NEW ART MOVEMENT BORN HERE AND NOW!

Heh. I've just created a new art movement.

So far I'm the only member. I don't mind if I remain the only member but in case anyone wants to join, here is the manifesto. If I, the founder, should fail to stick to it, then the movement will automatically self-destruct. Dissolve like sugar in hot coffee.

7ism MANIFESTO 

I hereby announce the birth of a new art movement. I name it 7ism.

The aim of 7ism is the creation of Complete and Wonderful artworks, in any medium, within the time frame of seven days, no less and no more, in a continuous procession of seven day periods, ad infinitum.

Complete = Finished to the best of the creator's ability.

Wonderful= Full of Wonder. Unexpected.

To Wonder= Not know. Reflect upon.

The reasonable objection that Wonderful artworks cannot always be created in seven days is not relevant because this movement does not pretend to address all art and all artists but only those multi-faceted, undisciplined ones who, like myself, find it very difficult to:

a) Finish within a reasonable time what I start .

b) Choose which of my many projects and interests to prioritise.

c) Avoid the frustration and guilt of accumulating un-achieved goals.

Setting short fixed time-frames will encourage sustained attention to one goal at a time, provide the satisfaction of seeing it achieved, and the motivation for moving on immediately to the next (perhaps similar, perhaps very different) seven-day goal.

Joining the 7ism movement requires members to note the day and time they will have to complete the first task they've chosen. 

I will embark on my first 7istic slice tomorrow and will report on my progress.

If you are joining, please say so below and on your blog if you have one, and in a week report on the results of your first 7ism experience. Heh!

 

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GUILT PURSUED

The thoughtful comments to the last post here and at my main blog are forcing me to look further into this murky topic. Having established that what my own particular guilt-harpy keeps harping about is that I'm guilty of Squandering My Gifts and Not Living Up to My Potential the logical next question is: what exactly are these gifts or potential which I'm supposedly not living up to? Do they exist at all or are they yet another mirage? Another false concept plugged into my brain by the competitive, egocentric, celebrity-obsessed culture we live in? 

Well, you know, maybe. But I don't think so. What I think, what I know gut-wise, is that I really do have gifts I'm not using. It's not vanity or arrogance to say so because gifts are gifts and the real reason why the exasperating little guilt-bug keeps buzzing around me is because it knows that I know that I'm built to fly but settle for crawling - I crawl very well but that ain't flying - and I'm designed to burn bright but settle for flickering, a flicker flicker here, a flicker there. 

You may say ah, but that's what we are: crawling, flickering creatures, doing our best against all the odds. Well if that's what you'll say, I'll have to disagree. Because what I really know down in my deepest of deep guts is that many of us have a locked cellar full of unused gifts - or maybe just one unused gift. It's not a thing, not even a talent, but a degree of feeling. It doesn't necessarily mean achievement or success in worldly terms. It means being willing to risk flying, Icarus-like.

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NOT ONE-TRACK-MINDED

One-track-minded people are those who achieve things - sometimes great things, sometimes terrible things. They are the ones you hear about because they'll have discovered something momentous or solved a problem nobody's ever solved or gone spectacularly insane or committed some particularly atrocious crime. Their locomotive brain drives them relentlessly along that one track they've chosen and doesn't stop at all the little stations along the way to have a coffee and a look around.

I am not one-track-minded, as my record shows. But I've always thought I should/would/could be if only I...um...stuck to one track. Oh yes, for short periods of time I can enter that zone where it's always four in the morning and breakfast is at nine pm and the outside world is really really outside and the mind is totally focused on the idea, the task, the problem. It's a marvellous zone to be in, exciting, challenging, even if it's totally obsessive and egocentric, shutting out anything and anyone who is a distraction. But I can't stay there, distractions rush in like noisy children, new tracks appear out of the blue - which one to follow? It's a fairground out there, irresistible and irrelevant distractions all over the place.

Know what I mean?

Anyway, I'll get back to La Vie en Rosé very shortly as soon as the deck is cleared of other unfinished business. Meanwhile my non-winning comic strip, along with other non-winners, is at Forbidden Planet, and there's a plan afoot to collectively publish a book of the non-winning graphic entries, a kind of Salon des Refusés. You can see some of the other entries on flickr here. Any Londoners interested in comics (ie sequential art: more sophisticated title) are very welcome to attend the next forum of Laydeez Do Comics on Monday 30th November, 6:30pm, details on their website. I'll be doing a short (10 minute) visual presentation there.

I've made a new section to post my POEMPICTURES . I was inspired by this new site.

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