words. I was once at an art show and a kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old, looked through the magnifying glass at one of my pieces and shouted with glee “It’s WORDS! I love words! I use them all the time!”
I use words — specifically the written word — as a medium in my work. Much like paint or ink. If you look at a piece of mine from a distance, it is a picture and image, a painting, but if you step close, you will see that it’s all made of writing. Mostly poems, certainly poems that somebody else wrote. I’m a terrible poet. I’m much more comfortable with the physical form of words than their actual meanings, though. How they look on the paper makes much more sense to me than when they travel through the air. Weird, huh?
Anyway, it’s a bit of a different take on the writers’ life. So sue me.
- Carol Bloomgarden
