Tuesday morning greeted me with a sense of impending doom.. my journey to work found me consumed by two questions..
(1) am I putting the skills I've aquired over the years to good use?
(2) am I gaining any new skills in my current employment?
There was actually a third question but that relied on the answer to 1 and 2...
(3) what am I going to do about it?
In 2020 when I decided to enrol for the Photography BA I promised myself that any job I did from hereon would be arts related; I wasn't going to allow myself to fall back into the trap of taking on roles offering little opportunity to be creative, surely work has more to offer than enabling one to pay bills. But the burden of obligation is heavy, and creative aspirations don't realise themselves overnight, so here I am doing a 9 to 6 on minimum wage, with little opportunity to shine and bills that need paying. Obligation can serve to keep us in our lane, often crushing our dreams, but it's not the only impediment.
In today's Zoom session Jonathan began by asking us the following..
What blocks my imagination?
Automatic writing:
We were given 4 minutes to write anything that comes to mind on paper, without giving the brain time to over-think or edit. We were instructed not to think about what we were writing, but keep the question in mind.
I only managed a paragraph, and although I managed to stick to the script I did want to go back and edit what I had written, if only in fear of the reader judging me. And I can see what Jonathan was aiming at when he suggested that we write our thoughts rather than typing them; the urge to make edits, re-arrange sentences or check spellling is too great in front of a keyboard, and this exercise demands an organic flow. Jonathan suggested that through this exercise the writing could bring thoughts to your attention which may not have surfaced through discussion alone. In my case I had basically written about fear and ego, the fear of being mis-understood or dismissed, and how that relates to my ego.
This got me thinking about any additional imagination blockers that affected me in one way or another, turns out there's quite a few.
Although I consider my mind to be one of my most valuable asets it tends to also be the one thing that stops me from creating. I surrender to the chains of adulthood; work commitments, financial concerns, health issues, social responsibilities, all weighing down on me like rainwater collecting in a bucket. I envy the child who generally has few concerns other than play and eploration. Yet despite the burden of adulthood I do occasionally allow myself to be creative, the spirit of child-George returns and something beautiful happens, and I run with it, because it's my moment to forget reality and the obligations that come with being grown-up.
References;
Artists must confront the climate crisis – we must write as if these are the last days
Ben Okri, The Guardian
Bob Moran Art
Browse a cleaner web!
Remove popups, banners, and ads from any website.
Calling all Aesthetic Activists!
Journal of Ecology
Sean Roy Parker
Fermental_health, Instagram
What Is Automatic Writing?
Susanne Bennett, Writers Write
When Everyone Around You Is Talking About the End, Talk About Black History
New Tork Times
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