Yesterday was a good Sunday at the art studio; I painted and my boyfriend made music and during our breaks we chatted with some of the artists whom we share the warehouse with. After the first cup of coffee, he went to the shop and came back and prepared a beautiful breakfast. Well-fed and caffeined we set off into the Sunday.
Doesn’t this sound like an ideal situation? It was, so how come it was lined with creative frustration, bad moods and a constant search for cables, which lead to a complete collapse of what could have been a magnificent creative Sunday?
Well, sometimes you just want too much at the same time and the creative force has the ability to squash everything which threatens to delay, alternate or (God forbid) kill its spirit. It is a train shooting into the future and although you aren’t behind the wheel you are on it and the driver isn’t listening to your shouts. That god damn train is flying through the air and when ordinary life is attempting to interrupt, you desperately cling on to a string of rope tied to the back of the last train car… Ugh. An overwhelming scent of creativity (can’t smell it?) is flooding the senses of the deprived expressor.
Image source: www.completemartialarts.com
“Be like water, my friend” – Bruce Lee
That plan to go to the park, to get on a train towards Dover, to clean the studio, to take care of piles of paper work, take a swim and then relax in the sauna, to cook a beautiful dinner, to work on the webpage, to write that project description for the funding application, to publish, edit and prepare features and interviews (in plural), to explore tantra… Maybe another day.
If you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend who is an artist and appears to be either obsessed with or even possessed by the urge to create then let them get on with it then. Whatever is begging to come out, must come out; it entered and must now materialize on the other side; pretty or ugly, challenging or soothing; humorous or frightening.
We fell asleep slightly disappointed and the following morning we agreed that London knows how to push us to the limit. The rainy clouds had gathered for another Monday morning in East London. On my way to the tube I walked through rows of houses and when glancing through a window I saw a man sitting on a chair in the middle of an empty living room watching the TV. There was only one chair and a TV in his living room.
This poster was created by the UK Government during the beginning of WW2
I made a silent agreement with the TV junky, “If you spend the rest of your life watching movies and TV, I will continue with what I do and I am sure that there are people out there that take care of the forest walks and the tantric explorations. This way we can all focus on what matters the most.” He mumbled something about time-management, I have no idea what he was talking about.
Elinrós Henriksdotter, Founder and Chief Editor