Structure and Decay

When I was moving house, I decided to get rid of all my old notes books and loose bits of paper, only keeping a few that I really really liked in memory boxes, the rest of it I either photographed or typed up onto a word document.  It was actually a good thing to do as I wasn't paying much attention to any of it when I had it, and it was also very useful for me to reassess things and read all the mad, looping round and around things that I'd written, they often seemed rubbish and nonsensical, tapping into some sensation or emotion that was only relevant at the point in which it was felt.  It was all quite dark and atmospheric, though it's natural that the only time when you'd like to express your thoughts is when you absolutely need to express them, cast them out onto a page hoping they'll stay away in future.  So most of the writing that was in my big box of paper was very personal and the sort of thing you'd only read as you were writing it.  Saying that though, dependent on my mood as I was typing it all up, I had moments when it all added up and there were bits of it that could be rewritten and made into something good, if I had the time or inclination.  Anyway the picture in the top corner of this paragraph is one of the pictures that was amongst all these papers.  It looks rather like a neanderthal's interpretation of a super computer.  I think.

 A lot of these notepads were made whilst working in some call centre - not listening to a single word that was being said to me whilst doodling and collaging science fiction abstraction and somehow managing to do well at both customer service and putting together nice little doodles, all the while either getting funny looks from some team manager or else the people I sat with who I never talked to.  I'm very much glad I work in Admin these days, I don't have to talk to anyone on the phone and on occasion manage to zone out into the empty swirling everything that goes on around us every single moment.  Enjoying the odd moment of inertia as existence sweeps by never explaining why or how and what on earth it's doing.  I get time to worry about proper things, big things, small things and things worth worrying about.  And I get paid more for working less.  I do quite like this little drawing.  It looks like one of those giant hairdryers... the crossed out and circled numbers are likely notes taken during calls.  And the word ORDER is stuck on with some innocence, surely with no meaningful or satirical intention, quite startling in it's irrelevance, yet it looks deliberate, like some sort of hamfisted metaphor of authority.

A raging machine working in note formula, on a note book.  It's good that this sort of thing got me through the day but I didn't really see any value in it at the time.  It was just left behind in some notebook at the bottom of box full of other notebooks under a desk covered in notebooks.  It was good fun to go through them and very weird that I don't remember making them at all.  Probably listening to some faceless bleating bloated blatherer bleating bloatfully about his overdue Barclaycard payment whilst I lived my entire life on autopilot. 

So a certain amount of tedium can be a helpful incubator for developing ideas.  Willpower is a good way of getting through really bad times, and even though you might spend hours, days or a whole lifetime thinking about what a massive loser you are... you might actually be doing quite well - in your own way - if you work hard at putting together your plans of world domination and "just be yourself".

It's weird but some of this simple work I did all those years back has a nice sense of composition to it, and some really laboured and intense cross hatching, like I was so impatiently wanting to get out of life through the paper.  In some ways it's probably a good idea to reassess the past so you can remember all the things that you are capable of but might have forgotten to keep doing.  As surely in your older, wiser, and better state you could probably do it better - me in particular:  I'm now less awkward, less spotty, less greasy, less rubbish.



I used to have a lot of nightmares about teeth, they bothered me for years, teeth would melt, teeth would crack, I'd wake up with my hands in my mouth as in my dreams I'd be pulling out big piles of mushed up bone and blood and letting them drop down an imaginary drain.  It was funny.  Funny weird.  Sometimes funny ha ha.  Never traumatic.  I'm not making a drama out of it, I'm so brave and stoic.
They've now been replaced by dreams where I backchat my way out of situations often involving some nasty and ugly characters - in a way I probably wouldn't be able to in real life.  What a turnaround that is.  Whilst at times I go about thinking about how all my luck is spiralling down some horrible mad trail I'm actually - when I "count my chickens" - doing really really well.  Judging from my dreams, circumstances in life and my relieving lack of acne. 

Is there any chance this positivity might breed contentment?  That I may all of a sudden be content and then stop feeling the need to make any progress and my life will fall into stagnation?

I am planning to take a walk at some point soon, with a big doodle pad: A2 sketchbook.  Go down to some broken down buildings, or the cemetery, and do some actual drawing of real life thing in my own fashion of the not real (except in my head).  It will be quite good fun.  It will not really be dwelling on the past though.  As I've never really done that before.  These old images have made me think of those sorts of places though.  Jagged, horrible, scribbly places.  All scribbled and scrabbled and scrambled - all scrambling and scribbling.  Squabbling.  A squabble between structure and decay.  That's always the case though, except when it isn't.