[untitled] 160412

Foreword: this is a typed transcription of a hand-written thing. But I rather like it that way; writing by hand is a different process, as the neuroscientists have noted. It's also odd to be re-colonizing an old online space, for me

So ever since Grandpa died I've been a little bit (okay, a lot, but sporadically, so it averages down to a little) like what the FUCK am I doing with my life?

I'm working a burnout job that brings me too little satisfaction and too much stupid and avoidable stress. With different circumstances it would keep me busy and perhaps content-ish, but fail to satisfy my creative desires… you see, I'm a creative. Artist? Designer? These labels are laden. I love experience and richness of observation and subtlety.

Shadows on a wall.

And several online writers have offered a 'just do it' suggestion - blog your way to understanding yourself. So I think I want to do that (the confluence seems like a bit of an existential neon sign); freeform write in the evening about the things I think of during the day.

I was thinking I'd like to install Of a ship in peoples' homes. It changes when lived with. But it becomes about the performance specification (to use a term from architectural practice). Not an instruction like Sol Lewitt exactly, but the special thing is the artist's work of considering its installation, maybe moreso than installing it. The idea is precious and the materials ordinary. (Much like Lewitt, actually. Ah.)
And I imagine making one for Charlie's new house.
My instruction piece A place upon which light may fall relates poetically to installing this piece.
[So, ah, if you have a desire to share your home with a dark expanse of wall, keep reading, and if you still do, please contact me. I love to imagine this piece being embodied in many ways, and in many lives. Same sentiment for many of my pieces, actually, which is part of why I enjoy working with instruction so very much.]

I also thought of reframing a bathroom ceiling to make it very tall; into an attic, reframing joists and rafters as necessary, so you walk into a space and feel as though you're in the bottom of a well, [except there's a bathroom at the bottom of the well, and some light], and that was really interesting, [the thought of] doing that in a residential space. [So the ceiling is just under the rafters, way up. The room would be painted a similar dark color to of a ship. And it wouldn't exactly be like a well because there wouldn't be an opening into the sky.]  It has to be understood as art, then, and carefully, because it's just so darn odd. And one grows accustomed and forgets wonder and then maybe remembers or lives it vicariously, by surprising visitors. [And these ideas about how we live with things and forget and remember is important to me too.]

Of a ship started out being about the scale of a barge but it became about vastness and the water and observation, and the slow time of a larger timescale, and indirectly about how difficult it is to access that. And maybe the sublime of Rothko and of Klein.

I'm wary of how this blogging exercise could easily focus on the unmet aspects of my life and overlook some that are met… like my enjoyment of proposal-writing is an enjoyment of finite detailed concrete tasks. I suppose doing the laundry does just as well… or (in the future when I am only doing residential design consulting and art) doing bills and accounting. The satisfaction of these little necessary things; of things orderly and done well. One needs an anchor, a reference point, after all. Even if it's just a tidy kitchen.