Christmas Beyond Good and Evil

 Grass has started growing on the ramp up to the loose parts platform.  One of my last jobs was to scatter grass seed and I'm surprised to see it germinated so well in the winter.   It was nice to pop into the playground and wish everyone a happy Christmas. Patrick's mum died last week and he is grieving but also going into work and doing his job which makes sense of things for him.  I did the projections in Rotherham and now I have run out of steam.  I want to finish my chunk of writing I have been working on so I can forward it to Kate and Laura before the Christmas break.  I'm a bit frightened to look at it in case it turns out to be a bit shit.  I also need to get it just as good as I can as I think it is probably the start of my PhD proper.  

I have put Anti Oedipus to one side and I'm reading John Berger.  He is nice to read and I think cleverly balances his writing in a way I can draw on.  This will be my job of work I think to balance the world with my writing and to write for artists.  Perhaps I will be like Spinoza and I will be discovered in some future epoch.  

Part of me is worried that I have got lazy another part tells me I need a bit of a break.  To be honest with myself  I haven't been very motivated for the last two weeks and now all the kids are home and I feel like I need to rest my brain for a few weeks even if I don't really deserve it.

I never did actually write any notes on a Minor Gesture apart from the first two chapters although it feels like these are the most relevant. 

I feel a bit all at sea again but this state is the modern condition. 

gratitude

 It's very nearly time to take a Christmas break.  I'm supposed to be writing today but couldn't face it, I was not in the mood.  I have been for a walk and chopped our old sofa up with the axe I got for my birthday which felt a little manic.  I am just about to set off and project stained glass onto Rotherham Minster and my brain just didn't feel restful enough to sit and write for a day.

 I havn't got on very well with reading anti-Oedipus  but it's not that easy.  I think that within it and the excision of the ego there is a way to understanding how Manning takes the 'I 'out of both art and team.  There is no I in team but there is a Mr T in the A team is an overused joke that holds more than its content.

I almost feel like I am going through the motions here as I am performing my blog.  Two things to mention that are currently not keeping me awake at night but enter my woken brain.

 

It is not the prefix that goes before discipline that is a problem, not intra inter trans or cross the problem is with the term discipline.  We are not interested in the things that provide edges makes up rules and constrains thought. 

The other is that the point of my PhD is to come up with research that is not about asking a question or set of sub questions.  Not that questions are bad just that it seems much harder than it should be to move away from asking a question.  The question can only really be asked about something already present.  perhaps that is why we look to the 'what if ' the 'not yet' and the proposition.  What is the proposition of this research is a what if question.  I shall not mark it with punctuation.  

Finding Hope Bento's Sketchbook

 I sent an Arts Council proposal off on Sunday, its the culmination of a lot of messing about.  I am in two minds about it as it is a symbol of my two selves the artist and the scholar. I need to wait 6 weeks and see if it gets funded. I am hoping it does as it will affirm to me that I am the kind of artist that the Art Council wants to fund.  It will also affirm I am good at writing applications to the Arts Council. When I sent it off I had to change it to be less about Covid19 focused.  We still seem to be in the middle of it but when I think of this time next year I have a strong feeling of the possibility of the end of it. I need to keep relevant. 

Last week was a finishing of things off week.  I realized that when I go to the playground there isn't actually anything for me to do.  The platforms finished and I don't really want to get caught up in doing any maintenance unless I am asked to as its cold and I get  aches in my fingers - perhaps the start of arthritis? Anyway it feels like there are other things I should be doing, there are jobs at home that will make more sense in the short term if writing and reading get too much.

 I finished the Minor Gesture and found it useful. I think I did understand it better this time around.  It is very specific and it is a problem to generalise or apply some of the thinking that falls from it.  It is like Deleuze and Guattari without the jokes but it tries not to oversimplify their thinking. I think it is very much a book for artist scholars which I am now in a process of becoming. I need to take notes this week before I forget what I read, it is not so good that it defies note-taking, this will have to be my reluctant job for tomorrow.

My next book is Anti-Oedipus.  I started it this morning with the slight feeling of familiar excitement that goes with reading a new challenging book.  The forward by Foucault is a joy - he has spotted the trap streets that catch you in the cul da sacs of texts - it was nice to find Foucault saying something I've been saying for a while.  I am not sure what happened then as when I read the first chapter about the desiring machine and the body without organs I felt all at sea again.  My mum told me a story once about a boy in her reception class who had been at school for a few months.  At the end of the day she would get the kids to do Yoga relaxation, they would lay on their backs and feel the energy flows of their bodies.  My mum invented this in the 80's along with Shake and Vac for carpets, but that truly is another story.  The boy was on the verge of sleep and staring at the ceiling said loudly "What is this strange place".  It was an acknowledgement that school was indeed strange but the real point to the story is that it had taken a moments pause for him  to pay attention to this strangeness. That is what it felt like this morning trying to get over Oedipus, to be reminded of having to stitch up all my openings including my eyelids and my anus and suck on the tit of the desiring machine which is not my mother.  The process of reading is uncomfortable and is something that cannot be enjoyed in the moment.  The pages make you wonder what you are doing in such a strange place.

Last week Niche's overman which I think must be his uberman or superman cropped up between good and evil and Spinoza was somehow important.  These were the two rabbit holes that I tripped over, I need to ask the question however. Is the problem with starting with someone like Manning that she starts where she is and not where you are?  You can't pick up a book like the Minor Gestures and read whats on the page. Well you can but you don't get very far. 

I also sent my 7000 words of writing about research creation to Kate.  This is actually a very clever piece of writing and it is performing a different thing to my other writing.  I believe it is my style, like it or lump it it will be the shape of what I submit next year. maybe with lots of projections to do and 2 weeks until Christmas I need a pause. 

On the desk next to me is John Bergers' Bentos Sketchbook - I named this post after him but I haven't mentioned it as I am never sure where to fit John Berger in - in simple terms he writes things that make sense to artists - in the end I hope this is what I can do and then I can retire.