focus on the focus.
Last weekend: Seattle for dissonant.org upgrades, Low live (awesome), guitar store geekery, and general hanging out. Last week: NYC for work, digital camera shopping, and mediocre sushi. I'm everywhere.
In Seattle we had dinner with Tom De Groot, whose painting is on the Plink CD package. We'd never met in person before and I really enjoyed hanging out with him. We talked about why he's not working on music much anymore -- it's too "easy". That is, there's nothing attached to it, nothing to lose or gain. But painting isn't like that. So he tries to work a little every night, even on the nights when it's not clicking, when it all seems stupid.
Then we saw the James Turrell exhibit at the Henry Art Gallery. Turrell is an interesting case: he "works with light". He's well-known, but his work is subtle, the kind of thing that might make you say "that's it?". But obviously he really means it. He's been doing this stuff for thirty-some-odd years. And he's working on this... I guess you'd call it an installation piece. In a crater. Like, in the crater. He's turning this crater into a giant art piece involving light and the sky and the stars.
The gallery had a short film about Turrell and the crater project. "People ask me what this project costs", he says. "And I tell them well, it's cost me about 30 years, 2 marriages, and a relationship...". Whoa, I said to myself. This guy is torching his entire life. For this crater thing. I can't tell if this project is worth shit but this dude is going to die working on it.
So thanks to Mr. De Groot and Mr. Turrell, our 4-day vacation surprised me by providing a lot to think about. These days I work on music when it flows, and when it doesn't, I run away. It's easy to distract myself by working on label things, or by coding little projects -- hey, I'm being productive, right? But I'm not working the way I did six years ago.
It's time to put on blinders and work. Force my way past some roadblocks. If I really care, it's the right thing to do.