I realized after pursuing learning the language of music, of sounds and practicing guitar and then keyboard, that I love music. I adore it. But the time it will take me to truly become fluent, creative and competent in it at a professional level is time I would have had at age 12. I’m going to continue to learn guitar, and keyboard.
But.
But part of diving into music was to find a way to express what I got stuck in expressing as a painter. I started a painting of my daughter in her hospital bed, with her spirit leaving.
I wanted it to express the:
dismay
loss
bottomless grief
the divide between the time with her, and the grey shadowed time after
the strange sense of loss of time that came with her passing
…and all the other pieces of intricate grief and loss.
I couldn’t finish the painting. It has sat, for 12 years. Three of those years I tried to find a way to say it in music instead, and while that didn’t work, what it did do is free me up from what ever block hit. I now consider that painting finished.
I also get that I am at purpose and at skills a visual artist, a painter.
I also get that that is enough.
— spence