"The Green Door", Oil, 10" x 8", 2007
Painted in Venice

A couple of years ago I lost my voice--I got a condition called spasmodic dysphonia.  Doctors say this is an incurable neurological problem and they give botox injections into the vocal cords.  You can listen to Robert Kennedy Jr. on his radio show if you want to know what it sounds like.  I didn't want botox shots in my vocal cords so I went to a cranky, 80 year old voice therapist in LA--Dr. Cooper.  He had a lot of stories about the medical community and notebooks filled with scathing letters to the spasmodic dysphonia associations and doctors and reporters--because in his book spasmodic dysphonia is a functional problem, not a brain disease--its a misuse of the voice.  He sat me in front of a musical biofeedback machine and made me say "um hm" a million times at a certain pitch.  I nearly passed out the first day from hyperventillating.

My voice is better now.  But it can sound pretty bad when I get nervous.  Sometimes the least uptick in my emotions and my voice crackles and breaks and people think I am about to cry.  It makes them nervous.  You never think about your voice until it doesn't work.  You don't realize how many mechanisms have to be in sync to speak.  I hold my breath when I get excited.  That's part of the problem.  I talk to myself all the time in my head, and it sounds perfectly normal.

Painting doesn't require speech--I can go for days without speaking much to anyone except my husband and my cat. When I talk to Muffin, I don't have any problems, because I instinctively pitch my voice higher.  Dr. Cooper calls this "pet talk" and he says it proves that spasmodic dysphonia isn't an incurable brain problem.

I bought a CD from a guy named Roger Love on using the voice--Roger works with Hollywood stars and famous singers.  He teaches specific exercises.  Two years ago I couldn't sing at all.  Now I can sing again, thanks to Dr. Cooper and Roger Love.  But now I get daily email newsletter solicitations from the outfit I bought the CD from, exhorting me to buy other programs--ex-CIA operatives expert in body language, brain aerobics for the elderly, secrets of obscure farmers now worth millions.  I keep unsubscribing but it doesn't stick.  Its hard not to associate all the cheerleading art marketing experts with all this stuff--they all sound pretty much the same. Just one more person telling you what to do. Maybe they never had teenagers. I remember when my daughter told me to stop telling her to practice--because it made it harder, not easier.

Losing my voice was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It gave me an excuse to chain saw a lot of stuff that I didn't want to be doing--to start to figure out what is really important.  I was freaked out and I wanted to fix it.  But it made me realize that there is wisdom within--wisdom that expresses itself in the most unexpected of ways.

"Mazama Ranch", 8" x 10", Oil, 2008

I used to be a programmer. I read an article that Clint pointed to today about how painting and programming are alike. People always exclaim how lucky I am that I can do that left brain stuff along with the right, a view that has always struck me as inexcusably simplistic. Painting and programming are at the very least about problem solving--they both involve holding multiple variables in the mind at the same time.  The logic of a computer program becomes creative using visual/spatial skills--and I don't mean layout of screens--I was never any good at that.  No, logic is a lot more complicated than that and its really fun.

But programming is easier than painting.  At least for me.  It doesn't involve all the baggage that painting has--that C in fourth grade art.  I was one of the smart kids, so I got a special piece of paper--all the other kids got newsprint. But I was terrified of making a mistake and the teacher didn't fail to express her disgust at the waste of a good piece of paper.  The humiliation was complete.  I did music all the way through high school.

When I first learned to program at the Computer Learning Center in San Francisco back in the early 80's, the programs we created generated a stack of punch cards.  We handed them to the guy in the computer room and he ran them through the computer.  Then I got a printout of the error messages.  I would go back to the computer screen and fixed the problems--either the syntax or the logic.  Man--was getting that printout an exciting bit of business.  Getting a run through without errors--a sense of accomplishment.  That's why programming is easier than painting.  My way of fixing the logic might be creative and I might go into the zone doing it, but I always know if it works or not--almost immediately.  It is a case of short term gratification--better than chocolate.  It doesn't require courage, just curiosity.  I never felt that I didn't know what to do--I would just go into the zone and do something.

Painting is a different story.  There's no computer you can run it through to tell you if it works or not.  The debugging mechanisms (my own vision and other people) are highly subjective.  Besides syntax and logic, there is expression.  There are a whole lot of things.  Having a good day matters.

I'm still cornered by that C in fourth grade--that horrible feeling of not knowing what to do.  I went to a workshop last summer with a famous artist.  He came by one day and showed me a couple of things on my painting, then handed back the brush and told me a few more things to change.  I looked at him.  He looked back, and said, are you afraid?  I said yes.  He said, be brave.

"Old Roses", Oil, 12 x 12

I went to an oil painting workshop with a well known artist in Idaho.  He hates Viva towels.  Everybody else loves Viva towels--they are absorbent and lightweight--better than those blue heavy duty absorbent paper towels that you can buy at Costco.  And light years better than regular paper towels.  A lot of new people come to the workshop with Viva towels.  Everybody knows that Viva's are the premier paper towel for oil painters.

The student next to me gets dressed down for using Viva towels.  He tells her to buy the cheap kind--the regular kind of paper towels.  I'm not sure why.  Somebody says its because Viva's stick together on the roll--they impede the flow of the painting experience.   I watch him do a 40 x 60 demo.  I get it--he doesn't really use spirits to clean his brush--he uses a lot of towels.

The next day she's still got the Viva towels--she bought them in bulk, like me.  Now he's really mad.  He told her yesterday to get the other kind.  He comes to my stand.  I am a good student--I went out this morning and bought the regular kind.  I hand them to him and tell him that I got regular towels--just in case he doesn't notice.

He takes the regular towels and looks at me.  He says, very quietly:  don't get the kind that have flowers on them.  Get the plain kind.

Now I get a news article in my box regaling me about what I missed by not going to a marketing workshop.  Another "10 must do things" to promote my art.  I get these newsletters and store them in a folder on my hard drive--mostly without reading them.  I have a tendency to save things because I might need them later.  But I think it is time to unsubscribe.

I decide to Google a pressing topic:  "introverts" + "facebook."  I need to find out if others experience the same thing I do--that facebook just represents more clutter--and here's what I find--an article entitled:  “Social networking websites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace are turning Britons into introverts a new study warns.”   Casting aside my certainty that the authors have mischaracterized the term "introvert," I am struck by the notion that introversion might be as bad as the swine flu, and is catching.  Is that how the extrovert world thinks about people like me?  Apparently I am at a serious disadvantage.  

So what to do if I want to start an artist blog?  Pretend that I am a self-confident extrovert or let all my indecision and uncertainty, my not wanting to talk about myself, hang out to dry in the cyber wind?  Or not do it at all. Or do it next week.  I go into my studio, now overwhelmed by anxiety--how can I even paint.  I think maybe I have to go through the 12-step Artist Way program again.  Eventually I pick up the brush and begin.  All the anxiety goes away.