Faraway Near– At West End Gallery
A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.
― Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays, 1935
Been thinking about the importance of idle time in my work, about how taking time to read, look, and listen allows for a wider scope and range in the work. It serves as both a form of research into and a connection to, as Bertrand Russell puts it above, a larger and less fretful cosmos.
Maybe I am just looking for an excuse for the time I spend not painting here in the studio or the time spent writing this blog. I don’t know. I am sometimes disappointed in how little writing often appears in this blog in comparison to the amount of time spent researching the subject of those blog entries. For example, I’ve already spent about an hour and a half this morning on this post with little to show. But during that time I read up on several other subjects and read much more of Russell’s essay than the brief excerpt at the top.
Ultimately, I chose not to focus on those other subjects but each pushed me toward this particular subject. And the research done, while not showing up here, is not lost effort. I learned new things that might show up here later in another form. I am sure it will somehow manifest itself in my work in some way.
It is in this way that idleness — reading, looking and listening– has real value.
Like I said, I read this now and it seems so little for what was behind it. I am a little disappointed but it has actually been a fruitful effort.
So. let’s wrap it up with a bow in the form of a song, Idle Wind, from the Tedeschi Trucks Band. After all, it was part of today’s research.
Redtree Times 