on senior week

Paul Madonna, May 8 2011

My friend Mark sends me a picture of a cartoon zombie from a Scooby-Doo episode and says it's the man his mother is going to marry.  He says that after his father died she lost all her confidence and couldn't be alone, and so this is who she ended up with.  Then he goes off about how hard it is to be an artist.  Lamenting that it's all work and no glory.  And when in the rare event that he does get some glory, people tell him how lucky he is to not have to work. 

I write back that I've been afraid of repeating myself.  Afraid of becoming one of those authors who spends his life writing the same novel over and over but with different titles.

Mark says repetition in inevitable.  That no matter how broad your range is, it's still limited.  Once you get a sense for who you are, you continually see that reflection in the mirror of all you make.

It's why failure is so hard, he says.  You feel crazy for believing the next time will be different.  He says he goes through daylong panic attacks, then has to push them down into a big bole so he can get back to work.  So I tell him what I tell myself: to just keep going.  I say that sometimes willpower is more important than talent.  That he has to believe it can all work out, while knowing that belief along alone won't make it true.  There are no guarantees.  Sometimes your mother marries a zombie.

(Paul Madonna, his studio in the Mission District of San Francisco)

Source: sfgate.com