I do think that people yearn for connection and intimacy, and that they're hard things to achieve.
I didn't really have a major role in how it was described. I wanted it to be a collection of essays where each storyline could be contained.
I was re-experiencing these things that happened a long time ago, and I'm trying to relive it now, and I'm bringing all of my current motivations and personality into that which were not there at the time. It's hard to remember exactly who I was when I was ten, fifteen.
I like being around funny people.
The thing about writing or making art is that I'm not thinking about that stuff while I'm doing it. Like the driver's ed kid, in retrospect I see that that was meaningful, and I felt close to him in that way, but at the time I just thought it was fun to draw, and that's all it was. I think that's what's weird about life and about making art. You have to talk about it later. I guess I should be prepared to talk about it now. That is why I'm here. But again, pass.
It's uncomfortable to just say the first thing that pops into your head, but you have to when you're speaking in front of people. A lot of times I'll say something I don't even believe. I've never actually used "pass" before.
In fiction you can make up everything to create the feeling. You can manufacture a story with whatever tools you want. With nonfiction you have to rely on what actually happened to describe what you're feeling. That's hard. You have to know what will feed into the emotion you're trying to convey. And that's hard because you don't necessarily know what causes your emotions.
I don't do the like, "This led to this, and this was why this happened." That doesn't feel real and isn't how I experience things.
That was an instance where I was given a word to define my confusing experience, and I'm just like, "nah."
The last time I was asked that, I said "A Year Without Spoons." Normally you get asked the same questions over and over, so it feels boring to say the same thing. But then I was like, I don't even know another essay I like. They're all good.
I think I've been able to express some of the more complicated feelings I had.
When I was going through the stuff with my dad and thinking about terms like restraining order and domestic violence, I was really just searching for a way to define what I was going through. I didn't really understand what it meant to disown a parent or not want to have a parent in your life. Even the word parent was confusing to me because my father came into my life so late in my teen years.
I wanted each different Chelsea to be able to navigate her own world without having to also speak to a larger narrative.
I have hundreds of Word documents filled with pages of one-liners. If I begin to write a story, or if one of my thoughts leads to more than a couple paragraphs of writing, I'll go into these documents and pull out lines that I think would work with it.
My artistic process involves pens, gesso, acrylic paint, and markers, all on vellum. I use a window painter's technique and paint on the backside of my image before I mess with the front.
People choose the most flattering photos of themselves to put on Facebook. Text messages can be vague and confusing. But conversations are confusing too. And some people wear lots of makeup. I think it's just hard to be a person.
I hide my documents in many different places on my computer, because I often write things that I would never want anybody to read, at least unedited, and I'm paranoid that someone might figure out what the password to my computer is and maliciously read my Word documents. So a lot of the time I lose things I've written and/or completely forget about them.
I basically have two ways I start writing. Either I'll start with something about myself, or something that happened to me that seemed important, or I'll start with some idea I have that doesn't have much to do with me. But one will always lead to the other.
I want to draw subjects that seem very boring and everyday... Stuff that would be normal except for one thing. Or two things. Or stuff that's undeniably weird.
I don't know how to talk about technology in a positive or negative way because it's just the way the world is to me. It seems like talking about the advantages of breathing through holes in our face instead of holes that lead more directly to the lungs.
There is a lot of stuff I write that makes it seem like my intention is to make people think I'm speaking about myself entirely, and it is my intention to make people think that, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's what it is.
I made my first website when I was ten. I flirted using instant messages all throughout high school. I like the Internet. I like cuddling. I like my cell phone. I like awkward eye contact with strangers. I like hearing people's voices. I like parties. I like Craigslist. These things don't seem technologically exclusive to me.
I think it's really important to have a sense of humor.
I think funniness is a sign of intelligence.
I love anybody funny. I think my ten-year-old sister is really funny. She makes me laugh way more than most people do.
