dearth

[helenic]

Is the fact that at the moment I can't think about anything other than painting, and how to market my paintings, just another bit of procrastination - an indication that I'll do anything other than revise? Or am I right in suspecting that I shouldn't be aiming to be an academic, I should be aiming to be an artist? I've been trying to read about Pindar's Odes and I have to keep stopping every ten minutes to make a note of a new composition idea, or online portfolio layout, or the design of the flyers I'm planning to leave around Cambridge advertising my work. Is this recent flush of artistic inspiration and drive, which has been steadily building over the last twelve months, the culmination of somewhere I've always been moving towards - an emotional signpost, the fruition of everything so far? Or is it just that faced with revision, anything else seems attractive?

I remember saying all through my adolesence that I would never be an artist because although I acknowledged I had a fair amount of technical skill, I had no original ideas. All I did was copying - I was good at it, but it wasn't new. My sketchbooks weren't explorations, they weren't dynamic, full of scribbles and diary entries and observations, all crowded pages of ink and collage. They were neat examples of illustration. Most of the time what I was illustrating were the stories in my head, but still, I thought that made me a writer of stories, not an artist. This is why I dropped Art at AS Level in order to concentrate on my Greek. This is why it never even crossed my mind to apply to art college, although I was told that I'd have been offered scholarships like a shot. (The girl in the year above me that I had a crush on got a scholarship to Glasgow, and my teachers told me, privately, while I stared at my shoes and felt guilty for wanting to go to Cambridge, that I was better than her.)

That's not true any more, the thing about not having ideas. Of course I still have a very precise and deliberate style; none of that dynamic, creative mess that foundation courses love so much. I'm working on that, as I think a bit of scribbliness and scratchiness and expressionism would do me good. I'm planning to start a series of quick oil sketches from life, for example, assuming I can find sitters. One of the paintings I've had in my head since last summer is so surreal as to be almost abstract and it'll be an exciting deviation from my habitual style. Lots of bold colour and paint sculpting, mixing paint with glue to create big palette-knifed wads of texture, that sort of thing. But more usually, I know exactly what I want to produce, I always have. The image appears fully formed, and all I need to do to work out a detail of it is "zoom in" on the composition in my mind's eye. Preliminary sketches and studies have always seemed redundant. I played along at school and it did my graphite technique a lot of good, but it was never compositionally necessary. I always ended up with exactly the same image I'd started with in my mind - but the teachers wanted at lease a pretense of idea development.

At the moment, I want to be an artist. I don't know if I'm at the my-degree-seeming-pointless stage of academia, or the anything-else-god-PLEASE stage of finals, or whether it's just taken me this long and standing on the proverbial academic cliff-edge for me to realise something. We'll see after finals, I suppose. It's also possible that this is a subconscious defense against the very real fear that I won't get a first, and therefore funding, and therefore the chance to do post-grad, my lifelong ambition. If I convince myself my actual vocation is to something else, the disappointment at having my academic dreams crushed (and my expectations of myself disappointed) will be easier to bear.

At the moment, I feel like as soon as my last exam is over I'll gleefully throw myself into the projects my head is currently filled with. It would be ironic if I worked twice as hard at something else after finals (surely the energy should have gone into the degree) but also, I suppose, a real indication that this is what I should be doing. But the ideas are the biggest hint so far. I'm seeing one or two new paintings every day - all new and fresh and powerful, and it's as much as I can do to memorise the composition and negative space and colour palette, make a mnemonic note or brief sketch of it. I don't know when I'm going to find time to paint them all but that's not the point: the thing is I've never had this many ideas before, ever, and it's startling and unsettling and uncoils energy in me I barely knew was there. Is this what it's like to be found by a Muse? If so, my dear, then you have bloody awful timing.

Comments

[ifimust.livejournal.com]

Will it help or hinder if I say everyone I know bar husband has been through this? :} (It may be that he's the only scientist I know well enough to know about, as well - his final year was practical).

The problem really, I think, is that by this point you have completed the essence of the degree - you've LEARNED, made connections, etc. What remains is PROVING it - which is not nearly so interesting.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I know, I'm aware of the situational factors. What puzzles me is that the ideas I'm having are real, and I've never had them before, and they deserve to be brought into existence. I'm not sure my brain could really just do that out of I-don't-wanna, just to be contrary. They're real ideas. I mean hell, if being in a place I don't want to be gives me artistic inspiration, why didn't I have it all through school? Or working in MacDonalds or offices or factories every summer?

I know the circumstances are a huge contributor and are giving me the impetus to think about it rather than my courses. But I'm not as convinced that the circumstances can give me the inspiration - not on this scale.

[maga-dogg.livejournal.com]

Necessary != sufficient. Ideas germinate and simmer under the surface, but having other things you really need to do makes 'em violently flower and reproduce like crazy. Having the time to do them makes them shrivel up and hide while you hit 'refresh' on LJ for the billionth time.

I don't really want to be doing anything but write prose and draw right now. And read non-revision books in enormous heaps. And cook properly. Small factory of tangential ideas.

[ifimust.livejournal.com]

Nodding to all of that - but I've never been able to write when I have the TIME to do so... :}

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

I think finals had a fairly similar effect on me in terms of writing. It *is* a kind of procrastination, but I don't think that means you're not destined to be an artist. My inclination would be to say that you are, since you're by far the best artist I know, better (or perhaps just more to my taste? I don't know) than many professionals whose work I've seen, but (as far as I can tell) you're not an exceptional classicist. Though perhaps the latter is more a matter of hard work than talent, and if you put the work in you could be exceptional? However, I don't really know, and I'm concerned about what you said about hating painting. I wouldn't ever advise someone to make a career out of something they hate, no matter how talented they were at it.

Talk to me about a commission when finals are over (assuming you'll still be taking commissions now you have all these fabulous ideas).

[emperor]

I can't really comment usefully on the academia/arts thing. But I will sit for you if you'd like, in *almost* any manner you'd like :)

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

I think you're a fantastic artist. Whether being an artist or an academic is your ultimate calling I have no idea. Also I suspect you're not in a position to tell either just right now. At the moment, everything classics-related will be associated in your mind with impending exam-doom and procrastination-guilt, while the idea that actually you're meant to be an artist and not an academic will seem like a heaven-sent escape route. Do the very best you can in your exams, starting from where you are now, and you will be in a much better position to judge.

But I certainly hope your ideas come to fruition post-exams and that I get to see some of them. :)

[libellum.livejournal.com]

this is very pleasing to hear - thankyou!

I don't think I'm an exceptional Classicist either. I have an aptitude for it which means I can produce first-class undergraduate work in very short time periods, but I'm not self-disciplined enough to be brilliant (I don't work hard enough) and I don't have ideas about Classics. I think I could contribute to scholarship if given the chance, and I'd like to be given the chance because I get great delight out of reading Greek literature, and I do think I'm in an unusual position re. the magic question and I should take advantage of it. But I don't think I have a "vocation" to do so. I don't think I believe in vocation in the Christian sense - I believe in a path, which one makes oneself by making choices and taking responsibility for them. Happiness and wisdom come from making choices based on factors like wanting to be in accordance with the divine, which I also try to do. I feel closer to God when I'm painting than when I'm writing essays. Reading Homer makes me feel very close to God, but that's because I think Homer had an extraordinary vision, rather than because I have extraordinary vision when I read Homer. If that makes any sense.

The argument for going into academia are primarily utilitarian. It will make me happy. It will make other people happy because I can teach them and provide a useful service to the community. It is practical, as it has a regular income. The thing is I'm not seriously considering going into academia, at least not permanently. And doing a PhD, if I'm not intending to stay in academia, seems pretty self-indulgent in the long-run, since it won't help me in whatever job I go to. And self-indulgence is the primary argument against trying to be an artist - that, and the huge financial risk of it.

The way I hate painting is the same way I felt when I was writing my thesis. And the way I feel when I've finished my painting is the same as I felt when I finished it - except that I have higher standards for painting. Usually the pleasure of having done something wonderful is very delayed. I still get an enormous flush of euphoria when I see my painting of Chris, for example, and I still get a huge whump of guilt whenever I think of my painting of Elly and Nick, because I wasn't happy with it and I did neither myself nor them justice and it was months late and as my first paid commission it was a disaster.

Part of the hating-painting is that I'm terrible at it, and I care about it so that hurts. Part of it is that it takes so long that it's boring, and that'll improve as I get better, and also as my self-discipline improves. Part of it is a comment Chris made in January that I've played at painting my whole life and now I have to work at it. Work isn't fun. I have a miniscule attention span and I'm a chronic procrastinator. Having done work is fun, but work isn't. That'll be true whatever I'm working at. I always used to say that I didn't want to do art professionally because I wanted to stop that happening, wanted to keep it low-pressure and fun. But I don't have the choice any more, and now that's happened, I'd rather work at art than at anything else.

But part of the hating it is just a fierceness, a nervous energy. That's never going to change and I don't want it to.

I'm very willing to talk to you about commissions :) I won't be able to start until mid-August, though, as I have two lined up already (one for my parents, one for another friend) and there's Paris and Sweden and things inbetween that.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Yes - everything you say here makes sense.

Can I definitely put myself in the commission queue after your parents and your other friend then?

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I can see the germinating/simmering idea. But a lot of the time the ideas I'm getting are the result of direct stimulus from my environment, and can't have existed before the visual moment that triggered the vision. Is it possible for the capacity to have ideas to simmer, and spring violently to life only when it's most inconvenient?

I'm well aware of the likelihood of all this impetus fading once finals are over. But the thing is - I'll still have the ideas. Even if the imagination goes, all I need is some time and self-discipline and I can still make something of the ones I already have.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

have any of us?

I think what I may need to do to trigger the reflex over the summer is get a job. Then I'll desperately want to paint and I'll be forced to do so in my spare time. Will cut down on my social life, but then, I'll be living with people, so the isolation/depression won't be as much of a problem as it was last summer. Or maybe I could get a three/four-day a week job. I'd be justified in taking time off paid work to do commissions, since they're also work, but I'd be forced to do my own projects in my own time. It's as good a test of my motivation as any.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

thankyou! I'll get in touch over the summer sometime :) All my projects are very long term: to produce all the ideas I have sitting in my notes files would take me several years. I'm not in a hurry here.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Sam, you are wise and make much sense.

Does it have to be an either/or decision? Would it be possible to do a phd and paint in my spare time? Or are neither art nor academia things that permit of "spare time"? There's no way I could commit to not painting for three years, so if it is either/or in the short term there's the decision made there, then. But there's nothing to stop me painting for a few years and then reconsidering PhD applications. And if I wait a few years I won't need the mphil, either, although it would still be fun and good experience and discipline and things..

[libellum.livejournal.com]

You are duly placed :)

[translucent.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many are so visual in their ideas -- it's something that's bothered me for ages, originally in the context of composition. (I was terribly jealous of those who could hear potential music in their head; it only happened rarely to me.) It's the shifting divide between inspiration, which comes in different-sized chunks for different people, & the work needed to manifest that inspiration. The last time I read anything on the subject it assured me that no way was intrinsically better than another -- that it takes different kinds of genius to hear an entire symphony & to construct one from fragmented inspiration. I'm still in awe of the former, though.

(I've used "inspiration" an awful lot. I can't quite think of a better word.)

Incidentally, I like your new 'Currently' panel -- though might I suggest expanding them with TITLE= attributes?

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Great! And I'm also willing to sit for your own projects if you want me.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

The way you procrastinate on whatever you're supposed to be doing? You'll find plenty of time to paint while doing a PhD. *wry grin* (Takes one to know one...)

Seriously, while doing a PhD is certainly hard work, I don't think for most people it is so all-consuming as to leave no time for other pursuits.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the same thing with clothes at the moment, and when the mood takes me/I'm in a room with electron people, experiments that Must Be Done too. I think it's because I'm pouring lots of incentive to work into my brain, and its main process is Creating - Learning Stuff is just a convenient side project - so whatever energy it puts into learning stuff, it puts twice as much into creating. Out come many many ideas.

http://www.thefrock.com is not helping my fabric pile.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

Brilliant! I always imagined you'd be fun to paint, your skin tone has such interesting colours in it and the shape of your face is unexpected. (Beautiful faces are often unexpected - see medieval_bunny for a good example.) And if the flat doesn't fall through, I'll be living just around the corner as well!

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I'd love to *sulk* at you about the procrastination comment, but ... it's a fair cop guv. Although I am reading a book on Dionysus by Charles Segal and it's really beautiful exciting, so perhaps there's hope for me yet :)

actually a thought - do you have free text messages or access to email during the day? Because you're someone whom I respect and admire and who I don't want thinking that I'm a lazy goodfernothing. But I also know that you struggle with time management yourself so it wouldn't sound like preaching. I was wondering if you'd be willing to take the role of gentle but firm long-distance revision prodder. If you don't have time, then really, don't worry about it, but tis a thought :)

The time-management aspect of PhDness simultaneously excites and terrifies me. I suppose it's such a great opportunity - if I can crack it, how great would that be! I'd get so much done! - coupled with the fear that I wouldn't crack it, I'd waste time and procrastinate and angst on livejournal about how I wasn't working and feel awful and guilty about it and not do my research ideas justice. Mind you, the idea of doing art fulltime is very similar. Although there's a very direct "you need to sell paintings to buy food" thing going on with art, which there isn't for the phD as you presumably have funding.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Yay Dionysus!

I have email during the day, and would be glad to prod you. If you prod me back over doing research. :)

Although there's a very direct "you need to sell paintings to buy food" thing going on with art, which there isn't for the phD as you presumably have funding.

Ha, yes. Or even if you don't have funding and have to work on the side or whatever, your food supply is still not dependant on working on your PhD.

'Tis a tough nut to crack. As I've said to various people I think, only do a PhD if you are really committed to what you're working on. But even if you don't manage to turn overnight into a disciplined, hard-working non-procrastinator, it's still possible to make progress and do worthwhile stuff.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I like that theory of it. It's true that when I do do work at the moment, it's very intense productive work. It just never lasts very long because my attention span is that of a fruit fly's. I'm sort of either waiting to start working, or working really really well - there's no "trying to work but failing". It's just that the "waiting" part is massively extended by how much I want to be doing a billion other things that are also all fired-up and ready to go by the big adrenaline surge.

I packaged your stuff today! Will UMS it tomorrow. I hope you don't mind it being in a carrier bag with your address on in permanent marker. I taped it up as securely as I could and the clothes are folded inside. I didn't have a jiffy bag big enough.

Do you think you'll have the time/motivation to make all the clothes projects over the summer? It would be great if we could all have a sort of sustained creativity drive and make use of our procrastinatory inspiration and encourage each other to Do Stuff as well as earning money and lying around being hot.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

this comment scares me, because I don't want to be brilliant or unusual. Except that I do, I just don't want people to think I am, or for me to have to admit that I hope I might be, until it's obvious that I am because I've done stuff. If that makes sense. All this talk about ways of thinking makes me scared that actually I'm fooling myself, I don't get inspiration like that at all, maybe I'm just trying to sound clever to cover up the fact I never do any art.

I don't think I am. But it's still all scary.

I used to hear music all the time. It was horribly frustrating because although I play some intruments okay, I have no idea how to compose and I could never identify any of the chords or anything. I tried a couple of times and as soon as I tried to work them out on the piano the sound in my head disappeared. My ex used to get painting ideas, similar to the way I get them, which always frustrated him because he doesn't paint and never will. He's described a few of them to me and then I got them too and intend to paint them some time. I have no idea how you'd go about describing a symphony in your head though, I suppose it's impossible.

Was is Pratchett who had the idea about inspiration particles randomly falling through space and hitting random people? Or was that part of the mythos corchen and my (other) ex and I had in our misspent youth? I think it's Pratchett. Anyway, it does feel that way sometimes. In which case actually getting an inspiration particle you happen to have the skills, talent, resources and opportunity to act upon is really very rare, relatively :)

(apologies for the incoherence of this comment. I'm reading Segal on Dionysiac poetics and Seaford taking him apart and Segal responding and it's 01.30am and my brain is fried).

addendum

[libellum.livejournal.com]

my reply made it sound like I thought you were saying I was brilliant and unusual. I don't think that's what you were saying - well, maybe unusual - but not ultimately better than the other way. So that's alright then. I don't know what I was saying, really.

I've taken your suggestion about the image tags - thankyou :)

[steeraway.livejournal.com]

I would keep all my options open if I were you. Even if an artist is what you are destined to be, that doesn't necessarily mean you won't [have to] hold down some kind of job simultaneously, for a time at least. I mean, I consider myself a writer [of sorts] but there's still no way I could live solely on my income from writing. Perhaps I could do if I concentrated on writing overtly commercial stuff, but that would defeat the point of why I wanted to write in the first place...

[lovelyoliver.livejournal.com]

having read all the comments i don't think there's that much to add except to say that i'm not sure you have the necessary degree of cynicism to be a professional artist (and i mean that as a compliment). you clearly have a talent for art which ought to be expressed but the nasty thing about the art industry is that it is, at the end of the day, another industry with all the problems that entails. more specifically it involves hanging around with other artists at viewings who tend to be self-involved wankers full of piss and wind even by the relatively high standards that a cambridge education gives people. dealers are also dreadful people by and large and the less said about the customers the better. many artists quit trying to make a living from it because the industry destroys their creativity and faith in art.

if i were in your shoes i'd be tempted to continue down the road of academia (its not like you can't jump ship if you change your mind) which is indoor work with no heavy lifting and no dress code. i'd also keep painting and make steps to see how easy they would be to market, i certainly agree that some constraints on free time is a helpful thing for creativity in general. apart from anything else combining art and academia is a grand old tradition dating back to the renaissance.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I will never make all the clothes projects, but optimistically I would expect the fabric pile to shrink by about half.

At the moment I think it'll be more like 'lying about shivering in three layers plus scarf, hat and gloves'.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

*nods* that makes a lot of sense. I guess the thing is that I'm impatient. There's no way I could paint everything I want to paint unless I did it full-time. lovelyoliver's point below is also valid - this is exactly the reason I've been arguing against fulltime artistdom for the last x years, the commercialism and cynicism of it. I don't want to be famous, I just want a steady stream of private and commercial projects such as portraits and paintings for restaurants and coffee shops and book covers and graphic novels and posters and so forth. which involves getting my work out there and seen. Which involves taking time off to produce said work...

[libellum.livejournal.com]

yeah. you are right, of course. my brain is being very absolutist at the moment. I make a few comments on this to steeraway above. My ambition was never to make a name for myself as a modern artist, just to work hard, retain my artistic integrity, try to be as proud of as much of my work as possible while still occasionally selling some (commissions are a very different ballgame to deliberately producing interior decorating in the whole of selling more). Painting Oxbridge colleges, for example, would probably sell paintings and I wouldn't consider it "selling out" as long as I could also do my own work. I'd think of it more as an uninspiring but reliable longterm illustration project. Ideally I'd like to be able to get work doing book illustration or advertising. I'm not sure how you get into the industry though, and I don't know if any companies hire illustrators on permanent contracts.

I appreciate your comments about art and academia, though. It feels a bit daft to be doing a phD "just for the money" though, you know what I mean? You should do a phD cause you're dead passionate about it. I suppose I am passionate about it, just not at the moment ... now is not the right time to judge. But I do cherish the fire I have for art at the moment. It's been nearly twenty one years in coming after all.

[verte.livejournal.com]

This may be long. Sorry.

I think it's natural to distract yourself with creative endeavours when you know you don't have time for them. I certainly wrote half a play in my head during the revision period and last exam time actually DID do some writing. But when the pressure's off, I've found I've drifted back into the usual lack-of-inspiration and creative energy and feel as stagnant as ever. I think it's because I like to think my creative drive is (for want of a ... different word anyway) a bit sacred in a peculiar way and don't want to turn it into the interesting mundanity that academia and the rest of my life occasionally is. Of course, it might also be that the pressure of revision takes your brain up a notch - it produces a kind of dangerous lucidity that's primarily creative in me, rather than analytical.

As long as I've known you we've both had the issue of spreading our energy over too many things to be sure of doing one in a way that makes us happy. The only thing that's ever made me happy that's sort of creative is acting, but only when it's not my own work (so I could blame a little of it on bad direction...). Sometimes I think being an artist of any kind is impossible unless the idea of it as a compulsory, Serious Career makes you happy. I know so many musicians, artists, writers who could take their work into the big league and it's easy to scold them for it when they choose to keep it as a sideline. But I've also learnt that the most I should do is try and encourage them to share their stuff with other people because, frankly, it's SELFISH not to. Their trying to make a living out of it instantly makes it something that's often mundane, and sometimes means they end up not even respecting their own work as a consequence. I'm not saying it's either/or for everyone, just that I think it's quite tricky to enjoy making art as a means of survival. I certainly don't think I have it in me (at the moment).

I realised over the exam period that academia is a godsend if you're bright enough and have the motivation for it. Literature inspires creative thinking, even if the action of it isn't creative, it'd let me write for a living, and I genuinely think that trying to help students find joy in other people's creative work would make me far happier than having something of my own published. I don't know if I have the motivation for it yet, but I don't think you need to feel like or even be an exceptional scholar to have a valid place in the academic world. I know I'm not one and I'm certain I'm lectured by lots that aren't, but then I don't look at academia as being very sacred so I don't really mind. It seems to me that it's possible to maintain a creative life while in academia, so as long as I still have time to try and write and perform, it seems like a good option to me.

I don't associate creativity with happiness and I like being happy. However important it is, or however much I think about it, I think I'd choose happiness. For the moment. I sometimes wonder if you disassociate the rest of the world from your artwork and choose not to make ANY sort of living out of it, perhaps it can go the other way and act as too sacred, where nothing and nobody can come close to its importance to you - I can think of at least one person for whom this is the case. So perhaps it's a question of finding a balance, and I think (of course..) of Coleridge and his yearning for 'that dome in air' and it makes a kind of sense. Working out how to fit creativity in with being happy.

I'd say see what happens after finals but do the best in them you possibly can. I really hope your projects will be gleeful. I think making a life and a living out of being creative is such a fucking privelege and everyone who feels able to try and do it definitely should.

[translucent.livejournal.com]

Of course. I was just caught up in the revival of this matter which has long held my fascination. And gabbing about it certainly makes me feel rather as you describe in the first comment-paragraph -- because these are things (composition, thrust-upon creative impulses) I've only touched upon, not immersed myself in, or not for a while, so it does feel like commenting from a distance.

re symphonies: It sounds impossible till you've heard accounts. The BBC's lovely 'Hawking' film had a bit with Penrose & Hawking discussing Mozart's inspiration -- 'But that's impossible! Music is temporal!' or something, I can't quite remember what the idea was -- which I missed when it was repeated a few weeks ago, unfortunately. I'd've liked to poke that one a bit further.

Howard Goodall, whose name if you aren't already aware of it can be seen credited to the theme tunes of 'Blackadder' & 'Red Dwarf' among other (and bigger) things, has a chapter in his book 'Big Bangs' (a bit 'David Attenborough for classical music', as I saw him described t'other day, but entertaining even if it covers things I half already knew) which completely astonished me when I first read it. It's probably my favourite true tale of everything I know: out of a chorus of evening church-bells in France which he'd decided to transcribe for fun (!) materialised an entire choral mass, which proceeded to get sketched out rapidly till the early hours. It's not just the event -- the more I read about artists in general, the more I realise quite how similarly (& how differently, of course) creativity works between people -- but the quality of recall he describes. Like lucid dreaming, I suppose -- which I've never managed to control properly either!

Inspiration particles was Pratchett, indeed, and very apt.

I seem to have derailed this thread due to my inability to offer constructive non-procrastinatory advice :) Wish you best of luck, instead.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

i imagine it's not recall, though. but that the music appears in your head almost synaethetically, and hangs there, and you can turn the themes around and look at them and realise "ah, that's how that harmony works" and then jot it down. Like Daniel Tammet (http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1409903,00.html) and numbers. Although this is pure speculation and perhaps it is "just" impressive memory...

I'm fairly complacent in my inability to understand music. I just enjoy it in an amateurish fashion. By contrast, I'm continually anxious to understand writing - the mystery what makes good writing, to unravel the language and see how people do it. Painting is more like music for me - I feel as though I don't understand it and I'm happy that way. I don't know how I do what I do, and every time I'm scared I won't be able to do it this time, but I trust that if I sit down and see (art is really the skill of learning how to see, just as I suppose music is, in a way, the skill of learning how to hear) then it'll all come out okay. It feels like it's something I'm borrowing for a while and it might be taken away at any moment. I'll wake up one morning and not know how to do it any more, because I never learned as such, it's not something I can deconstruct. I mean I can happily analyse paintings, colour use and compositional structure and leading the eye and emotional manipulation and symbolic languages. Oh, I don't know what I mean. Only that music and art are both languages that are untranslatable into words, and I think in words, so I can't describe them.

[translucent.livejournal.com]

(thanks for the Tammet article -- I love how self-aware he is, as do the scientists :) and that his life partner is a software engineer called Neil!)

Goodall says of the nature of it:

Imagine you are wearing a Walkman and you are haring a piece of music you've never encountered before. This is what it felt like. I could 'see' (probably a combination of hearing, feeling and seeing the music laid out on a mental manuscript score is a more accurate description than 'see') this piece of music. I could sense that it had a shape but not how long it was nor where exactly it began. [...] I 'selected' the Gloria movement [...] It started like the track on a CD, it came out like completed music — all the tunes, all the melodies all the rhythms.

And when I've heard music it's been fleeting, with the thought being that it's only my faculties that're lacking. There's the other kind of 'hearing' though which can come after it, the willed kind that's a humming-of-a-tune in your head, like verbal thinking. You don't hear the words, but you know they're there.

(I suppose HG's example above is how he generally experiences any new music, though -- just applied to the spontaneous.)

Conversely, I'm fairly complacent in my ability to understand music; rather than actual technical accomplishment it's more a feeling of security, that I've grown with it since I was small and the rest is just academic, if you will. Again, I say this and feel silly again because I can rarely get my piano-fingers round a tune these days, I've not complete mastery over my voice qualities, et cetera.

I feel lost in writing, but I'm always trying to get my head round ideas, both linguistically and those that don't seem to want to be shoehorned into words. I think it's just that I haven't read widely enough for the act to be/have anything other than an almost indiscriminate sponge effect -- I absorb the lot & the way it's said is secondary, so I only notice it when it doesn't work. Sort of. I was surprised by your last comment at first, but it does come through in the fluency of your writing and is backed up by the general academia-atmosphere (having ideas and expressing them based on highly linguistic ideas in the first place) which I miss.

[surje.livejournal.com]

you could consider a year off, maybe even living at home just to explore your artwork, and if you aren't able to consistently deliver or don't feel you'll be able to make a living, then go back to academia.

[oddcellist.livejournal.com]

At the risk of repeating everything that everyone else has said, and also of inspiring "what the hell?" for being a little bit drive-by in my attitude towards comments...

I'm being faced with the same question, albeit in a different form - this past year, I didn't think I'd do anything with the cello, except maybe practice a bit to keep my technique up, and while I didn't end up practicing, I did end up in four quartets and an orchestra, and it has started to make me wonder - do I really want to do this academia thing that I've always sort of assumed would be best for me, in terms of my personality, or is there perhaps something to this persistence of chamber music? This is, of course, why it's different - I'm not actually creating anything, except for an interpretation, but I think this is a similar form of doubt. I think part of it gets down to my own insecurity about whether I would have the discipline to pursue making music as a career of sorts, no matter how much I enjoy it; I have good instincts, generally, and it's not as if I'm a complete slouch, but I've also never enjoyed the rehearsal half as much as I enjoy the thrill of just sitting down with a quartet and reading for a couple of hours.

Er, I suppose this is mostly just to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for where you find yourself, right now. I think right now that you should see what happens after finals, and once you have the opportunity to work through your current ideas, see also what pops up - see if maybe the one will always be giving birth to the other, in which case, maybe hoping for a balance is the best you'll get. I know people are often telling me that I should seek to keep up my options for as long as possible, and I also know how tiring that can be. But what you say, about Homer and academia and the rest of it, all of it makes sense to me, and it seems best to go on trying to find somewhere between the absolute points, keeping what will make you happy. I am, I fear, rapidly growing incoherent, but I think it's a possibility that there will always be this see-sawing of inspiration and drive in both, and that it never may feel fully settled - which is bad in some respects, but also holds tremendous promise, and if it makes you feel a more complete person, then that's never a bad thing.

But - good luck with everything, answers and academic work both.

[oldmotherchaos.livejournal.com]

I was in a similar situation when I finished my degree (Anthropology, from London). I always have been very much in love with books, and the idea of writing was extremely seductive. I also didn't feel that it was anything I could practically aspire to. I didn't continue in academia, I started out temping around London, and over the next year or two, kinda kept my dreams in the back of my mind -- pushed at them when I could, persuaded bosses to give me relevant job titles (ie changing Technical Designer to Technical Editor), spun my CV a little, and kept trying out for pie-in-the-sky opportunities.

One of them came through: working as an editor in a games company (WotC, if you know Magic: The Gathering). From there, I got into a mainstream London publishing company, again editing. Some contacts later, and a bunch of small, cheap, nasty bits of sold work listed on a publication history, and I was getting commissioned to write books, which is now my full-time job. So far this year, it's been books on the Kabbalah, Freemasonry, Witches and Symbolism. I still dream of writing my own novels (as opposed to writing novels for White Wolf)... but I have some stuff on the go to take me to the next step up.

I'm good, but I don't think that it is any exceptional talent or luck that's got me here -- just steady brachiation, keeping an eye open and leaping to the next tree whenever possible.

What I'm saying -- in a very rambly, roundabout way -- is that it is possible. I saw you got the first -- CONGRATULATIONS!! -- so the post-grad stuff should happen, but if you keep dreaming, and pushing, and you can find yourself painting for a living yet.

I hope that makes at least a little sense :) I'm not very well, and rather tired, and I may well be a little incoherent today *grin*.