With the most enormous relief I sent off yesterday evening my comments on a text posted to me by a friend and former colleague. He is writing a book, and asked me to look over a couple of chapters dealing with issues about which I once had some kind of expertise….and still have an interest. It turned out to be a herculean labour. My observations on his 140 pages ran, in the end, to 14 pages (or 6,400 words, in you are used to counting in that way.) In other words, I wrote the equivalent of a good-length academic article! Fond as I am of my friend (and genuinely interested in his project) I can’t convey the relief I feel at having finished the task.
The nearest I can get to an adequate description is quotation from H.G. Wells’ History of Mr. Polly (which my wife is very fond of citing). “He felt like the aetiolated grass and daisies must feel when the garden roller is moved to another place.”
The experience has been a familiar one in a particular respect. I have realised on previous occasions (and I think I have commented on it in this blog) that art work and academic writing are antagonistic activities. I cannot do them both at the same time. I’m sure that this is a matter of the contrast between “left-brain” and “right-brain” activities, with art being characteristic of the latter. Whatever the cause, however, artistic creativity has been shut down almost completely for the past two weeks.* Despite the fact that I have not actually embarked upon a new composition as yet, already I can feel the imagination beginning to tick over. Some stimulus was given to this development by my visit to the Graeme Willson exhibition I mentioned in my last blog.
At least I feel that, artistically speaking, I’m starting to breathe again. I would be really interested to know whether this kind of experience is shared by other artists.
*There is perhaps an odd exception to this, in that my performance at the weekly life-drawing class does not appear really to have suffered.