Saturday 15 September 2007

Cancelled flights and Decisions

01/09/07
I'm supposed to be on a flight up to Edinburgh for my parents Ruby anniversary. Unfortunately my flight has been delayed by about an hour and a half until 10:25am. I suppose it's good in some ways, since it means I didn't take the view that I could stay up later, but to be honest I could have really used the lie-in.

Between this working in London during the week and a stag do next weekend it's really limiting my ability to find somewhere to live in London, which is annoying because it limits what I can start doing there. After all I don't really want to start something on one side of the city if I end up living on the other.

I've decided upon three basic things that I want to do:
1) Learn to drive, because it's really starting to get ridiculous now.
2) Start either Tai Chi or Capoeira, because I've always wanted to do them and if I don't start sooner then I won't start later.
3) Learn to play guitar. Dad used to play amazingly well and I'd kind of like to be able to do that.

You'll also note that between the three of them they manage to cover creative, physical andn sprirtual areas. I think I might need to throw in something mental/emotional, but then work covers mental and this journal covers emotional so I guess I've got my bases covered.

I guess learning to drive again should also be considered to be emotional considering my history, but it doesn't feel like it somehow. That in turn feels like a wound that doesn't hurt so I'm very tempted to poke it a bit, just to see what happens.

I think I'll resist though.

*****

I'm still stuck on creativity. I know that the ultimate end here is that I start doing something more creative, but I'm confused as to why I want to and, probably more importantly, why I stopped.

There's a simple joy to creating, a relaxing and purposeful movement of mind and body. Like most things in this world it takes some time to fall into that groove, but once you're there you can shut the doors on the world, lock it all off and just exist. It gives space andn time to truly think about things, to lose yourself in your mind and thus to reath new and sometimes startling conclusions.

Yet as much as it's internal it's also very much external. The drive and inspiration comes from somewhere, something or someone else. Boredom, a random comment, a sight that moves you, all of these things and many more can combine to create an idea that requires more thought and some expression in the wider world.

Concepts of eternity, viewpoints on life, ludicrous thoughts and deep emotions can all combine to create this impetus, this drive, and although it can be focused and honed I'm not convinced it can be controlled.

However, if art is an imitation of life then surely it can be... prompted is the wrong word, but it's the best I can manage right now. The chances of inspiration can be increased.

Creativity itself inspires this. The act of creating, of exploring an idea, leads to new ideas which in turn lead to more creativity. It can be a twist on an old piece or a wholly new one, neither better nor worse, only different. But sometimes better. Or worse.

Is this what happened? Did I stop creating because I stopped creating? Did I lose the impetus to think in the right manner somehow until I could no longer mentally put the ideas in place? Could no longer translate a thought into expression?

Maybe it's more subtle than that. I think I've always taken a medium to it's logical conclusion (to me at least) before moving onto the next. It's not at all that I become a master of it (or even good) simply that I achieve all I can achieve through it. I learn a lesson and move on.

Yet now I find I have no continual medium. Nothing I do to move me forward. Maybe my medium changed. At university I think it all became about groups of people. My art was how they thought and acted. How they worked.

Put like that it seems coldly calculated, hugely maniputlative. I hasten to add it wasn't. It was, well managerial I guess. The action of getting a group of people to effectively achieve the goals that they set before them. This occured both in Nightline and as SU Training Officer, and I don't think it's going too far to say it took over my life.

Once I left university those groups of people disappeared. That chance and ability to effect a bigger audience disappeared and that avenue of creativity, which had become my only avenue and ingrained into who I was dried up.

In direct response to the amount of effort it had taken I decided to be boring for a while. To kick back and chill out. Four years later and I'm still doing that. I'm still not being in charge, well apart from the flat I guess.

Hopefully learning to play guitar will help me get back in that mode of thought. But the more I think about it, the more I write, the more I realise that even that is transitory in its own way. Writing a song can be moving, but it has no physical form. Nothing you can touch and feel and move about. It is simply playing to the extrovert and gives me a limited ability to go back to it and see it anew.

Basically I need to start painting again.

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