I wrote this

I wrote this on Tuesday night after my first full day in the studio.  It got better.

I’m not sure if it is pleasurable being in my studio. Sometimes sure; when I’m totally purposeful or when I get something unexpected from a combination or a material.  Then I’m on a high and get giddy, skipping around and talking to myself. 

But even then, I don’t know if it’s entirely pleasurable.  Most of the time, I’m not even sure what it is I think about.  It’s as if I’m listening to mice scurrying around in my brain, their little claws scratching over tiles, eating or doing what they do amongst the dust and debris of a whole world of neurons and electrons that I can’t see.  And I’m panning in that.

And then there’s a point where I don’t even think about that, hear that.  When twenty minutes will go by when I haven’t heard each song from beginning to end.  It doesn’t necessarily mean that what I’m doing is great or good or necessarily bad either.

Despite my verbosity on this blog, my relationship with my work is mainly non-verbal.  I’ll spend five or nine hours on my own.  And when I do think, I think about composition and balance and form as much as any words like absence or the familiar.

If I do have a chat with another studio inmate, it’s more likely to be about money, the lack of, or other projects.  It might relate to what we’re doing, but always feels quite removed. 

I guess this is why it feels strange being back in the community, talking and eating like a normal human being.  It’s as if my brain is still somewhere else, or is sleeping or is wide awake – the third eye still searching for something I didn’t catch.

I don’t intend to make a statement about a link between art making and forms of madness.  Enough has been written of that already to annoying effects; where everything about an artist’s work is routinely harassed in the shadow of an illness.

And I’m not suffering from a mental illness.  I’m just wondering about this stuff after a day in my studio, knowing the week is all mine and spread ahead of me.  And which I’m still considering as bliss if not entirely pleasurable.