OK I'm going to write, I must write, I should write, I need to write.
Hot diggedy dang I'm FINALLY PROCRASTINATING!
I've got a conference presentation to prepare, and I've got to do it this weekend, and I spent an incredible amount of time sleeping today, and then I had to watch 3 episodes of the Sopranos, and now I'm here in my fluffy writing dreaming staring cave and it's the middle of the night, it's the witching hour, and I should be writing something tomish and bookish and decent but here I am and I'm writing on my blog.
And I haven't written in my diary for months and months and months, and haven't posted here for over a month, and I thought getting some email friendly phone would fix this, but it hasn't and I dunno why it is that I don't write, don't draw, don't create much anymore.
and the conference i'm meant to be writing for is researching practice, and Lucazoid is writing about blogging as a practice that is researched in the process of practice, and I'm meant to be presenting something about my thesis (my what?) that big thing I've got to tidy up and fix and bound and do something with, and I can't even bear to look at the book case where it is, and I'm not doing any life drawing at the moment anyway and haven't done for ages, and probably won't for ages so how the hell can I give and engaging presentation about practice based research when I've done a whole heap of research on something that I'm no longer practicing?
Fuck
and I'm wondering what kind of practice do I actually have at the moment, when I feel that I'm really quite content just to get up and go out and do stuff each day, and I enjoy my work and enjoy the people at work, and love having stimulation and a challenge that is structured and renumerated and rewarded rather than the long slow drudge of solo bloody thesis writing, and god it was so hard, so bloody damnably difficult.
and the other thing about research, and doing this as a career, is that the practice of writing, of thinking, the hard slow grind of paper production is STILL DONE out of hours in the spare time, in the secret hours after dark, working from home, or working on other stuff, and every academic will tell you this, and we all look forward to xmas break SO WE CAN DO OUR WORK - because our work only happens when the university is shut down, and that is the craziest contradiction in the world, I don't even know where to start 'unpacking' it, but I wondered at what point did I make the shift from artist to academic and start seriously dreaming of how I cold fill my hours with words, more words, and deep slow thought, and papers and books and stuff?
Meanwhile I can barely bear to think of reading a novel, let along a book of theory, and GOD - why didn't anyone tell me I would be this tired?
Not that I'm a total braindead voidoid.
I take stuff in each week, each day. so much stuff.
Western Melbourne is Crazy in lots of wonderful ways.
hell. it deserves its own post
Mar 4: Reading for Migrant Spring
1 month ago
3 comments:
i love how reaching the point of procrastination was a sign of progress in itself. fantastic.
anyway, as these things turn out, your presentation was very inspiring and compelling, mayhem. loved it. especially the cheesey powerpoint diagrams - a form of conference site-specificity?
God yes on the writing swallowing art thing... spoke with some recently who in a voice of fortelling when I said to him that I was both writing and making art "The Writing Will Win"
So there you have that is our future unless we manage to llucoazoid and make the writing the art.
Aww thanks!
Yeah there's a certain integrity with finding the productive point of procrastination. Part of me think that I should have submitted all the writing and performance and random stuff I did during the tome, along with the tome.... but that would be unmarkable.
But - I'm now into thinking of conferences as site-specific settings for a particular performance of ideas. I think Keith Armstrong and Alphonse Lingis have both led me to this point - even though they didn't use powerpoint.....
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