I’m sitting here listening to some LoFi relaxing hip-hop nonsense. Because its relaxing and boring as can be. I’ve written and rewritten this in my head about a thousand times, and on paper/the computer several times. I’ve lost county honestly. The assignment of “Attempt Number 3.5” is completely arbitrary.

However, to begin in earnest: I’m rereading Catch-22 because I brought it up in my last post and felt the need to reread it. At the time of this writing I have completed the majority of my task and am currently on chapter 35, titled “Milo the Militant” in my 1974 copy from Dell. Which puts me at the bottom of page 376 out of 463. But that’s all useless metadata. As far as storyline goes, Dunbar just disappeared. No more spoilers.

My last post had mentioned Dunbar and boredom, ostensibly was about Dunbar and boredom. More than anything else I want to revisit his concept and apply some things to it and vice versa. Dunbar claimed boredom extends life by slowing down time, and excitement shortens life by speeding up time. Personal life experience seems to back up this claim in an anecdotal way. Of course. For example when I’m sitting in front of the TV with the family watching TMZ, I live a thousand lifetimes in the thirty minute run of the show. Conversely, when driving on a highway somewhere around here and theres a series of fools going a million miles an hour and passing everyone on all sides, I have never been older because of how close to death I am. I lose time, decades of life in a matter of seconds. I feel exactly as described by Dunbar. I could expand on theses examples endlessly. But I wont bore you with that.

As far as this applies to the creative process, my creative process, and generating work is that all generation of art takes time. Massive, behemoth, incredible amounts of time, life, energy, and effort. Personally, I need to slow everything down to get creativity going. I need time to stop. I need to stop time. It’s that room to breathe and think about nothing else besides the task at hand that I find essential. Dunbar wasted his extended lifetime by doing nothing besides extending his time. My intention is to extend time so I can be creative and generate something worthwhile. I am not immune to wasting time, far from it. However when I am zeroed in on the task at hand and have nothing to distract me, nothing to speed time along, I can take all the time I need to think it through and play out possibilities and then execute the idea. There’s a lot to be said for getting the hand moving, start working, figuring it out as you go along, and adjust as you go. But theres also quite a bit to be said for mental labor.

For the past month or so I have been doing the mental labor part much more than he physical labor or art-making. Also much more of the physical labor side of working a physical labor job. However, in fairness, I have take two entirely too short vacations with the family. The kind of vacation that’s so short you need a day to recover before going back to work. Really need a week-long trip down the shore or something. But I digress. Mental labor. I have been planning, plotting, scheming on some work to be done. Materials are gathered to finish the large drawing / mixed media work I was calling “Lifting the Curtain”. There will be an update on that soonish. I have a painting stalled out and sitting in the basement that I’m about to get back to, with a plan. I haven’t really put any of my plans on paper or in my physical sketchbook or anywhere else for that matter. They exist solely in my imagination. But they’re solidly there. I only need the physical time to execute them.

The more I sit around with nothing else to do the more I get to planning my next move. And the more time I sit around bored is just motivation to get something tangible done. Way back when, 11 years ago, in the summer of 2013 I attended the Mount Gretna School of Art in PA. One of the faculty there talked about having an “art uniform”, something you can put on and be in art-making mode. That stuck with me. It meant something. I had something like that for years when I was in school, both before that experience and after. I had certain clothes for painting and drawing while I was at CCP and MICA, and other clothes for living life in. After graduation from MICA, I lost that. I got jobs and had actual work uniforms and not artwork uniforms. Today, however, I finally have a new art-making uniform. Sure it’s cliche and kind of weird. Some would call it “typical weird art kid getup” but, I went and got myself some white painters overalls. That’s my new art uniform. I can put it on and just make art. I can focus. It’s an outward sign of what’s going on inside. A warning of sorts. To me it says “This is what I’m doing now and let it happen”. I don’t really know what it says to anyone else. But then again, it isn’t for them. It’s for me.

So: here goes nothing. I’m going to suit up and show up and make something or some things. I can get my hands and overalls dirty and not worry about fouling up my regular life clothes. I’ll go make art and look like Super Mario after he gets the Fire Flower. Yes, I’ll put on a red shirt too. I have nothing else to do right now and I’m bored enough to do anything. I’ve thought it all through and it’s time to get to work.

Wish me luck.