Getting things done

I used to write like crazy.

I wrote down a thought, any thought, as soon as it came in order to keep it fresh and preserve it in it's raw form. Often the thought would be a question about why something was the way that it was, or why I felt the way I felt at the time I felt it, what were the influences, the variables, was there a pattern somewhere. Making connections.

Then I started thinking, and tended gradually towards being more analytical about the thoughts that came out; if I wrote about a problem I'd come across, I thought about what might be the solution, or why in fact it was a problem and not something else. I worked on redefining my relationship with the good and the bad in my own perspective. I would then begin writing, only to switch over to analytic thought, and begin automatically "fixing" or perhaps not, perhaps just re-angling whatever I had on my mind to write about. This would halt the writing process, to my dismay, and I couldn't conclude that I was exactly dissatisfied, but neither was I particularly satisfied.

On the one hand, I had found a way to better appreciate and understand something in my reality and forgiven it for being a hindrance; on the other hand, I had intended to get some good writing over this; some of my best writing had been exactly in these times of introspection and frustration over some existential, philosophical, or social matter. I would try to double back and recontstruct my path towards an understanding, but felt like it was lying to depict feelings that I had just erased, even a matter of minutes ago. It would be wallowing in my emotions, I felt that was egotistical. Or pretending to go back to before something was sparked, pretending it was still an area of darkness, in order to show the beginning of light.

There would be no point in bullet-point conclusions all the time. Those are not interesting. Nor do they teach. They are dry and aloof.

And since I could not pretend the darkness, nor would I take the light without it, I would stop right there. My journal is full of little severed, sporadic blurbs.

Over the years, this process has gone quicker. I might take up a pen with an intention, and as I pause to think about what it is I wish to think about, I've already sparked the next sequence of causal analysis. It is so clear that no thing is so simple as to be one dimensional, so why even begin that way? I immediately branch into a thousand directions. My pen is immobilized, for it can write but one thing at a time, and there are too many things, too many ideas and interpretations, dolls sitting in other dolls. My pen is practical, and lets it all float away, unhindered.

I think of all I want to say. I want to communicate, but words are not good enough. I can speak faster than writing, but we are less truthful when we talk. The less said the better, depending on the goal. (If the goal is bullshit, then talking may be bliss, and bullshit is fabulous sometimes. I am getting very good at it. Probably most people are.)

I think of ways to communicate, and finally settle on a logical, linear way to make sense to someone in a valuable way, then I am lost in silence for a moment, thoughts stop. When I think again, the valuable communication is now of less importance altogether, and in fact, I need not communicate at all, for there is always something more important than what I have to say, and more than that, who am I to say anything at all? Who are we to evolve, and take, inhabit, learn? We are as beautiful and have as much meaning when we are alive as when we are not.

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In art, bias is welcome. Bias is the bases for the creation of many things. But bias is also the bases for fighting among people, for war and power struggles. Ego creates bias, thinking we have the right to claim that our personal truth is the best, that someone else's interpretation or beliefs or needs are invalid or lesser, or perhaps just not venturing beyond our own opinions in the first place.

Bias is in art because we are venturing to define something but can only do so from our own point of view. Our representation of it in any form is our definition.

I value art, as many people do. And I value the vast quantity of it too that was fueled by many kinds of biases.

And this is what I struggle with, as an artist. I try to discredit my own bias, believing I know nothing. There is always a bigger picture. But at the same time, I wish to tap into the bias, to use it, to say something, anything that is true that comes from me, or to show it, or to build it.



In the end, too much truth is immobilizing, and it may be necessary to become more of an ass in order to get anything done.