given the time you need

a good adventure - mrl 2010

I spend a lot of time on the internet looking at the work of other artists.  I can't say whether this helps or hinders my own work, but I do find it fascinating and engaging and I love to see the different perspectives people are presenting.  Today I found myself engrossed by a project by JP King called Free Paper, which asked "participants to examine the way in which we mediate our lives – either through money, objects, people and work – and most often all four of these themes." 

I'm often interested in how people choose to spend their time in the world, be it creating, investigating, documenting, researching, teaching, managing, selling, socializing, worrying, transporting, or, say, putting bread on their cat's face(really?  I mean really? Yes, really).

In fact, I find I'm thinking about time quite a bit these days.  I recently re-read Borderliners by Peter Høeg - a truly wonderful book about education, time, and awareness told from the perspective of a young boy.  Also, I'm in the midst of teaching a felting course to senior citizens and they are in turn teaching me a significant amount about people, time, and the power of a good attitude.  Some days I can muster a really great attitude and am met, in return, with exactly the time I need to accomplish everything.  Other days it's harder, and time behaves either like a weight you drag around by your ankles or like a wild animal you can never quite catch. 

Right now I have a deadline, a big one, staring me down.  In such instances time becomes a creature you must somehow win over, somehow gain as an ally.  How am I accomplishing this daunting task?  By procrastinating of course.  Writing artful letters to strangers via sendsomething, trying out a new wine, playing music, watching movie trailers, writing this blog...I can't explain it, but I know that through some alchemical reaction, these things actually will lead to eventual inspiration, and to me having productive days in the studio later this week.  That in order to have the time I need, I must not look directly at it.  Time, like so many other precious things, is easily spooked, prone to galloping away.