Evans likens it to a Japenese painting technique, haiga, the most important aspect being the spontaneity of the artist and the felt, unplanned flow of the brush over the thinly stretched delicate paper surface. Any readjustments or nostalgia is irrelevant and simply couldn't work because a second stroke of the brush would rip the canvas and destroy the painting.
This morning I was extremely sad. I was truly clinically depressed and although I was up early with Tom this Sunday morning, making breakfast and playing games together, I spent much of it in quiet tears. There was no reactive reasoning to how I felt, it is simply what mental health professional call a diurnal variation in my mood- the natural daily ups and downs of depression, grief or even in the mind that is well and functioning at full capacity. My mood continued to vary throughout the day, an ebb and flow that culminated eventually to what maybe feels like joy, sitting in a very comfy armchair in my front room opposite a woman I love and who I know loves me, drinking good wine and listening to jazz on vinyl, my favourite of all musical experiences. It is not the height of human achievement, I'll admit, but it is a zenith of my choice. It is the cream in my coffee, the sunny break in the clouds, the fresh wedge of lime in my gin.
Sometimes I can gain a little control over the variations in my mood, sometimes I can't- I talk, I cry, I consider and weigh up, I focus on the minuscule or immense, I find discourse or harmony, I write, discover and read. The narrative arc of my story of grief is influenced by the sheer quantity of psychic effort I have to input to remain in charge. Mostly I am in charge. Mostly.
But sometimes it is necessary to let go too. Sometimes, too rarely, I afford myself the luxury of mindlessness. I run to let my mind run for the sheer liberation of it. I drift, without fuss, into aloneness for the sheer emancipation of it. Sometimes the detention of grief is a shackle in need of reparation. Sometimes I need to be inconsiderate and, instead, to propitiate aloofness.
Sometimes feeling is everything. Sometimes it is perfect to flow without conscious thought, unemcumbered by the weight of expectation or acceptable premise, to improvise.
