What if I just draw?

Exploring my anxiety from the inside and finding a new place for words

A few months ago, during a writing dry spell, I drew a tree.

I’ve drawn trees before. In fact, they are probably one of my most frequently drawn subjects. Trees feel infinitely accessible to me. From the cherished childlike tree with a canopy resembling a blobby cloud and an owl-sized hole in the trunk, to explorations with light (tree trunk dark brown on one side and light brown on the other, inspired), I have drawn things that are often instantly recognizable as trees.

My mom is an artist, and for most of my life, she painted. (Lots of trees, come to think of it.) I’ve always felt there was a sense of relief when I left the cocoon a writer and not an artist. We spoke different dialects of the same language, so we could understand each other, sort of. As I’ve explored my aversion to creating art, I’ve concluded there is an element of eldest daughter syndrome at work here. I never wanted to compete with my mother. I idolized her and thought her a better painter than Tom Thomson (still do). So it made sense for me to swerve away from art, and my love for reading and my need to create worlds other than my own to reside in made writing a better fit anyway.

As I entered this winter, I could tell it was going to be a rough one. Like a groundhog who instead of predicting the onset of spring predicts the size of the wave of seasonal depression, I cringed away from the long months ahead of me. Winter is hard. Writing became hard. I wrote a short story for the CBC Fiction Prize and, for perhaps the first time, I felt like writing was insufficient. I wrung myself out on that story, yet still wasn’t pleased with the subatomic drippings. I wanted something to be revealed immediately, not word after word. I wanted my layers to build from the bottom up, not start to finish. I wanted my edits, my mistakes, to be concealed within the finished result, not erased from the page forever. I didn’t want to say what I meant, I needed to see it.

I didn’t have a style, but I knew I liked really time-consuming, intricate details. I like geometry. And I liked nature. So I drew a tree.

I’m not going to show you that tree because it was a ridiculous, grasping monster, unintelligently designed. But I liked a couple parts of it, so I did those parts in new pieces, over and over. In doing that, I found a style. I also discovered something mind-blowing.

Art is not like writing.

Are you astonished?

I honestly am. I have the kind of brain that has six layers of observation engaged at all times. When I say it’s self-referential, that implies there’s only one self. My inner chatter is like the walla of a major airport. And it never stops. It’s the cause of my lifelong intractable insomnia, it’s why meditation feels more like a staff meeting, and it takes up so much space that peace can only trickle in from the sides.

And I always thought writing was a creative endeavour, because, well, there was nothing and then you write and there is something. By its very definition, writing is creating. So why, if I write so much, am I so fucking anxious? I thought creating was supposed to ease that part of the left brain, letting the right brain, anchored in the eternal now with no concept of past or future, take the wheel. But writing has always felt like my entire brain is in use, including anxiety, including depression, including fear, a constant conversation in two very different languages. Flow is elusive and always has perfection nipping at its heels, causing me to stumble.

Then I put a black archival ink pen in my left hand and drew a tree. And another. And I found I could draw for hours without hearing much at all from my left brain. (Surely it is involved in art, I’m not suggesting otherwise – making shapes, judging perspective, choosing media, all that and more require the left brain). Art smoothed over the chatter and even the incredibly repetitive and mindless components extruded from my hand in absence of accompanying announcements. In fact, those are the parts my brain likes the best. Make a triangle. Make a triangle. Make a triangle. Two hours later, I have made seven hundred triangles and haven’t compulsively checked my calendar for overlooked events or appointments once. It feels like a beast has been soothed. And my mom loves what I’m working on and has been so supportive and generous with her art supplies.

I wanted this piece of writing to be about Martha Beck’s new book, Beyond Anxiety. But I’m over seven hundred words in and I haven’t mentioned it, so maybe that’s meant for another time. I will say that if you love writing and you don’t make art and you’re incredibly anxious (I see you), please try drawing something. Her book completely validates this experience, and even she sees writing as being very different and separate than art.

I wonder if we’re doing a disservice by pairing these two creative ventures so stubbornly? I wonder how other dark periods of my life may have been lightened by drawing. Maybe this is one of the many things that everyone knew but me. My girlfriend always says she is surprised by what I don’t know, given the breadth and depth of what I do.

I don’t want to diminish the pesky self-loathing I encountered as I started doing what I considered art (and not ‘just’ zentangles, or neurographic art, as the adults are calling it now). But it just wasn’t that loud. I let myself make mistakes and keep going. I let myself be ‘bad’ (re: new).

Another thing I am loving about drawing is that I can shove it under people’s noses and make them look at it, unlike writing. It is very hard to get people to read your writing – even people who love your writing. But I can send my loved ones a photo of something I’m working on and know they saw it, and through it, me. It’s more accessible in that way. I can write a lovely scene, but it takes you almost as much time to read it as it took me to write it. With a drawing, your eyes alight on the entire thing at once, then circle around, then zoom in and out. I can watch you do that. It only takes a few seconds. It connects us.

Well, there is so much more I wanted to say. But I’ll just leave you with this.