BEGIN ANYWHERE

02 Daydream Trash

Hi. Hello. I’m so glad you’re here. John Cage once said “Begin Anywhere.”, so that’s what I’ll do. Let’s time travel for a moment. Do you remember LiveJournal? That cute, naïve place on the early internets where Millennial teens with brand new, speedy cable modems could share their innermost thoughts and ideas with the vast, unknown internet? This feels a bit like that (showing my age), but I hope I’m at least a tiny bit more sophisticated now with all the years and life experience behind me. Regardless, I promise to be real with you and myself when writing here. One of the things I loved about LiveJournal was the community aspect, and I’m excited to have that again with you on this new platform.

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IN BLOOM

I consider myself a late bloomer as a working artist. I tried a million and one things before I found this path I’m on. I would experience flashes of momentum, but I was mostly banging my head against the wall with photography, graphic design, illustration, web design, copywriting, coding, painting, saxophone, guitar, drums, singing, poetry and on and on. I’d get discouraged, lose steam, and pick up a shiny new activity, like speed skating (yes really), track cycling, comics, collecting records, writing fiction, swimming, meditation, travel, tattooing... I had a hunger to be creative but I also felt an aching void; lacking my own identity and compass.

My family is 1950s blue collar to the bones, so where does all this artistic drive come from exactly? My Dad had a job he enjoyed (aircraft maintenance), so it was coded into me that the boundaries of work-life and life-life could be blurred successfully. I wanted that for myself one day but traditional gender roles were omnipresent in my family life. The men did the work, and the women had modest jobs or nurtured as homemakers. I did a lot of dreaming about what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I had no template on how to get there. I was also anxious and shy, if this was a movie we would now flashback to young Shannon at school, bawling her eyes out in Drama class. Looking back, I so badly wanted to be a singer, even then, but I was terrified of the prospect at every turn. My family was genuinely supportive of all my artistic endeavours but maybe not quite equipped to deal with an artsy kid who needed extra coaxing and drawing out of her shell. But here we are. Notably, I am the only daughter born in my extended family, and I’m the first woman in my family tree to not only be self-employed, but also an artist. That feels good; all the curiosity and searching lead me somewhere. Begin Anywhere and eventually I found my way here.

It’s time to feed, water myself, and get a bit of fresh air. Thanks again for being here, there’s lots more to come.