THE CHADDENING (video)

Will be uploaded as soon as it renders. WARNING: contains disturbing content.

Well

That me done for the day. After last weeks paintathon my hand is totally crapped. So have to keep icing it and hope it picks up.

My hand

This is an accurate photograph of how my right hand looks. The left is included for posterity.

Depression is a full time job

It really is. I am not going to do one of those irritating posts where people moan about their 'problems' and list all their various (self) diagnoses and then give a crap reasons why they don't believe in medication (which often as not they aren't being offered anyway because they've never actual seen a human doctor and have only consulted Dr. Wikipedia).

Personally I do believe in medication, because it works. It makes me more functional, it means I can eat food and taste it, it means I don't go into a horrible autopilot. It means I can sleep and get up in the morning. However despite having medication, clinical depression is absolutely exhausting, it fills most of your time in managing it and trying to cope with which mood you will be in. Then you get into managing diet and trying to deal with tiredness, a tiredness which has no bearing on sleep or exercise or light or season. Aside from the more eccentric other aspect of it, cause or whatever, you also have the joy of social stigma to deal with. The unfailing belief that most people have that they have had depression (like experienced extreme stress, SAD or been down in the dumps). Resulting in their case to having moved out of the situation and therefore believing that depression is something from which you can 'pull yourself together' from or alternately 'cheer up'. Of course this is total bullshit, because the reality is that clinical depression / unipolar depression is the result of chemical imbalance and learnt behaviour.

Ultimately while "not a real illness" in that you haven't broken your leg, it is a very real illness. We don't live in the fucking dark ages anymore. Mental illness is real and it doesn't matter how many times you plug someone's butt with garlic and tell them to cheer up. It's a crippling affliction. Not just some moaner who needs to get their shit together.

Personally i struggle every day to manage my depression by working extremely hard at it. It's not easy and the saddest thing about it is that I don't have the chance to opt out, or decide to get over it. I'm not feeling sorry for myself by posting this, just venting frustration in that I don't have the chance to do all the things my brain wants to do. There isn't an option NOT to feel like this. And I find it intensely sad (not depressing) that people fail to make that understanding that it's not a lifestyle choice, laziness, apathy or malaise. It's just like a broken leg, except it won't heal. Anyway, I'm going to pull myself together and go chop some wood.

Hummingbirds lick!

Awesome!

And dream of

A life in outer space.

Relax day.

Feels weird. Wearing my poncho and no trousers all day today. Knocked some flowers off a plant with it. And confused the cats.

Can't sleep

My hand is swollen up. Back hurts. And all I can think about is painting. And it is pissing me off. Can't do any. But brain and body are full of it. Can switch my brain off.

Music

The best music to have a relaxing bath too is storytelling by belle and Sebastian. I am now having a little holiday because I am shattered and a bit damaged.

Apparently

You can black out from leaning over something at a certain angle. Rest time.

Under coated...

A shit load more boards, the carpet and my hands. Useful.

Update: also undercoated my forehead and hair while wiping sweat from my brow. Also in other interesting news, also have ink around my mouth (?) and paint in my ear (understandable).

Ah the great crap pile.

Every now and then I have to move my studio so the boiler can be accessed. What appears from this moving of objects, paint, water pots etc is the great crap pile. It is like the 43rd wonder of the world. Tourist revenues this year were 3p (which actually I found on the floor- no idea how because I never have pockets in here).

Hmmm

I've got to the point where I am so hyper active that I am taking twice as long to do anything. Which is nice in a way. Being excited. Over excited. Painting and ink work going on simultaneously. Which is good.

Exciting news!

In other exciting news I figured out how the 'fly' on my disguising thermals work. I've missed these babies.

I can't decide whether or not this is indecent or not.

So this is daylight?

Pretty grim weather. It's nearly 10am and it's dusky outside. Ink work is now underway under a new flow of coffee. Which may or may not be decaf. Another m file to investigate. Where are my manilla folders?

3 hours solid

And now I'm pretty tired but the majority of the painting is done, now i need to do ink work, which is normally staged but I was on a roll with painting.

Hello sun

Well not quite.

Wherefore art thou elbow sponges?

I had elbow sponges. I suspect they have been stolen. Probably by unknown forces. I might re open the m files. I will need a desk, some folders and a bottle of apple juice in a whiskey bottle in the bottom draw of said desk.

Ah Thursday I presume.

6 am. For this series of paintings I am recreating the feeling of excitement you get when you wake up early to travel. Except in my garage.

Good day

Working my ass off on paintings, had a really good conversation then nice lunch in the car then painting more. Painting is happening at the moment, so I'm making the most of it.

This carpet no longer has any absorbency

Because I've wiped the shit out of it. I am reduced to budget napkins. God. Nightmare. I might pull up the stair carpet and use that. I'm sure no one would mind.

I need a decent one man coffee maker

Because I am fucking sick of drinking a mouthful of grit from the crappy one man caffeterie (spelling?)

1 email. No post.

I'm like the kid at camp who doesn't get a care package. Just a scribbled postcard from his sex-offender uncle in prison.

Do they have post cards is prison?

Got bored of not sleeping.

And thinking about paintings. So I got up to do some. 5.45am. Agh. I got an hour or two of lame sleep and had a dream where my parents changed my name to capernicus (which I can't spell I've only heard it) as punishment for some crap.

obviously from here you are walking backwards

this is my zoom in shot of a rare falcon. you can't really see it from this picture, but it's totally a falcon or eagle or something. anyway so lots done today, lots more to do tomorrow. planning to be up at 8am to start painting. had planned to go on a trip, but my pizza party and sleep over companion unfortunately skipped out on me so i'll have to wait and see if he is around later in the week.

and this one also is new

in addition to this new one

and this one as well.

this too.

this is new

updated my website. yay woo

so go and have a look if you want. www.mikebromage.com

Shattered

I am now totally exhausted. I've done the majority of the structural work for the next piece and now I'm all out. Lying on the studio floor. But I can't paint objectively now.

Jess' twin peaks skirt

If you get the reference then awesome.

Coffee, how I love you

It is a cliche to love coffee and I probably smell like those broken spirited art teachers at school, but I do like it.

I've been painting for about

7 hours. I feel a bit weird. It's nice when the update works because in breaks in feels like I'm conversing. I have a feeling the last painting is too 'dark'. But I know it isn't. It's just the kind of thing people will latch onto as something else.

Finished painting

And starting the next. Nmh exclusively on the music front.

Up at 0830 painting

Making progress. Good strong progress. I do need a coffee drip though. So if that gets invented someone let me know.

I would put a picture with this but the AMAZING phone blog app won't fucking work again.

Diagram

Which is interesting because I'm trying to follow the maps as the poem continues. It's beautify written. I really need to eat soon. Made some garlic bread to go with lasagne.

Further into the inferno today

Sat in the bath and read. Which was nice. Then I got sleepy and I'm going to have a good old dinner, a nice lie down then get my ass up early and get into the next one.

Break

Taking a pause to watch a bit more of seven, finished another painting and did some back painting on the next one.

Still working

Made Jess a cheese sandwich before work and had a break and now ploughing back on. Drunk quite a lot of coffee so far. Which is good. Not an excessive amount. Undercoated two more boards while i wait for the painting to dry. My music is fighting for noise supremacy with the washing machine and my horrible singing.

Good

It's going well. The halogen is giving me a false idea of the quantity of light. Do need more coffee...

It seems very early

Up and painting. When do the clocks go back?

Trying to figure

If I should stop updating the dust piggies. It's a pile of hassle to get them sorted to update every day and people don't seem that bothered or fussed, so I will probably just stop them and see if anyone notices.

I'm also...

Blogging less in between painting because I am reading a really good book and can't really be shitting about with the application on my phone that I blog with because it's temperamental. And it is now really starting to piss me off on a large scale so hence less posts.