{"id":1499,"date":"2013-07-01T12:43:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T20:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2013-07-01T12:44:48","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T20:44:48","slug":"reporting-life-creating-blog-musings-scribbles-and-other-artifacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/reporting-life-creating-blog-musings-scribbles-and-other-artifacts\/","title":{"rendered":"Reporting Life: Creating blog musings, scribbles and other artifacts…"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

This is like an inventory of things I do to\u00a0express myself. I don’t know why I nee to do a\u00a0catalogue, but it feels right – like emptying a\u00a0closet before you reorganize it.<\/p>\n

Writing<\/h2>\n
    \n
  • I post musings<\/strong><\/span><\/span>and observations to my blog.<\/strong> These<\/span><\/span>often are like a journal of reflections, or\n

    some passing whim or temporary interest.<\/p>\n

      \n
    • I tend to return<\/strong><\/span><\/span>to the same themes in the course of 12months:\n

      <\/strong> comic book and graphic<\/span><\/span>artists, like Will Eisner, E.C. Segar, Jack<\/p>\n

      Kirby, or Alan Moore, and iconic characters<\/p>\n

      like Popeye and Superman.<\/li>\n

    • I recall emotional patterns<\/strong><\/strong>from my youth, particularly regardingmy Mother and Father, or themes of loss,\n

      responsibility, persistence or hope.<\/li>\n

    • I try to connect cool ideas<\/strong><\/strong>or inspirational movements across eras, oracross media or disciplines.\n

      Sometimesthe expressionist films like Metropolis will<\/p>\n

      lead me to the Bauhaus, which will lead me to<\/p>\n

      the new wave band DEVO, which leads me to<\/p>\n

      underground cartoonist Robert Crumb, or the<\/p>\n

      Cult of the Subgenius and concepts of<\/p>\n

      devolution, or to the movie “Idiocracy”. I find<\/p>\n

      it interesting that some of the same ideas seem<\/p>\n

      to “infect” both high art and low art in<\/p>\n

      similar ways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      Visual Art<\/h2>\n
        \n
      • Occasionally, I’ll do adrawing, sketch, of collage<\/strong>,to document a state of mind.\n
          \n
        • Sometimes, it’s a sketchy<\/strong><\/strong>portraitof the back of a stranger’shead, just to see if I still have enough eye-\n

          hand to render someone representationally, or<\/p>\n

          to see if my Playbook tablet can be used as a<\/p>\n

          sketching tool with as much effectiveness as a<\/p>\n

          brush-pen.<\/li>\n

        • Sometimes, it will be a<\/strong><\/strong>little diagram or design scribble, tohelp me sort out a design idea.<\/li>\n
        • Sometimes, it’s a crazy,<\/strong><\/strong>colourful collage, using a plastic binfull of scraps of images culled from hundreds\n

          of magazines over the past dozen years. This is<\/p>\n

          the most fun of all – like putting together a<\/p>\n

          strange Freudian puzzle out of irregular<\/p>\n

          pieces, and with no box cover to show you the<\/p>\n

          final product.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

          It’s all about some kind of creative output.<\/p>\n

          Thought Precedes Action<\/h2>\n

          But inspiration for a creative act or artifact\u00a0most often comes after I’ve internalized some\u00a0cool information, or someone else’s cool<\/p>\n

          art.\u00a0More often than not, some kind of<\/p>\n

          stimulating input will have inspired me to<\/p>\n

          synthesize something for myself: It’s important<\/p>\n

          to listen to music or to look at art by artists<\/p>\n

          whom you admire, or whose vision or message\u00a0resonates with you.<\/p>\n

          It comes and goes. I need to hear or see\u00a0something that makes me laugh or makes me go<\/p>\n

          “wow”.<\/p>\n

          It will trigger something inside me – a<\/p>\n

          response, a dredged-up memory, or a forgotten<\/p>\n

          sense of self. I will ask myself who I am now,<\/p>\n

          or how I want to feel. I will create an<\/p>\n

          artifact. I will need to make a mark.<\/p>\n

          Everything in that last paragraph can happen<\/p>\n

          very rapidly, like a sensory-response, or at
          \nthe level of muscle memory – subconscious, and
          \nnot even clearly or consciously articulated.<\/p>\n

          Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage in, Gold out. Sometimes copper.\u00a0Most often, pixels or paper.<\/p>\n

          It is what is is: a response-loop that simply has to happen. Without it, I think I’d get ill or be too nervous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>This is like an inventory of things I do to\u00a0express myself. I don’t know why I nee to do a\u00a0catalogue, but it feels right – like emptying a\u00a0closet before you reorganize it. Writing I...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,12,11,18,17,16,20],"tags":[38,40],"class_list":["post-1499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-inspiration","category-interdisciplinary","category-media","category-process","category-psychology","category-visual","tag-art-2","tag-life-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1503,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}