;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
What is the symbol of the semi-colon? In grammar, when do you even use the semi- colon? Is there a way to justify it? Is it a circle over a comma? Why is the image of it in some fonts a period mark with the dash added to it and in others a circle and a slanted line? It all depends on the comma in terms of what it looks like.
Here’s one explanation:
“Think of semicolons as thoughtful pauses, as opposed to the full stop indicated by a period. Semicolons can fluidly link two complete ideas without the need for conjunctions. Semicolons are not only used to link main clauses. They can also be used in complicated lists.”
The semi-colon is complicated. It’s not a rules kind of creature. It asks you to be creative, and often it’s your best friend when you can’t stop writing long sentences. It comes in there to rescue you; it’s like you’re kind of cheating by being lazy., but the semi-colon is there to say, “I got you; You’re not so lazy; I think you’re full of ideas, and it’s ok that your mind is popping out of your brain; I’m here for you.”
This is starting to sound like the semi-colon was created for ADHD. Who needs to clean up long assed sentences? Us people who hate having to read over our writing more than maybe once.
The semi-colon doesn’t just understand the laziness of ADHD writers; it understands how bored we quickly get of our own topic and how we can’t stay on one topic for too long unless we are in hyper-focus; the semi-colon is also understanding of hyper-focus that is this post. I wasn’t thinking if the semi-colon and how fascinating it could be; I thought I’d just dash off a quick explanation of why you’d see a semi-colon tattoo on someone, and how intense that is, and all the things one of the simplest tattoos could be saying. And the show and tell part with the photos.
Besides a single dot, I can’t think of a simpler tattoo involving less marks; yet, it will tell you so much about a person, more than a huge back tattoo.
When you see a semi-colon on someone’s body, the first word that will come to mind once you know what it means is “suicide”. It doesn’t mean the person belonging to the body of that tattoo tried to commit suicide. It does mean that at some point they were thinking that they didn’t see their life continuing. Maybe they just thought that there was nothing more. Like, well, I’ve reached the point where nothing new is going to happen. I’ll just wake up every day knowing I’m just taking up space, and there will be no surprises or turns in the road: no semi-colon. The first explanation is that your life is a sentence that has reached the end where you put the period on and that’s it. You expect to be dead very soon and start planning your last word and the period end of your sentence; the other one is bad in another more subtle less horrific way, but it’s got it’s own pain, the dull pain of living every day waiting for your life to end. Maybe not actively waiting, worse, you’re passively waiting, going about your life pretending so well that nobody noticed the dull ache of a certain kind of depression. Not the kind where you stop brushing your teeth or cry on the subway for weeks. Just the quiet dull feeling some have who have run out of gas and allow life to happen to them. They don’t try to summon energy to make anything happen. Those are people whose life continues because their sentence has an ellipses at the end. The kind indicating a continuation of nothingness. Literally the ellipses can mean you’ve trailed off in thought or that it’s a continuous repetition that doesn’t even bear writing a sentence more than once…
The semi-colon is there to save the day. It means you’ve gone through a lot of invisible pain to do the almost impossible and agreed to STAY; once you’ve agreed to stay, you’ve actually become the subject of your sentence; maybe it starts out as a simple contract; sure, I’ll stay around, and that’s an agreement that I won’t end my own sentence or let it trail off forever. I’ll try. That’s all. I’ll try. This kind of trying is a heroic act usually at the beginning done for other people. It’s not true that you need to want to live for yourself. Often, the biggest motivation is to do it for others because you don’t want to hurt them in the worst way possible. Choosing to leave them forever. That semi-colon means you’re there and trying for someone else. That’s the biggest motivation there is for someone at the end of their rope. For a few, it’s their dog they can’t leave; for others, it’s kids, partners, family, friends…
That semi-colon speaks volumes; it might quietly be there for those of us with ADHD who want to write and hate their writing, or it’s there to keep someone going and give them a small hope that their chapter is ending because a new one is beginning. The “staying” and “trying” become a new chapter, a new kind of continuation.
So that’s why I’m making 9 or so little 5 x 7 canvas boards with semi-colons on them. For my friend’s non profit event for mental illness awareness. Her non-profit does different topics. Because if my ADHD I can’t explain it to you. I’ll get her website and post it. It’s ass backwards that I’m making these paintings but can’t explain her event in more detail. This time around it’s something I can make art for.
As per usual, I just started somewhere and then got somewhere else accidentally completely; meaning, despite my desire to make all these pieces that go together in some way, the only thing they have in common is that there are obvious images of a semi-colon; it’s annoying that my Adhd extends to such wishi washiness; on the other hand, if I for once wanted to sound positive about my work, it’s a cool process that mirrors the semi-colon itself; it’s seems simple and not that interesting and then it becomes more and more full of possibilities. I started with the boring idea of making a semi-colon in the center of the canvas; then I used duck tape and a mirror for the top period; a big moment was the realization that my panel could be horizontal and have lots of semi-colons all over; later I realized I could use magazine collage in a fun way; I’m not done yet; here are two of them:
These canvases are also going to, in their weird multi-personality all over the place pieces that don’t go together but have a through line, say as a whole something about the semi-colon; no two are the same; if each is a portrait of maybe the turning point and most important moment in someone’s life, none of them go together in an aesthetic good feeling way like the one people get when they see someone’s Instagram is so organized. The semi-colon is chaotic, or it’s very clear, or it’s something else we don’t know what.
To me it means both staying and trying. I don’t always brush my teeth in a way that makes sense. I’ll brush them then get hungry later and knowingly be lazy and not brush them again. I’m not going to lie. During the pandemic I realized I could workout and sweat a lot, then do other things and just conveniently forget to take a bath. I’d already long before discovered I could be lazy and skip days, something I never would have done maybe 5 years ago. Anyway life is hard, and sometimes you don’t bother brushing your teeth, or you actually forget that it’s time to do so. I’m trying to do a lot of things these days. I question my art more than ever before, and don’t do it every day. I try drawing and then collage and imagine paintings I haven’t made. Suddenly I can’t obsessively workout 6-7 days a week because I got bursitis in my elbow and can’t do most of the stuff I was doing. I don’t know what’s going on.
I feel like I need a reset button. Then I remember I’ve accomplished the impossible; I wake up early before my alarm, and most days I don’t eat a whole bunch of sweets; I got off gluten and hardly eat cheese and started eating fish instead of cookies, all accomplishments I thought were impossible. And, I’m going to edit this post now!
6 Impossible Things For Breakfast 