I didn’t sleep particularly well last night, but there was one moment when I did see very clearly what I had to do today. I chucked away the stuff over which I had been worrying unproductively, hanging in there and hoping that somehow something would turn out right. I decided that this was unlikely to happen, and whatever I had been chewing over for several weeks was probably an obstruction to the development of new ideas. It certainly wasn’t turning out to be the seed-bed of any promising new directions. I was just plain stuck!
So: this morning my first action was to chuck into the bin the various sketches, drafts and reference material that had been cluttering up the studio for too long, and put carefully the pastels back into their boxes. There is nothing new in mind to replace it, but at least the space in my head into which something might move is not occupied by a “tenant” who refuses to pay his rent but won’t move out.
It’s not easy to make that kind of decision, and it feels in some respects like that agonised but overdue recognition that a love-affair really isn’t going to get anywhere.
Sorry about the mixed metaphors. Perhaps I needed to make a clean sweep of them also.