life is a collage

Started reading "the forest for the trees: an editor's advice to writers" by Betsy Keener in order to prepare for a project.. or maybe I just missed writing ... What a tiring self I am living with who needs a reason for everything? Anyway, I am shocked at how much this book can apply to visual artists as much as writers. This can attest to a common foundation in all creative work. Or maybe I just see art everywhere now. My collage and assemblege instructor says the job of the artist, among many things, is to see connections between seemingly unrelated things because in the end everything is somehow related. "Life is a collage anyway," he says... he also says "collage is a painting." So life is a collage; life is a painting. What a terrifying thought.

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everyone had the same idea

Today is one of those transition days that is not quite an autumn but definitely not a summer. It is quite beautiful and fleeting. There are not many days like these and I know my days of being able to fret over the concerns of an art student are limited as youth is also fragile and fleeting. I found myself with a couple of hours before my evening drawing class... I had too many art student luggage to be mobile and walking away my angst. So I braved the NYU undergraduate crowd, grabbed a cup of earl gray and went to the Washington square park ostensibly to sketch. When drawing gave me a headache, I started reading. First I read "the book of grotesque " by Sherwood Anderson because Michael recommended it... and I realized I read this in the ninth grade and I wrote some crazy paper about the absurdity of packaging and owning a truth. That made me feel old and confused so I started reading my portable book about writing. That made me feel guilty about not writing anymore so I looked up... and saw that all around me people are reading. A dude next to me to the left is reading some course packet. He took the bench abandoned by some prelaw who read some serious blue prelaw book after whining about the LSAT on his phone while I was trying to draw. What a loser. Anyway, another dude is reading a tiny paperback... and the cute guy across the oval from me has been reading and underlining and crossing and uncrossing his leg furiously for the past hour... so he is impossible to draw. An old guy is reading a newspaper and I prefer him over another old guy who was here reading his newspaper. Two other people have read and left and so will I. To draw. Which is a choice I keep making these days. Leave the readers and draw.

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