Since I started following Jhadina on YouTube, she has mentioned the ‘angel number’ 923 in more than half of her posts. It has always hit me a certain way, because 9/23/24 was the day I met the man that was to create both joy and heartbreak in my life, but it was also the day that I varnished the paintings I’d worked on the night before, into the wee hours. It was the day I recovered both my creativity and my divine feminine energy - 923 will always be an angel number for me.
I was still very, very new on my spiritual path - exploring my dark side, getting acquainted with my inner children and higher self, and seeing where weed took me. My mind was opening, unfolding and awakening to life, and for the first time in years I’d been wanting to do some art. I bought this stuff in late August (which is cool because my incredibly talented son Finn goes by the name Late August - you can see his gorgeous work at his YouTube channel LateAugust) I didn’t want to use my previous media - graphite or ink - I wanted to try color. I’ve used colored pencils and crayons in the past, but I wanted something more flexible. I really wanted to challenge myself. I’d never been a fan of acrylic paints - hated them, in fact - but they were more versatile and forgiving than watercolor, and didn’t require long drying times like oils. So I bought acrylic paints and brushes and little square 4x4” canvases.
(Image is a set of cheap acrylic paint in small tubes, a white dinner plate serving as a palette, a jar of cheap paintbrushes, and other painting items)
I bought them, and put them on the table, waiting for whenever I was ready. Because it had been years since I’d done any real art, I just kept putting it off. It all sat there for weeks.
Then I realized maybe I should just take some weed and give it a try! Duh. Seems obvious now, but honest to god I wasn’t sure how I was gonna get to my creative self. But I had talked with my dear musician friend and first spiritual guide, Chris Juhlin, about creativity on weed so I decided to give it a go, with intention of painting whatever my high brain came up with.
So I took one of these:
(Image is of package of Gold Crown Live Resin cannabis gummies, specifically for ‘creativity’. Please note, these are the most disgusting tasting gummies I’ve ever had - and I’ve tried quite a few. Great high, terrible texture/taste.)
I sat with the art supplies in front of me, my creative mind as blank as the little canvases. I still had no idea what I wanted to do. All the creative people I know make visual art, except Juhlin. So I was musing on his music, and wondering if his creativity is just the universe manifesting itself, and if art and music are a way for people to express the divine. I decided to start simple: recreate a picture of him that I’d seen – simple silhouette, lovely colors – seemed like a good choice to start with. And away it went.
I really wanted to incorporate music, so I decided to write song lyrics on each canvas and paint over them. So I did that, as I got progressively higher and higher.
My thoughts wandered. The very first time I got a glimpse of the spirit realm, it was through music, while high. Is music the gateway to the universe? How can I possibly show that? How can I show that the music is under and through and woven into the art? It was a challenge to keep the sober side of my mind working on the side to help with the technical stuff, and let the high do the painting.
The first one was as simple as I could make it. The underlying lyrics are ‘I Wish I Was’ by the Avett Brothers, one of the many songs that Juhlin had sent my way over the years, and it always reminded me of him. I don’t know who took that photo, but I’d always liked it. It was very simple and clean, right up my alley (I’ve always been a fan of silhouette against glowing color) so I borrowed it. Like I said it was hard at first to let go of needing it to be perfect, but once I got going it was actually fun. Ending up looking a bit like an aurora borealis which was fitting, since Juhlin hails from Alaska.
My thoughts were along the lines of “all that matters is creativity, the rest is just noise”, so I wrote out the lyrics from Juhlin’s song ‘The Noise’. I love that song; it has a lot of layers to it. (You can check out his music at chrisjuhlin.com - my son Finn did the album cover featured on his web page) At which point I realized this was just gonna be a little Juhlin project, but that was okay. I could think of no more fitting subject matter than my friend who was not only a guide, but a wonderful musician.
I grabbed a still from him singing ‘The Noise’ on an Artichoke Cafe livestream, and just kinda winged it. The high was kicking in, and the background was calling for some stars, so that’s how that happened. I wasn’t fond of the thickness of the paint, so I watered it down a bit for his shirt, and loved how the lyrics showed through it. I started to try to paint in his features but realized that was subtracting from the vibe. The fact that this isn’t photorealistic was a real leap for me - I was a portrait artist for years, so leaving out his face wasn’t something I would ever have considered doing before. I wish I could describe the freedom I was beginning to feel at this point. My high brain was loving the textures and the feel of the brush in my hand, riding the waves of whatever music played on my rotation, feeling happy and grateful to be making art.
This is when the idea “music is the gateway to the universe” really took hold. The spinning images/sensations that I get when I’m high were swirling in my head, and it was quite obvious that the hole in the guitar was the perfect metaphor. THE UNIVERSE IS IN THE GUITAR. LOL. Holy shit I was high.
Found a pic for reference, with increasing difficulty wrote out the lyrics to a song called “New Sky” by Rufus du Sol, and started by painting a swirly galaxy, then painted the guitar around it. First the universe, then the guitar. Get it? Ha.
The designs on the guitar turned themselves into infinity symbols, which was kinda cool. I no longer felt I was in real control of where things were going. In retrospect I probably could have left his hand out and made the hole bigger, but my training in realism nudged itself in one last time.
Annnnd… yeah. I was absolutely in love with my own handwriting at that point, but it took a lot of concentration to write out the lyrics and not just start doodling! I kept telling myself to just write out the lyrics like normal, and I can let the crazy swirls happen in the top layer. It was incredibly difficult because I was SO HIGH.
I have no idea what any of that is. I was just listening to the music, letting it do its thing. Lyrics for this are another Rufus du Sol song called “Another Life”. When it was all said and done I’d basically painted an album cover for my friend; a love letter to someone who got me through some really dark times, offered a hand, and lifted me to higher ground. So much gratitude for that man.
That’s when it began. My inner child, who always wanted to be an artist - a ‘real’ artist - had finally been given a chance to shine. And shine she did.