Anxiety and the Artist

I have generalized anxiety disorder.

That was probably the hardest line of this to write. It’s not built into my DNA to admit weakness, real or perceived. Though I’ve been making a concerted effort to own up to my shortcomings, it’s hard to do.

This will be neither a confessional, nor a prescription for “how to deal”, just a picture of how life looks to me. Maybe I’ll go into the genetic and childhood ingredients of my particular brand of disorder some other time.

Despite amassing an impressive number of birthdays, I still feel like a child. I long to rush into the waves, to race across the playground and talk to that new kid, or to jump on a plane and go to Europe. I survey a multitude of adventures and badly want to have them all. I am and always will be, in some ways, a child. And that should be awesome.

The Child and the Monster.

Sometime when I was physically a child, maybe at conception even, a monster came into my life. It doesn’t scare me and it’s not meant to. It was born to serve me. To protect me. You see, the monster is able to see danger before the child and run interference. Nothing wrong with that.

Somewhere along the way, the monster started to notice danger in everything and everyone. “Everyone else has a monster,” it whispers, and the child begins to see them, too. “But their monster is bad.”

And soon the child goes from adventuring to peering at the world through his fingers. Afraid of potential hurt, possible loss, embarrassment and even fears of being afraid. He and the monster work out each detail of each scenario that they see on the horizon in painstaking detail.

It whispers about the danger.

This makes the art very good. I’ve been asked many times how I can write about things I’ve never experienced as though I had.

It’s because I have. Through the child and the monster.

It makes life very hard. I don’t travel to Europe. I don’t talk to new people (easily) and I struggle to have the sort of fun I imagine is out there for regular people.

The monster calls regular people “delusional” or “dimwits”.

The child secretly envies them.

The monster sometimes emerges to confront situations in monstrous ways.

As the vessel that transports these two, I’m sometimes able to overcome and sometimes not.

I know it has damaged the social aspects of my career. I know it has cost me friendships. I know it has caused bad first impressions with people I just KNOW I would have become friends with if the real me had been able to get free.

But the child loves the monster and would never send it away, even if he knew how. It has protected him from pain, real and imagined. And the child values this very much. But it’s costly to the vessel.

I mean, look at the terror in my eyes!

I’m still in the middle of life (I hope) and not sure if I’ll get this figured out or keep faking it, but I just want anyone else harboring the child and the monster to know you’re not alone.

Anxiety, the kind that just hangs around all the time, triggering fear and reclusion leading to depression, is hard. It’s terrible. But it’s not how we ought to define ourselves.

“I’m an artist and I experience generalized anxiety.”

Yeah, that sounds better.

JSn

Ps. Cambria (Cydney Penner) talks about dealing with the other anxiety, those epic panic attacks where you feel you might die, in today’s episode of “9 Days with Cambria”. Check it out (after 11am est): 9 Days with Cambria, Day Five: Drugs & Anxiety

Long Roads and Mea Culpa

The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing. ~ Eugene Delacroix

On Set: 48 Hours in Purgatory

Imagine labouring over a painting. You work at it for a couple of years and it’s quite beautiful. You decide to show it off, but before you can, doubt about whether it’s any good creeps in.

So you make a few changes. Not bad. But still that doubt nags.

Maybe it’s not fit for public consumption (says no one but the voice in your head). So you decide to stop feeding it and paint something else. And the process repeats. Except there’s this other painting in the corner, mocking you. Or maybe just trying to get your attention.

You consider burning the paintings, each in different stages of completion. But you can’t, because the paint and canvas meant something to others and you owe them a painting. But in your mind the art is garbage.

Only in your mind. Your heart knows it’s special. Meaningful. Powerful. But your heart fears the judgements that will come. Because your heart has been dinged up over art before.

This scratchy metaphor is, maybe obviously, my relationship to art, specifically film.

Seven years ago today I was deep into the first week of my first feature film, 48 Hours in Purgatory. I was learning on the job. It was a great experience and before I knew it I was rolling with some excellent people who believed in me and made another film. And another. As of today, I have directed two shorts, two commercials and five feature films, with number six coming this fall.

Sounds pretty good for a seven year old film career. The problem is that every film but that first one has remained in my chamber of anguish leering at me for keeping them hidden from the world.

Inspiration

In the recent past my friend Mitch watched a rough cut of my second film, “Inspiration”. He liked it and jumped in with both feet to get it finished and out into the world. And that is happening very shortly, despite the way my mind bristles at the idea.

The Ghost is a Lie

The film that followed Inspiration was “The Ghost is a Lie”, successfully crowd-funded and shot with a heap of great new talent. But it never felt good enough to show off. This time my friends Heath and Kat jumped in, with Mitch right there to really kick things into gear, and re-invigorated that film. It will now be two films! Double the puke-inducing fear of inferiority.

Alison Undone

Lastly of the trifecta of terror is Alison Undone, a nightmare odyssey of communication breakdowns and misunderstandings. But following this new track, AU is in process and headed to the public eye, come-what-may.

I’m thankful for the people who brought me face-to-face with my own self-sabotage, even those who didn’t know they did.

So officially, to everyone I have frustrated these last few years: I’m sorry. Terrific actors, amazing crew-people, fantastic business partners, friends and family who have believed in me long after I’ve overstretched the reasonable bounds of grace.

The taps of these stories are about to open and it will be out of my hands and into your minds to judge whether the art is for you or not.

I guess it starts in June with a really cool project I shot with long-time partner-in-crime, Mike Klassen, 9 Days with Cambria.

This is a wandering mess, but transparency is the new name of the game. We’re going to succeed or fail in plain sight. No more imaginary monsters.

I wanted to give something away to anyone who made it to the end of this thing, but I can’t. Below, however, is the link to rent or buy 48 Hours in Purgatory. I hope you check it out and I hope it makes you think or feel things, good or bad.

With tortured, artsy-fartsy love,

JSn

48 Hours in Purgatory @ Indiereign

My Brain is a War Zone

 

This Graffiti Gets Me

So it’s been just over two years since I wrote an entry into this blog. Seems like a me thing to do. And 5:00 AM on a Wednesday seems like the right time to get back at it.

My wife and I had a “day-date” yesterday. A little time while the kids were in school (most of them – the eldest is recovering from an appendectomy) to go for a hike and have lunch together. We saw deer, graffiti (above), and ate Thai food. It was awesome.

It also allowed me to feel content for a few glorious moments.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally a happy guy. I have a kind-of-serious resting face (my wife and kids claim I look like I’m going to kill someone when I’m really just pondering breakfast options), but I’m not really an angry person.

I just can’t get ahold of contentment as a rest-mode. For me, peace comes with creating, be that playing the guitar, writing a story, directing a film, taking a photograph or building something. A state of “nothing-in-the-works” is the thing that makes me uneasy.

Today we saw some amazing places and things, right near our home. Open spaces. Nature. Spring just as it’s about to tear away the brown and put on a lush, green show.

But as I looked over the landscape, I could see a dozen stories unfolding. My mind swirled. A piece of me, rooted in the quest for contentment, stood as a weary soldier, hopelessly defending against a vast army of ideas and thoughts. The only defense was to allow creation to happen.

And so I allowed my mind’s eye to overlay the landscape with mysteries and characters and magic. It always comes effortlessly. My muse is elusive, but reliable. Add in my wife’s presence, which is the only thing that really steadies the ship, and my brain is free to let this war play out. I suppose the only casualty of said war is my unshakable fear that this isn’t a normal way to be. But maybe normal sucks.

In the next post (yeah, not two years from now, I promise) I’m going to talk about what’s transpired since I first posted here. Most all of it has been positive. And positively interesting.

JSn