More Collaboration and Listening to Records

Saturday I purchased a record player.  I love it.  It allows me to take time to think about the music that I am going to put on.  It does not require that I be attached to this sometimes loathsome machine.  It allows me to pause, watch a record spinning, listen to the music for what it is rather than as background and allows me the time to sit in my clean room.  I am currently blogging from my clean room.  There are no studio objects around me, just a lamp a futon, and a cat.  I am effectively alone and I think that might be okay.  I have a hard time being alone.  When I am sitting in this room and listening to my record player it feels easier.  Everything feels easier.  Staring at Facebook and Twitter trying to wrestle with my personal demons while watching the fruits of other peoples efforts seems a bit counterproductive, but when I am quiet, when I do not need to put on my anxiety induced act in public, when I am not trying recreate that feeling for an online platform that responds to positive statements, when I just allow myself to find my solace in 33 rpms, I am okay.

Why is it these simple things that help, and I do assure you that all of this ties into the art that I am posting this evening.  I saw a meme earlier today which claimed that being a creative was like having an internet browser with 2,847 tabs open.  This was of course an exaggeration for people's amusement, but as I read it I couldn't help but think that that is not always the case.  My "creativity" is a mercurial stepchild of Aphrodite and Judas Iscariot.  Sometimes it is beautiful and I feel that I can trust it, but then I turn my back and it is off dwelling on some emotional garbage which doesn't stimulate anything but more emotional garbage.  But really this is too harsh, what really is going on is that sometimes I can see everything clearly in my head.  I know what I want to do next.  I know what will make a successful piece.  I know who I am.  Other times, I feel more uncertain, wishy washy, and notably uncreative.  But I am finding that the easiest way for me to attack those feelings is found within the warm crackle of my records.  They command my attention.  I love listening to music perhaps more than I love making art.

And so when I started working on my series of machines making up the machine of my creativity, as I said before, I had start using references to music.  Music is what really drives me.  It provides my beat, presents my excitement in a different form, and allows the emotive outlet that I need without encumbering my artwork with those very heavy feelings.  Recently I had a coffee with a local artist who has been very active in the mail art, fluxus and small run book disciplines for many years.  He and I spoke quickly about doing a small limited run book.  Today I finished the first two pages.  They are pieces of the larger machine that provides the "key to my creativity."

I am very pleased with these segments of the machine.  They are a bit nonsensical, as I feel my own thoughts often are. 

Earlier today I finally got this month's Thursday Night Throw Down poster drawing done as well.  The idea came from old seed packaging and something that my friend Brittany said to me.  It was especially fun for me to try to do the Latin species bit of the Throwdown header.

I don't have much else to say tonight.  I'm going to sit and enjoy the rest of this An Horse record.  It is really good.  If you don't know them you should check them out.

Peace
-Mike