volume fifty-nine

back to the drawing board

hi, lauren deborah! is free for subscribers every week.

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TW: brief mention of self-harm, creepy men

It started at the dining table. It started with Dad drawing something and then me doing my best to copy it. There was a picture of my furby, a picture of me, a picture of him. I spent my time after dinner with him at that table — I was there for maybe an hour or so, which at that age was my whole night — drawing, trying to get mine to look as good as his. Wanting to draw everything I saw and wanting to draw it all as well as him. I watched his hand move across the page and took note of what order he drew in. He started with the shape of the head, then slowly added features — hair, lips, a nose, ears, maybe some accessories like sunglasses in his case — he layered and layered up the lines until they became what he saw. I was in awe.

I found this after I wrote the experience from memory. (unknown: poop maybe requested by me but also maybe just dad’s choice because why not?)

He whipped these up in a matter of minutes and I thought about what I could do with even more time, if I practiced. I loved how he could capture someone’s essence in a few strokes of the pencil on scrap paper. I often had my Dad help me with creative projects. I believe we co-authored my first series of poems which were about the Addams Family complete with a Cousin Itt illustration. That one we wrote in his shed, likely while he was busy working on something but still had the time to recite lines as I wrote them down, filled with glee that he was so funny and so good at writing. He helped me with a later school project where we had to design an album cover too. He had always been so creative and artistic.

My drawing eventually graduated from the kitchen table to the backyard, where I would set up shop in the sun with the fold-out chalkboard I shared with my sisters but it seemed it maybe got most of its action from me. I was often wearing my favourite outfit, too: blue cotton overalls that were covered in a daisy print, over a white singlet and paired with my faded-red-into-a-pink gumboots (sadly not William’s Wish Wellingtons as hard as I tried). I would place the chalkboard in the yard so that I could face the driveway that led to our dirt road, and see when Dad’s car would come home from work, so I wouldn’t waste a second of time before showing him what I had drawn.

I was deep in concentration. I feel as though Mum was in the house, cooking dinner in the kitchen that overlooked the yard as I enjoyed the prolonged summer daylight. My sisters would have been playing together as they often did without me — I was too young to be cool enough to play with my older sister, yet my younger sister was so young, still in nappies, still cute enough to be considered fun and adorable — this didn’t change for years. I was often playing alone, writing plays and begging people to act in them, drawing, colouring, playing dress-ups and pretending I was a witch. Sometimes my sisters joined in but I never felt they were there to spend time with me, more to make me their entertainment between boredom, sensing the fun I was having and wanting a part of it before taking it off for just the two of them once they understood the assignment.

But the chalkboard and I were great partners. I often liked to snack and draw, sometimes on apple skins, particularly on carrots. One day, carrot in one hand, chalk in the other, eyes set on my masterpiece, I confused myself and bit the chalk instead. I spluttered in disgust and went straight back to my drawing.

When Mum and Dad broke up, I don’t really recall drawing much. I know that is when I started writing a lot. Journaling my dreams that haunted me, the thoughts that bothered me, the worries that followed me, and crumpled them under my pillow hoping they would never be found. Drawing maybe happened at home in those next few years but I don’t recall it. At school, however, I would draw whenever the opportunity arose. I remember turning the entire classroom chalkboard into an ally. The walls angled as if we were looking down towards the end — every individual brick, graffiti, litter — all so it could be used as a backdrop for a performance.

In year seven, when I started high school, I was so excited that we had an entire class devoted to art. I had long admired my sister for bringing her art book home from school and seeing what they had done that week and I couldn’t wait for a class devoted just to art. I drew self-portraits and dolphins and country landscapes and the ocean in that class. I learned how to draw in perspective in that class, so that the view perfectly shrunk as we looked further in the distance. I was easily one of the best in my class of fellow twelve-year-olds. I was always met with choirs of compliments when I submitted my homework. If my Geography teacher sent me home with homework, and so did my art teacher, one would get ten minutes spent, rushing through, doing the bare minimum, and the other (art, of course) would get my whole night’s attention. Art was the only reason some people at school spoke to me — otherwise pretending I didn’t exist — telling me how good it was.

When I was fifteen, art became an escape. There was a period of my teenage years where life felt very dark, like a lot of teenagers feel, sure, but mine took over in a way I hope most teenagers don’t feel. I began to self-harm and have suicidal thoughts. In part, it could have been my feelings of isolation at home, in part, it could have been wishing I had a happy family that got along, in part, it could have been the dreams I kept having of having a girlfriend but being in a school and home I felt I could never talk about what that meant and thinking there was something very wrong with me, in part, it could have been my friend’s creepy Dad that everyone seemed to love so I didn’t want to voice what I knew, in part, it could have been seeing my friend die from leukemia and all the praying we did in school do nothing so for the first time in my life I lost my faith, in part, maybe it was getting my heart broken by a boy for the first time that I held hands with for a week, in part, maybe it was a bunch of my friends fighting and deciding to take sides and me being stuck in the middle which resulted in them turning on me.

But art saved me. I went home and blasted my angsty music in my bedroom and filled the back of my school art book with sketches and collages and visual depictions of my dreams that only I could understand. I think back then it was what I sometimes do with my writing now. I let it out.

I went on to select art class as an elective in years nine and ten, meaning when I had options of what my extra classes would be, of course, art and drama were my choices. I still to this day do not know why anyone would want to pick anything else because for me there was never a question. I drew a giant portrait of my niece as my final art project of the year that perfectly captured her crooked smile — the one we share. I paid tribute to friends with my work throughout the year, I made epic mistakes and was helped through by my wonderful teachers, I learned how to capture hands, eyes, hair — something I am not quite sure stuck (especially the hands).

In year eleven when I entered my last two years of high school at my tech college, I was able to select all of my classes. Mum had a strong opinion on most of them and won, having me study child care, commercial cookery and business studies along with of course english and math. But I won ceramics and printmaking. Half of the year was spent drawing lovely things that I then learned to make into all sorts of prints (lino, screen printing, and other experimental methods) and I got to create t-shirts and tote bags and banners for my bedroom walls all with the creations I had made. The second half of the year was ceramics. I didn't thrive as well in that class but I sure as heck loved every second of it and made statues of beautiful female ghosts, fruit bowls and paperweights.

Then what happened? I got my first “real” boyfriend. I discovered alcohol. I started going to parties. I got a part-time job. I graduated high school. I got a full-time job. I broke up with my boyfriend. I moved to the city. I discovered music festivals and party drugs. My work of art became myself: fake tan, bleached hair, false lashes. I moved across the world and filled two pages in a colouring book over five years. I went home to sort the rest of my stuff and threw away all of my old art left in my mum’s garage to get rid of the clutter. In my first year in Canada I picked up a sketchbook, I drew now and then but I never made it a priority.

During the lockdowns, I found myself again drawing. It started with my sister’s kids, jumping on zoom with some drawing prompts — even teaching them the perspective method I had learned years ago. Almost every month we jump on together, it has become a collaborative effort where we all choose one drawing prompt and draw together. It has been the most wonderful way to connect with them from so far but it was unexpectedly my way of finding myself back to my sketchbook. I quickly filled the pages and then bought a regular notepad for future classes. This wasn’t going to cut it, but I insisted on this being good enough because this was just something I did for fun.

Until this week, when I bought myself the best gift: a new sketchbook and some new markers and I revisited and revamped a whole list of ideas I have for funny fun fun prints to make, and maybe gift them? Maybe sell them? Maybe hide them away for no one to see? But definitely, definitely, I am going to draw them.

What made you happy as a child that maybe you have forgotten along the way of growing up in the world? Have you rediscovered it as an adult? Let me know in the comments.

here are three things I struggled with this week:

🧙‍♀️ Jay and Ice won’t be returning to be in Hocus Pocus 2. Devastating.

🤦‍♀️ I was at a concert and there was a guy enjoying it as much as me, singing to all the same songs and dancing as much as I was, who was also v good looking and dressed v cool, and after the concert, he introduced himself and started talking to me and I cut it short and ran away into the crowd because being a demisexual is like that. Consider this my application to the missed connections classifieds, because I would never actually do that: Martin I am sorry. It’s not you, it’s me. But it really is.

💌 Refreshing my email over and over. Did that job I applied for reply? Nope? No news is good news, I will just refresh one more time to be sure.

here are three blessings from this week:

🍁 I SUBMITTED MY FREAKING CITIZENSHIP APPLICATION. Dual homes in Australia and Canada, making art, writing for my days, and endless summers, here I come.

🎸…and then that night I took myself to a Steve Miller Band concert and ate poutine and beamed from ear to ear as I danced and sang and I thought “I really am the love of my own fucking life, look at this dreamy existence I have created”.

📅 I revamped my Mondays. Thanks to this thread I posted and this post from my pal Lou (that came out within a few hours of each other as we usually are on the same wave without realising) I concluded that some things about Mondays just cannot be avoided, but that doesn’t mean they have to be the only thing about Mondays. Yes, the first half of my Mondays are hectic with unavoidable meetings and to-do lists, but the second half? I have taken the tip shared a while ago from my pal Maud, and scheduled play. I used to have it on a Friday but let’s be real: Fridays there will always be play. This week I got some sun and stretched my legs for an hour in my neighbourhood, I made a phone call to a friend as I enjoyed the walk, and I went and picked out my new art supplies. Something small maybe, but at the end of the day when my roommate and I passed each other and asked each other about our day, I said “It was a really good day!” and it was.

here are three goals for the coming week:

☀️ I am off to Vancouver Island for the week to revisit the housesit that I loved (and as it turns out they loved me too and invited me back). I plan to have a week of cat cuddles, sunshine naps and writing, writing, writing.

🎤 I am on another comedy show after a summer hiatus. Yay! I am on a comedy show with some very, very, very funny people. Help! I will practice to my heart's content to make sure I give it my best but you know what? I am going to have fun.

🖍️ Draw.

here is something I enjoyed this week: 

I have mentioned the amazing work Maud Mostly does before with The Other Team. But I want to give a special shout-out specifically to Tunes Tuesday.

I have had the pleasure of slowly but surely getting the transcripts ready for these interviews, which means I have been watching them as I do that.

1. Maud is an excellent interviewer. They ask thought-provoking and thoughtful questions and react to the vibe of the guest in the best way, responding to the awareness, heart or joy of the guest.

2. My music knowledge has far extended and my saved artists in my Spotify are looking way better than they did before I started watching these. The talent! I love expanding my horizons and hearing music from amazing people singing about important issues or (*holds breath*) love stories I can relate to.

3. Support queer artists always. These mini-interviews are an excellent place to start.

pics or it didn’t happen:

v proud of this 🔥 pic I got for my application so you must rejoice with me too

I love you,

LD

xoxo