Thursday, July 13, 2006
Working and Dreaming
As they say: put your secret down a well. So this blog is no longer what it used to be - not that that changes much in , I still have no idea who comes to read, who does not.
Strange, this compulsion to reveal and conceal, as if telling is a kind of redemption.
I noticed that as the posts went on, I used 'I' less and less, or I got to play with constructing different versions - Arty Betta, Politically Informed Betta, Sensitive Vulnerable Fragile Betta, Secretly Smart and Sexy Librarian Betta, etc. (Mmm, yes, I like the last version too - throw in some silk shirts and lacy panties, why doncha)
Today I feel very tired. In terms of being artist, it is the same long cry that probably haunts every part-time waitress in the quiet night... I wish all I could do is work at what I do best.
In order to keep income coming in, work has piled up, work that seems so far from what I want to do. Like climbing uphill, or using languages you can never get your head around. As I chip away as this little mountain of work, thoughts and ideas spring up for future art - a concrete reflexology pad for migrant workers, projected text messages of a couple trying to break up with each other on different sides of the world...
Art is like running downhill (even when you have to run uphill!) - everything seems to increase exponentially: expertise, quality, depth, complexity, elegance - with each effort. The more I make work the more I understand the nature of work, labour, effort.
And this other work, the uphill work, I also see through that lens. The different ways in which people work, or are forced (I used this terms loosely) to work - to create effects or to create actions on the world and in people. I do this so that I can make art. To find a way to get from hand to mouth is part of making art and is not divorced from it. So the hill is one and the same... I try to remember this.
Work is what gives life purpose. War takes away work, takes away living. We work because of a dream. A footballer works for a dream.
I wonder... is it about how hard we work, or how hard we dream?
Strange, this compulsion to reveal and conceal, as if telling is a kind of redemption.
I noticed that as the posts went on, I used 'I' less and less, or I got to play with constructing different versions - Arty Betta, Politically Informed Betta, Sensitive Vulnerable Fragile Betta, Secretly Smart and Sexy Librarian Betta, etc. (Mmm, yes, I like the last version too - throw in some silk shirts and lacy panties, why doncha)
Today I feel very tired. In terms of being artist, it is the same long cry that probably haunts every part-time waitress in the quiet night... I wish all I could do is work at what I do best.
In order to keep income coming in, work has piled up, work that seems so far from what I want to do. Like climbing uphill, or using languages you can never get your head around. As I chip away as this little mountain of work, thoughts and ideas spring up for future art - a concrete reflexology pad for migrant workers, projected text messages of a couple trying to break up with each other on different sides of the world...
Art is like running downhill (even when you have to run uphill!) - everything seems to increase exponentially: expertise, quality, depth, complexity, elegance - with each effort. The more I make work the more I understand the nature of work, labour, effort.
And this other work, the uphill work, I also see through that lens. The different ways in which people work, or are forced (I used this terms loosely) to work - to create effects or to create actions on the world and in people. I do this so that I can make art. To find a way to get from hand to mouth is part of making art and is not divorced from it. So the hill is one and the same... I try to remember this.
Work is what gives life purpose. War takes away work, takes away living. We work because of a dream. A footballer works for a dream.
I wonder... is it about how hard we work, or how hard we dream?
Labels: sweet misery
¶ 8:44 PM
