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I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Friday, April 13, 2018

What if?

What if the only obstacle were the work itself? If there were no external barriers, even internalized external barriers like self-doubt?  Then whatever difficulties that were there, would be difficulties inherent to the work itself. It still might be very hard work, but all problems of time, money, energy, access to materials, disappeared.

If you could get yourself to that state, then you could probably do the work and have a good time doing it.

6 comments:

Thomas Basbøll said...

Where to you place the problem of building and maintaining relationships with your peers. Is that "the work itself" or an "external barrier"?

Jonathan said...

Probably if you think of it as "oh, how will be field react to this?" as you are writing that would be external, to some extent. If you are thinking of how to reach the reader in your field effectively as part of the work, that would be more of a difficult inherent to the work itself, in the sense that writing posits an audience.

Anonymous said...

A consummation devoutly to be wished.

Thomas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Thomas said...

I think a lot of externalities sneak back into our work through the injunction to "think of the reader". We can manage it by focusing on what the reader knows. The trick is to try to forget about the power the reader also (inevitably) holds over us. It is possible to approximate that state when writing. As Cyril Connolly put it: "the human brain, once it is fully functioning, as in the making of a poem, is outside time and place and immune from sorrow."

Anonymous said...

I was actually like this before my experiences with the conglomeration of events I call "Reeducation" (my first job + my experience of the corporatized science university + very bad psychotherapy). It was very fine!