Creative evolution is always inspiring. It's a wonderful feeling when suddenly a door in your mind opens and everything is flooded with a new light, a new way to see. I've been moving in this direction for the past month or more now, as you've all been witness too (and have been so very supportive in).
But it's coming to the time now where I find myself at a crossroads. I don't know if what I used to make a few months ago is something I'm ever going to go back to, and the idea of letting go of it for good frightens the toast outta me. This New Age space thing I've soaked myself in shows no signs of abating- in fact it's settled in quite nicely and now has it's feet on the couch eating all my food- to speak metaphorically. Dickens is sitting at the back door, staring balefully at me with sad eyes and wondering what's it done to be pushed out into the cold like that.
Writing in my bedside journal the other night I was trying to analyse what my shop is, in the attempt to better market myself. I started listing all the usual stuff; 'Derelict Victorian, cogless steampunk, faginpunk...and then I realised these words don't really fit my shop any more. I'm not steampunk without gears anymore. I'm ancient astronauts and Future tribalists; New Age post-apocalyptic androids. Granted there's still an essence of the worn-out and the ragged, but the make do and mend of the working classes of history has become a sort of survivalist foraging of found objects, like Mad Max or Escape from LA.
There comes a time in every change where we must acknowledge and let go of the past. In order to move forward we must release the old...and that's scary. No less scary in terms of art; what I have made and sold here online in the past year has been wonderful, interesting, joyous and (to be pragmatic) popular. I've always felt it come from the heart and I've always loved and believed in it. But there are chinks in the armour.
Is my derelict Dickens something I will ever come back to? Is this space age business here for good, or will it pass just as Dickens seems to have? Even just writing that my Dickens theme seems to have passed fills me with sadness. I still love it so much, I still have ideas rolling around in my head but most of them I can't get to without some basic metalwork skills. (Semiprecious Salvage and Complete metalsmith are in the post, thank you for all your suggestions!)
Most of this is mostly just panic. The fear that comes with sweeping out the old to make way for the new. I know that some things - the important things- will stay. You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and there are times of positive light where I feel that by going on this space trip I've actually stripped my art down to the core of what I want to do, and that I'll be able to go back to the Dickens thing with more conviction.
But there are shadow times like this, where I worry that everything is lost. I have to let go of some things and have faith that something better will come along to fill the void. It's like dumping an old boyfriend- you still love them but some thing's between you isn't working any more. And you get a feeling that...you can do better.
