intomybrain

Today I started taking pictures of the church staff for the new website. It went well. I didn’t get as much done as I originally would have liked to, but you can’t have everything. Or so I’m told. It’s a good project for me right now. I get to use my husbands camera, which has mostly been collecting dust in one of our closets, and use some creativity.

Tomorrow I think I’ll be going into work with Dan. In the evening we’re joining some friends of ours in the city for food and drinks, and since my husband works in the city, we’re thinking I may as well just go in with him in the morning. We’ve done it in the past. It’s interesting, but it can get to be a tedious day if I don’t plan carefully for it. When I go, I have two options. Maybe three. I can sit in the Starbucks at the base of his building for most of the day (except for lunch when I go up to eat with Dan), which is nice because there is coffee and I can read or write about the “people watching” I do while I sit there; I can sit in his office, off to the side, and play around on my mac; or I can wander the city all day. Walking around gets tiring after the first three hours (unless I’m wandering through the heavenly wonders that are the stores in Chelsea Market). Sitting in his office can be interesting, but sort of boring at times (surprisingly enough, the people at his work aren’t all that fun to observe…not enough variety or spontaneity). So I usually opt for Starbucks. Although, the food and coffee would be free in his office…so there’s always that flip side to the issue (especially when you’re newlyweds on a tight-ish budget).

We’ll see how that goes. And maybe I’ll blog some more! I’ve been wanting to find a topic for this blog. Probably not a super specific topic, since I don’t exactly have one single expertise…other than myself. Maybe I’ll spend some time tomorrow thinking of one. I have another site as well. Well, I have another domain name. No site attached to it yet. Maybe I can make that one a more specific one.

I decided that I have a lot to say. And I have a lot of creativity. And I want to put the two together. I did some random surfing of them web and found various blogs with writing tips, tips on beating “writer’s block”, getting something started, etc. One tip that comes up a lot was to just start writing. I’ve done this before. And it’s always worked. So I don’t know what it is that keeps me from continuing to do this.

I decided to start typing away (in a relatively distraction-less environment). My goal was just that, to just type. No matter what it was that I felt or thought. Whether it made sense or not. Just type. It didn’t matter if what came out was sensical, random phrases, or complete gibberish. Eventually it would take me to my destination. A cohesive thought. (Side note: It’s really strange and; not to mention thoroughly, exhilarating-ly, thrilling; that a goal of randomness usually results in complete order.)

This is what my brain said to my fingers:

I want to start writing a book. Maybe a novel. Maybe a short story. Fiction or non-fiction. I’m not sure which yet. Mac should have a full-screen mode. That would make this a lot easier for me. I wonder what I should write about. I could write a poem. Something abstract. Right now the only things that are flowing out of my brain are random thoughts, nothing coherent. Something that seems to be more useful on the creative end if I was painting. Not writing. There is an analytical side to writing. Of course, there’s an analytical side to painting as well. But with painting I can create freely with my brain and hand. The only barrier between my brain and a finished painting, besides time, is what I can make the paint do. The limits of the paint itself. But when I am writing, what is between my brain and my creation is the alphabet. It’s finite. 26 letters. Some punctuation is involved of course. Space, capitalization… And the words that are made up of these letters. There may be an infinite amount of words, but my brain only contains a finite amount of knowledge pertaining to them. The beholder of my creation (still on the subject of writing) needs to be able to visually see my words, and make sense of their letters. But with paint, the beholder not only sees with their eyes, but also with their senses. People can see words on a page with their senses, but it seems to me that it is more indirect. The words can stir things in them, but the words on the page themselves can’t stir anything. Words have a finite limit, and letters have finite restraints…when grouped together, they have to correspond to the intended readers language. But paint…a painter doesn’t have those constraints. There’s such thing as writer’s block…everyone at one point or another has used that term. But you rarely, if ever, have heard of “painter’s block”. There are an infinite number of shapes, colors, textures, etc. And every artist (every artist who understands this) has access to every single one of those infinite possibilities.

So this is where I’ve started. A dump of my brain. Relating art and writing. Or more specifically, painting and writing. Paint and words. Brushes and letters. A canvas (or anything for that matter) and a laptop (or paper or white board, etc).