I write a lot about my thoughts. Academically, I write about my thoughts on language and literacy, on education, and on the relationship between the written word and our lives. Professionally, I write about bands and comics, and I compose my thoughts on contemporary creators and the value of their works, or lack there of.
I've been giving some consideration to making a place for personal writing, a place where I might write about my feelings and passions, as opposed to more formal thoughts. Clearly, I'm not talking about the word vomit of adolescent diarists, or the uninformed rants of the overzealous self-appointed quasi-journalists who proudly categorize themselves as “bloggers”. I aim to talk about important feelings, like my feelings concerning Joe Queseda and Dan Dido, and how they are sacrificing the legacy of two of the 20th century's most significant and vibrant cultural institutions on the altar of corporate interest, or my feeling that a lack of casual social violence in America, and the greater phenomena of a lack of human intimacy, has undermined every level of our culture, from the simplest conversation to the loftiest work of ideological assessment. I aim to talk about simple passions, the brief moments of spiritual ignition I experience when I encounter a relevant and innovative work in any medium, be it television or music, comics, film, or that wayward and nearly forgotten form we call the novel.
Likely, I’ll also talk some about hockey, food, and the value of indulgence in perception altering substances. In my experiences with the myriad forms of human expression, the significance and value of a work rests as much upon the sum of the spectator’s idioms and lifestyle as it does upon the conjurer’s; for me, these interests simply come with the territory.
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4 comments:
Let's talk social violence, especially if you mean to spice things up with a hint of Dada-ism. Lately all I'm doing is sewing soft objects and pretending to scrape by while I work toward the next big something else.
Moving from room to room, and etc.
xo
Moving from room to room is a fair approximation of my work patterns this week. I haven't been working less, more if anything, but my working has been less rigidly scheduled. I read for a half an hour, practice bass scale for fifteen minutes, then pause to smoke a cigarette and think before doing a load of dishes. A sort of constant fluxuation of efforts towards a series of ends as opposed to a tedious sequence of whole labors processed in nearly unbearable single sessions. If I could work this way all the time, I suspect I would be a happier and more agreeable person, and one far less reliant on daily substance use towards some vague end of completion.
For me, yes, my time is split among the infinite paths converging upon "and why did I come in here, now?" ... spend a moment, return to my previous room, remember, get sidetracked. But meanwhile picking up pieces that fit together; putting something somewhere it belongs; wiping the dust from a record and placing back with the others. This would be a weekend, for instance, and I imagine the process progressing toward more and more creation than consumption, which is really all I can ask of myself.
Its like I'm sure you have your things you always mean to do, but the way to do them is to chip away at each project. The only magic comes in the consistency of your practice.
I agree too that I am also happiest nearly running from thing to thing and doing bits here, bytes there, like points earned.
As you hinted, I can't behave this way at work, and its likely why I am so unproductive. Things must be accomplished by order of priority, and that makes me a bit detached.
Which I like.
Because I am, I should only be, attached to my life at home, really. All things temporal for the here and now. And this too will change.
It does breed a bit of paranoia, though, what with having people to report to.
xo
I certainly haven't forgotten the novel. I've been consuming them like they're antidotes.
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