You know – those seemingly mundane, random thoughts that tend to happen in a flash, moving through our minds like water disappearing down into a crack: here, and then suddenly gone as the next bit roils on through. We go about our days amongst ever-flowing ideas, awarenesses, sights, sounds, scents and impressions in a continual, internal reactionary buzz, and then with another tick of the clock or the turning of a corner or opening of a door we’re amidst whatever’s next. It can take a lot of effort to gain and maintain personal focus during art creation, as well as to garner the attention of the masses when one is then promoting and selling.
It’s important for me to do some information-gathering about my actual daily experiences. So I asked myself:” What are some Things I Know?”
I know it’s a mind-blowing experience when I eat a really good apple after a period of not eating apples. This never happens with bananas: I loathe them no matter how long it’s been. (Yet I like fried plantains. Go figure.) Converse-nutritionally, I have the same happy experience with Jelly-Bellys: savoring their 49 flavors one jelly bean at a time while watching sci-fi indoors on a sunny afternoon is a highly underrated experience.
A non-food example – though still in the kitchen – is that I’m always glad in the morning if I did all the dishes the night before. You know the opposite feeling when you walk into the kitchen early, all bleary-eyed, thinking “I need to feed the cat,” and “I need coffee,” and then you see the sink and think “WHY DIDN’T I DO THE DISHES LAST NIGHT? AAAUUUUGGGHHH!!!”
OK, so that is very specifically autobiographical. But I’m trying to emphasize how big a little thing can be. And there is something very Zen about doing the dishes. And it’s a concept worth embracing, especially when one has only one choice.
I also know that my cat is pretty gosh-darn cute, even when he’s being a dork. Part of his obnoxiousness, mind you, is that when I pull out the camera, he stops doing whatever he was doing that was SOcute it was going to revolutionize how the world views cats on the internet. But he makes me laugh, anyway. Something about the way he pads across the floor toward me, with this look that says: “It is my mission to destroy you.”
What is swirling around in our heads is a reflection of, well, everything we are, see and do in this great society. To me, realizing the impact of any little juncture – like how a stream of sunlight comes into my living room window at just this certain angle perpendicular to the striped pattern in the carpet, how it feels like light and fiber are having a conversation — reminds me how easily and inadvertently I can miss or dismiss observations during the rush of life.
It’s paradoxical that we sometimes need to slow way down in order to gain information we need in order to keep up. These life-captures, these snapshots of the little things, how they feel when I’m paying attention, they’re crucial because they inform my art. And it’s circular. My drawings remind me to keep seeking-out and noticing these events. At this time, a squirrel and bird sound like they’re having a discussion in the front yard. The way I stacked my Dad’s books has a pattern I didn’t notice until I sat in this chair over on this side of the room. The air this morning seems to have a shimmering in it much like that old TV snow-pattern. These observances are in endless supply if we’re paying attention. And somewhere in all this noticing, I need to regularly enter the studio so I can put these bits and flashes onto paper, and capture the elements of a life I’m pretty grateful for. After I finish the dishes.