There’s a portrait
In the back room which I keep for days upon, which I relent and gaze for days upon the muscle, skin, and bone of some imaginary friend. So how about it? Show me please how I will look in twenty years? And let me please in history in every line and scar that’s painted there in front of me.”Quote from Belle and Sebastian’s song lyrics for Slow Graffiti
Last Summer, I originally had intended to write a formal introduction to everyone of the nice friends I’ve encountered on substack. A lot has happened since last summer, to say the least. But before I get started with beginning to write on a frequent basis, I think I owe people a genuine introduction. Hello my name is Jessica, and I love to draw.
Similarly, I’d like to make amends for any mistakes, offense, or miscommunication that occurred between then and now. I’m sorry if my presence here may have caused any kind of sadness, fear, or misunderstanding. I am putting myself out here in the spirit of good faith and friendship.
When I was at art school in Olympia WA, I made a ton of handmade DIY art: drawings, stencil prints, wall and ceiling murals, hand-taped booklets, zines, cover art, and music tapes for my friends. I like to write with a pen and paper. In the past, I’ve been shy about sharing any of my art online for many reasons, but specifically I tended to avoid online art due to my personal respect for and loyalty to the written word, the blank paper page, pens, and markers.
Drawing is second nature to me; it’s just what I do with myself to pass the time, like breathing oxygen. Making art and writing is like a natural reflex. Just as how I love to be alive, drawing is just what I love to do.
I find it interesting how, at least for me, making drawings doesn’t involve too many words. With art I can speak with pictures, talk in a visual sense through the movements of light, lines, colors, and shadows, as a way to make my internal ideas visible to our outside world. At times, I have tried to hide myself behind the canvas, keep all of the fearful secrets locked away, remain the ever absent private artist.
Of course, in all sincerity, I realize that people are free to interpret my drawings as whatever they believe.
An openness to interpretation is something I love about art, the illusive subjective nature, the infinite sea of possibilities and meanings for each observer, hundreds of people seeing, creating, building their own unique imaginary worlds. I suspect some writing may be put out there by authors in a similar spirit.
On the subject of reading and writing, as a reader I often see a book from my own subjective perspective, and I tend to create my own intimate experience out of reading, building imaginary worlds in my mind. I think that’s part of the beauty, intrigue, surreality, and strangeness of the realm of art. My never ending relationship between art and audience is strange as all get out: eternally changing and evolving over the passing of time.
Admittedly I’ve got terrible stage fright and eternal anxiety. My self-conscious nature tends to be quiet and shy. At least, I’m quiet when it comes to meeting new people. When I trust someone, when I’m in a safe environment, then I tend to talk too much. My laugh is so fucking loud that you can hear the booming laughter echo down the city block.
I guess part of the reason why I’m writing now is because of the sincere, tender-hearted, safe, respectful, egalitarian, brave, and generous environment I’ve found here on substack. The group of writer and artist friends I’ve met so far have been endearingly supportive, encouraging, and trustworthy, kind of like my art school friends in Olympia.
The story I’ve often told myself is that my stage fright makes me well suited for drawing pictures and painting. Words come harder for me. But it’s worth a try, I believe. I’m learning to trust more people.
When I lived in Olympia for years, Slow Graffiti was my one of my favorite Belle and Sebastian songs. And the song is even more meaningful to me to this day, 2nd only to Fox in the Snow.
Probably I have way too many favorite Belle and Sebastian songs, somewhere up there in the double digits. Their words stay with me like they’re imprinted on my soul; I accidentally hum their melodies when I go for long walks outside at night. Their tragic, funny, hopeful and beautiful songs pull at my heart strings like an invisible lace thread. And the absurdist jokes in their lyrics make me laugh way too loudly; their lyrical imagery flashes portraits (like my imaginary friends) inside my mind, similar to the fluttering of an old film projector flash, lifting me up and saving my life in times of trouble. Their words uplift my heart like a luminous candle, their songs stay stuck on a loop in my head. The State I am in. I Don’t Love Anyone. The Fox in the Snow. Songs from their original albums Tigermilk and If you’re Feeling Sinister, from the early years.
At art school my friend used to sing Slow Graffiti accompanied by slow hand-waving movements with me, which is maybe part of why I love hearing the song. My Evergreen friends and I would sing the song and dance together in their houses’ on the unfinished concrete floors of their old basements, with their antique wooden piano in the corner room. Lots of broken hearts. Classic art school drama.
In Olympia, my friends would stand up for me no matter what. Unconditional platonic love, loyalty, acceptance, belonging, trust, with zero judgements. I guess the drab concrete buildings at Evergreen helped us stay focused on making art together, instead of turning me into a pretentious kid. Seriously I don’t even know how to begin with trying to write, but I know that I’m just one person starting with the blank page.
One evening in Olympia, my friends and I wrote a song about being like furry polar bears, based on a cold winter night when we were huddled around the warm basement furnace light. That polar bear song makes me smile in the darkest hours of a January night.
When I first heard Belle and Sebastian as a teenager it was on KEXP, formerly KCMU, on the radio in Seattle while I was driving to school with my sister in the early morning fog across Lake Washington. Electronic Renaissance was the song on the radio. Belle and Sebastian’s music felt like platonic love at first sound, so to speak. Like searching for the North Star at night, I felt instantly compelled to find their original first album Tigermilk, which led to hearing If You’re Feeling Sinister, and then the next album, and the next.
I’ve drawn the cover art for almost every album that I have in my music collection, thousands of portraits in a back room and stacked among my bookshelves. Their sad songs made my world a better place; the music is tied to my tender heart, connected to some of my most vivid memories and most meaningful emotions. It makes me smile, but then I get tears in my eyes at the same time. Tears of love, friendship, and sadness.
About the poetry of the words to Slow Graffiti: shit I still don’t know how I will look in 20 years. But I do have a jagged, raised, and textured scar. I’m not trying to hide that scar by covering it up with my long black bangs that hang down over my left eye. There’s a long story behind that crooked red line, a story about where the scar came from, one that feels too long and too heavy to tell here or at the moment. Someday, I will.
In the words of Kathleen Hanna: “I put my head up against the wall. To be closer to the music that they played. You were my oxygen, the thing that made me think I could escape. This is a thank you song for Les and Ray. You were my batteries, the thing that made me think I could escape.”
I finally left, and I am here.
I wear my heart on my sleeve. Literally, there’s a black broken heart tattoo on my inner wrist that I drew based on the book cover for Ms. Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West. The heart tattoo is also a reference to the novel Invisible Man by Ellison.
On my other arm there are two twin stars, on my middle back there’s a line of birds on a tree branch, and there are three lilies on my leg. My history is written like an open book on the lines of my face, the scars, the truth. And the people who I draw they are sometimes self-portraits, and they are just people, and my friends, and a whole wide world to see, exist in, and believe in.
‘There’s a Portrait’ is a sketchbook drawing I made with ink, colored pencil, markers, and mixed paper collage. All of the art included is made by me, Jessica M. W. The Polaroids were taken by some of my life long friends. I still keep the memories from my Polaroids in my mind and in my heart.
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to share your memories, emotions, and ideas connected to music, if you feel like sharing. Sending love and respect to you all, my fellow readers, artists, and writers.
Sincerely,
Jessica M. W.
PS. I thought I’d add my own thank you song here. I’m eternally grateful to the kind-hearted, empathetic, sincere writer and artist people who have encouraged me to share in this collective endeavor to create and build a world of writing, music, art, and film within the ether of the internet.
The kindness, empathy, and compassion I see in our creative community of good writer people led me towards something meaningful, magical, and a kind of art and storytelling that pulls at my heart with the same magic gravitational strength of the moon, the stars, and the sun. With love and sincerity, from JMW
Wow!
This writing (and art) made me cry. I love Belle and Sebastian so much. Stuart Murdoch really got me through the time when my CFS was most severe. I still listen to them every day. 💓