So I’m feeling artistically frustrated

This is normal. Show prep has moved to the stage of “Everything I have ever painted is shit,” which slides into “I must change my medium/style/genre RIGHT NOW,” which slides into “I am madly inspired to do something that I cannot possibly put in this show.”

In my case, this latter is paintings of giant penises. Not, like, attached to anything. Just, y’know. There. Possibly wearing little robes. (But not hats. Hats would just be silly.) I cannot put them in the show because this is at an art center where they teach small children to make lumpy ceramic ashtrays, and I draw the line there.

Look, I don’t know why it happens either. We could chalk it up to “a week of celibacy is starting to grind Ursula down” and there’s a certain truth to that, and YES, I know some of you have been there for the last decade, and I’m sorry, I deserve no sympathy, but you know how it is when you’re gettin’ some regularly as opposed to how everything goes kinda dormant during the really dry dry spells. Like, um, frogs. The ones that live in the desert. They need water as much as anybody, but when it’s obvious that it’s not gonna rain for the next ten months, they build themselves a little mucus cocoon underground and go into torpor. Thing. Well, I’m out of my mucus cocoon, goddamnit, and…y’know.

Still, that’s a little glib, because we have stuff like “Compensation” and “Valley of Wang,” so obviously this is a recurring artistic theme for me, and I have mostly come to terms with it, although god only knows what my boyfriend’s relatives think of me after reading this stuff. (Hi, guys! Um…at least now you know I’ll never leave Kevin because I’ve decided I’m a lesbian?)

I’m frustrated, I get the urge to paint penises. Big ones. Four feet tall. Giant canvases. That’s so bloody obvious I don’t know if it even qualifies as Freudian.

Either this will have passed by morning, or I’ll spend most of tomorrow painting something that only a very few people will be willing to hang in the house.