Here’s my theory: we operate under narrative principles as people — even if we don’t have a story in our heads when we live our lives. We can look back on our lives and see how things happened the way they did. We realize what feelings we ignored and then rediscovered, who changed our lives versus who didn’t, and what we’ll never do again and what we can never stop.
The pandemic brought a lot of that to the surface. It certainly brought a lot of that up for me. You’ve heard about the ADHD (a story that is still playing out, in many ways. I didn’t realize how much time I actually liked to spend alone…). Here’s one example:
Act I: 2020
I started the year very unhappy, but because of lockdown, my state of mind, and my lack of employment, I started painting. Before that, it had been biking, cooking, selling clothes, a whole number of things. Cooking had bottomed out because I couldn’t cook and eat all the food I wanted to cook, and while my friends enjoyed the fudge and lentils, they weren’t THAT enthusiastic. Selling clothes had not been as fun as I wanted it to be, not least because I should’ve just donated the clothes I’d tried to sell. (Mainly because I was no longer enthused by them, even if they were good quality. Hard to sell what you don’t like.) And while I loved to bike, I’d had a recent fall in the middle of the street, which made me realize my biking enthusiasm was far outpacing my biking skills.
And I’d already shaved my head, so I couldn’t keep posting selfies of myself for attention. Growing your hair out is not pretty.
(I hate this picture of myself but I felt compelled to share it.)
I’d love to paint as a kid, and I’ve kept sketchbooks for years. I loved brush pens, found watercolors tolerable, played around with markers and would make cards and paintings for friends and family. But I hadn’t really thought very seriously about my art in a long time. One could say that every other pandemic hobby before was just a hobby. But this was a passion of mine…which is probably why I’d avoiding getting too deep into it until now.
So I walked (a mile and a half, because I was afraid of my bike) to a Blick near me and asked them about paints. The woman who helped me informed me, to my surprise, that acrylics are actually cheaper than watercolors. I had been painting unenthusiastically with watercolors for years, just thinking I was never going to get any better. She helped me pick out brushes, canvases, and gave me a few Liquitex student-grade basics. I also grabbed a neon orange, just for the fun of it.
After struggling walking home with two big canvases (I was also too afraid to take the bus), I asked a friend in my little tested-and-found-negative social group to drive me there for their next sale. I made weird, strange paintings very quickly. I had the time.
I realized when I posted this painting that I might have some potential to do more with art that I realized. People reacted with delight to what I felt was a pretty typical pattern — floral on black, a classic Victorian era print style which was always in vogue, and mimicked the Unicorn Tapestries from the Cloisters. It hadn’t occurred to me that simply noticing that type of print was an artistic impulse.
But when I gave the above painting to my doctor (partly to thank her for diagnosing me with asthma right before the pandemic), something changed. She hung it in her office and told me she thought it was a loving, caring image for patients to look at during appointments. (I had seen a version of the pattern when looking up 1960s ceramics.) Hearing that someone who had helped me in such an important way saw my art as a way to help others really surprised me. It made me take my own art seriously in a way I hadn’t since high school.
Act II: 2021
Before, when I tried to make art, I would only share my work with a few very close friends. Anyone who’d seen my sketchbook knew they were part of a very special coven. My instagram was even private before, mostly because I made art like this:
A joke that I shared on Instagram to joke with my then-co-workers about. But looking at that painting, I see someone simply unschooled, using materials that . The canvas board was too slippery, and the paints lacked the creaminess that made my art flow on to the page. But the colors are well mixed and matched, the light is hitting all the right places on the elements, and the painting is neatly plotted. I see a real potential. But I had no idea how to improve.
So in 2021, I decided to fix it. I painted nonstop, almost every day. I painted for friends and asked their thoughts; I reached out to artists and illustrators for advice and found multiple mentors; I made art goals for the year. In 2020, I bought Posca pens, which I deeply connected with:
In 2021, the goal was to sell prints, to develop my style further, to find all my options and narrow them down one by one. A friend who gave me an iPad (for free!) in 2020 was the reason I bought an Apple pencil and working on digital drawings. I eventually did something for Food52 partly because of the potential I showed in this drawing and caption:
I’ve sold paintings of people’s pets and for their homes. Moreover, one day a friend asked me: “Did you see the news on Twitter last night?” And I got to reply, “No, I was paintings stars.”
Act III: 2022
Who knows??? But I don’t feel done yet. I’m still figuring out my shop, and I haven’t sold many prints yet. I don’t feel like doing too many pet portrait commissions outside of my friends. I’m trying to gather the courage to finally submit a few cartoons to the New Yorker. I’m working on ideas for a comic or an animated show.
“Duh, everyone gets this way around the New Year.”
No, this is different. Because the New Year actually meant something in 2021 — because this was around the time the vaccine was approved for the wider public. There’s no post-pandemic period yet — but we ARE post-vaccine, post-booster shots. We struggled through 2020, and personally everything I did in 2021 was to avoid the pain and suffering I experienced in 2021, right down to the fact that my new apartment has a goddamn dishwasher.
But it was only in the past week that I felt like I could actually go back and remember my 2020. I stopped running away from those memories, and just sat with them. I talked to a friend about that time — not being nostalgic, not “reminiscing.” Just remembering. That pain still lives in my body, the way it does in yours. I just could release some of it without being overwhelmed by that pain again.
I think in 2021 we were taking our suffering in 2020 and reacting to it. We could do nothing but react. Could do nothing but listen. Nothing but releasing the grip of pain that we’d unknowingly carried for years before the pandemic. Here’s a typical three act structure:
The pandemic was our inciting incident. We’re at a midpoint here.
I’m not saying that everything related to the pandemic is following this structure. Instead I’d say that a few simple things are. The pandemic is going to have an incredible amount of ramifications for the world — some good, some bad, most completely neutral in the grand scheme of things.
But this one, this one personal thing…I’m sure you have it. Maybe multiple times over in your life. Something that happened to you that’s reaching its third act. What is it? Tell me. I want to know.