before falling asleep yesterday i was dreaming of dragons. and when i woke up the download of eragon had finished with a ping curtesy of transmission. watched half of it blearyeyed over two cups of coffee this morning after four hours of sleep. wonderful weather outdoors, and thanks to my genious money-saving scheme (i’m skimping on the tram fair and walk the hour it takes me to get to uni) i got exposed to the sun for the first time in two days (i shit you not. this is also a result of me saving money, since everyone knows that you cannot walk out the door without someone trying to tax you for needing to take a piss).
my semi-voluntary seclusion from civil society did bring a good thing or two. the forever vaporware that is a new, brilliant, shining-like-a-radiant-star, homepage got a few tentative first drafts in photoshop (after which i despared at all the css i don’t know but need to learn), some doodles have been doodled on a web-service involving video in an original way (i’ll let you know when that project is available up on cambrianhouse.com), i’ve baked bread three times in a short time, and i have with all my blackened little heart avoided thinking about the examination in 14 days on masters degree.
or rather, i haven’t stopped thinking about it for a moment, but i have this worrying feeling that “everything is going to be fine”. i am not certain if i am convinced about this myself, or if the correct image associated with that thought is one where i sit on the ground, rocking back and forth and gently weeping into the crumpled up pages of “Ten steps to a more organized you!”
this is the drawback of trying to focus on a process oriented artistic practice. i’ve been mulling this over, and it’s hard to distinguish purely process-ish driven work from general slackery or lazyness. i was talking this over with anna, and she wholeheartely agreed with the sentiment: if what you are doing is not driven by an actual presentation of an artistic work, you will more likely than not come over as full of hot air and methane gasses rather than the spunk and vigour you’d like to be associated with.
this blog and talking about my ideas are the closest thing to a presentation that i get to something that is of artistic interest to me. whenever i’m told to do any particular work i freeze up. this might make me a poor artist (in both senses of the word), but still. truth to be told though, i have this same block whenever i feel pressured to perform (erectile dysfuntion jokes aside). this pressure is of course of my own making – people in general don’t give a toss if you can perform to your standards or not, they just want to know if you’re interesting to them and their interests. i’m always doing the don kitzott thingy where every position i take has to be defended against every imaginable foe, and where this defense becomes the thing that you are defending.
in the end i’m left standing on a small hill, waving a stick around and shouting “i have a right to defend my right to defend whatever i’d like to defend!” and since offence is best defence i might as well attack my own position since that will show ’em how it’s done, that’ll show ’em good.
basically it breaks down into meta more than it creates anything intelligible. (neither does it easily allow the activity itself to be understood as proper artistic practice)
a while ago i wrote an artist statement: the fun of failing. what the title implies is that everything you do ends up being a failure in the most strict sense that wherever you end up is not where you thought you were going. it’s all learning, it’s all experience, it’s all last-minute judgement calls on what your work is about, what you are about and how you think you fit in; “whatever you do, you fail to do”. i’m sure there’s a zen koan on the subject.
plus, “fun of failing” sounds good – the alliteration slides gently off your tounge and into the bucket labelled “aren’t you clever”.
here’s a link to the essay: The Fun of Failing [1.2 MB pdf]