I talk about art and being an artist too much. This, I know. I think about it even more so than I write about it. Why? Because it is who I am. There are days when I have these thoughts about my work and I want to shout them out for all to hear.
And then there are the other days, when me and my art want to play fetal twister and hide away from the world and all that ails it. Those days are what I call the Camera Obscurart.
Let me explain.
Camera Obscura (Latin for “dark room”) is an optical device that led to photography and the photographic camera. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where it is reproduced, inverted (thus upside-down), but with color and perspective preserved.
Now, imagine the artist in a room with nothing but a hole on one side. That thin beam of light cuts through the dust-flecked space…but vanishes, deep within the heart of the artist. In that vacuum of self, tucked away from the mirror of society, I often hide. It is my defensive mechanism, my safe place. I hide within the Obscurart when I feel like the world has its cold, unfeeling fingers wrapped around my heart with intent to snuff out my life.
Sounds dark. Sounds bleak.
I’m a writer of dark, twisty fiction…what do you expect?
A glitter farting unicorn?
That’s not going to happen.
Unless we call in Shero. In which case every kind of fabulous will occur.
Everyone say it with me:
You go, girl!
Where was I?
Oh yeah, gloom and despair.
Le sigh.
Have you ever watched Louis CK? You know, the comedian. He’s hilarious, right? If you watch him closely, however, you’ll see this inner pathos dancing behind his eyes. Fueling all that funny is the artist’s fear. It’s real and it is a painful cyclone to confront. Watching the late Robin Williams (RIP) you’d have seen the same flicker behind his glorious ice blues.
Too much. Too damn much.
Must pull myself out of that funk-fest.
Today, during my run the idea for the third book in the Nameless Saga came to me. It’s a return to a Hell’s Muse-ian form that will once again pit me against a most worthy foe…
The publishing industry.
Did I say me? No, no, no, no. I meant Bronson Coutler.
Anyway, I plan on revisiting that nasty, horrific world very soon. I’ve titled the third book, Dark Side Down and I have every intention of making it the bleakest of the series. Every so often, I simply have to go there. Where is there?
My dark place.
Yeah, that’s right…we have them. Even horror authors have our own personal mental spaces where we unleash a very special beast. I normal do that in the Camera Obscurart. When writing the Nameless Saga, I give myself permission to open the floodgates and let it pour.
I hope that makes you all a twitter with excitement.
It does me.
Mu. Ha. Ha.
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