success (? / . / !)

in

Thanks to a therapy / rubberducking session with Claude the AI (seriously, he works great for that: I appreciate analytical approaches to mental issues, especially when they manage to work in Nick Cave), I've realized that I have no clue of what success looks like to me: I've spent my life living up to my perception of others' expectations and constantly failing. And now that they're all dead (some thankfully, others crushingly) and I'm doing whatever it is that I do, I'm still living up to those perceived expectations. Suppose, then, that my current job is to figure out what success looks like to me. Probably a lot like what I'm doing now but without the soul-sucking striving for the approval of people who don't exist.

spacepoint

in

Been having a hell of a time getting myself into writing mode, hence the return of these daily things (finally settled on midday), "What's the point?" being the operative thought – though I have a feeling that's more the result of an all-encompassing emotional exhaustion sourced to the last 15 years. Perhaps it's that I use/d writing as a way to emotionally (and rationally, sometimes) process things and the only rational and emotional answer is I just can't anymore. But here I am anyhow, because what else am I going to do? Current quandary: how do I make my writing side as appealing as the workshop side of The Shed in a way that makes "What's the point?" moot? Notions simmer.

tactile

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Conversation with a good friend the other week made me realize what's going on with my move towards metalwork: I'm redisovering my love for and need of tactile creation. Suppose this love makes sense, given that my entrance into the arts was playing drums (hit stuff and that makes cool sounds) and that my downfall(s) began when I shifted more into the internal, less tactile arts (music composition, especially, though writing can't be absolved of its complicity in my descent into creative schizophrenia). Filmmaking was far more tactile than writing – though since I've also started drawing and cartooning, I'm bringing more tactile sensation to my storytelling (should it survive). And I can't forget that I've long considered accepting the Executive Director position at the NPO to be the biggest mistake of my career: I missed getting my hands dirty too much. Alas, live and learn. Eventually.

recapturing

in

Windy, cold: hello, Winter. Efforts underway in earnest to either recapture my passion for writing or to let it go with happiness as The Swell Season said and move on. Swapping out the order of bloggy release – Herbie and I will appear in cartoon Informality form midday, at least until I change my mind and revert to the same old same old – is part of it, the opening salvo, mostly to churn something again, to feel my brain wrap around a subject or twenty, to reconcile itself in text – present goal being to make this space one of synthesis, first in text, then in cartoon form; the opposite wasn't working, nor was synthesizing solely in cartoon form. Perhaps this will be the right path for this moment until this moment passes which may be in a year or by midday when I realize that I’ve made a terrible mistake and cartoon Herbie and I take it out on myself.

right (enough) brain

in

As I've indulged my newfound passion for metalwork and my reanimated one for cartooning and drawing, I've realized that a big part of my problem the last couple of years WRT the written word is that left brain seepage has overtaken the right brain requirements of creative work: it's the same thing that killed music for me, both when I left music school 20 years ago and the times I've tried to rekindle the flame since (and the reason I can't, no matter how great it looks, watch WHIPLASH: JK Simmons in the trailer IS my internal left brain voice, in words and in action).

Both welding and cartooning have become proving grounds not only for the import of Suzuki's "beginner's mind" but of the essential nature of letting go of all gaining ideas: the joy I've felt in practicing both these last several weeks (metalwork) and years (cartooning), in doing them for myself and myself alone and not for some nebulous accolade or token of communal belonging, has been beyond anything I've experienced.

And so I'm now trying to bring that Informalities creativity into this space, textually, much like when this site started and bore the original Informalities name: 15 minute text pieces at mid-day, after lunch, written, pubbed, posted, and forgotten, with no time for any of that left-brain fuckery to seep in. So far, so good, on that count.

in

via artnet:

Eno and Adriaanse’s book looks at why people create art, how it helps people, and the role it plays in keeping communities together. It’s a concern that is as pressing now as it ever has been. What Art Does explores “the function of fictional worlds—such as pop songs, detective novels, soap operas, shoe tassels, and the hidden language of haircuts,” the pair explained in a press release. The result, they say, is potentially “a new theory of art.”

the front cover of Brian Eno's book

The book has a complex and unique release strategy. Initially, What Art Does will be available as a limited edition of 777 copies with each one signed and enclosed by a unique slipcase, hand-painted by the authors. This first edition will be released on December 3, priced at $225, and available exclusively on the experimental creative platform Metalabel in North America and through Enoshop outside of it. Following this, a black-and-white PDF will be available for download for 7 days, for just $1. Thereafter, physical and ebook editions will be available from Faber, after January 16, 2025.