Sat, 07/18/2009 - 12:57 — marylo

From an early age I felt compelled to read books. Compelled by an internal force as a response to my situation in life or by my personality? Or by the allure of the easy access to other sorts of communications? I’ll never know the whole answer.
I would stubbornly refuse to go skiing with the rest of my family and preferred to stay at home with a book in spite of the guilty conscience that always diminished the pleasure of reading. I remember the scolding my aunt gave me one Christmas for hiding with a book instead of welcoming a visiting friend of hers with a daughter my age. The whole group, including my mother, came to the my hideout and stood there talking for a long time. When they went back to the living room I guess I told them that I would join them later. I didn’t.
The last years I’ve become less and less satisfied with books. Most of them bore me now. Instead I found that the moment I started writing on my own I regained my original fascination for texts.
In the beginning I found a way of limiting my texts by making them into short rhymes. That helped me to find the best words and meanings by a confinement that felt liberating. I guess in a way of similar consequence as the rules of Dogma filming this made me reach a core of truth in a more focused way. Without the distraction and insecurities of the innumerable options that are open.
I mostly use a painting or photograph to go with the verse. I’ve painted since an early age, but even this interest had waned. Now this development of combining images with texts has changed that.
I guess all happened in the right time.
Now I have started a project of combining even more elements into a saga.
I read about a painter who could not write. She had difficulties writing even a Easter postcard... “Happy Easter” – what does that really imply?
I still feel like her but now I so enjoy when finding something that feels right.