Sept. 25th to Sept 30th, Daily Practice

The following posts are copied from my notebook where they were written on site at the time and date specified

Friday, Sept. 25th
Tonight I decided to write more from self expression than for fictional purposes. At the moment, I'm having great difficulty deciding what exactly it is that I'd like to do with my life. So, I wrote down, as close to stream-of-consciousness as I could, what I want from life.
The funny thing about writing from stream of consciousness is that there are multiple levels of consciousness as I'm sure we're all discovering in this class. There's the first level with the immediate thought that says, "I want to be a teacher." Then there's the second level, the editor, who says, "But do you really want to be a teacher? Don't you really want to be an artist? Are you just saying teacher to be practical? To make money?" But as soon as I write that down, a third level of consciousness comes in to say, "Stop editing, let me say what I want now and think about it all later. This is supposed to be self expression. Or is it? Perhaps this is still self expression."
The problem is, I only wrote down that first level, those first immediate thoughts. The other layers of thought interrupted me and slowed the process of writing, though I think if I had written them down, I would have had a much more valuable piece. The tragedy seems to be that I will never be able to write as fast as I can think. Regrettably, the words you see on this page represent only about a third of what I thought in the time it took to write it.

Sarurday, Sept. 26th
Saturday morning, my 3 room mates and I are in a car heading to my home in Philadelphia. The primary function of the drive is to pick up things from home that I had forgotten when I came to school. However I could not escape the notion that what we are on road trip. Naturally when I started writing, I began with that sentence, "We are on a road trip." But as soon as I had written it, i begen critiquing it. I wrote how I didn't really think it was a road trip or at least it will be nothing like the movie bearing the same title and how all we really wanted to do was pick up stuff for the dorm and I don't even like the phrase "Raod trip" anyway. This was much more a stream of consciousness than my writing last night because eash sentence was a direct reaction to the previous one. Cleaner representation of thoughts, but worse story, and virtually no structure. Perhaps tomorrow I'll try righting more of a third person narrative. I have to start making these shorter.

Monday, Sept. 28th
Today I returned to my idea of writing from other people's perspectives. I've just spent the entire morning in the studio receiving a lesson in welding from my teacher Josh. This time I tried telling the story of what actually happened as opposed to writing the future, but still from Josh's point of view. Again I found this very difficult. not because i find it hard to empathize with people, but because I keep interrupting myself. Just when I'm falling into the "Josh groove" my "John" in my mind interrupts and criticizes the Josh in the story, making the Josh embarassed and less likely to reveal his true feelings. I find that it helps to exxagerate everything, that way even if I edit it or trim it down, it will still have an element of what was there originally.

Tuesday, Sept. 29th
Tuesday I was freaking out and decided that i wanted to switch to architecture. My head was spinning, and i couldn't think straight so I whipped out my book and started writing. This is a direct quote...
I want to switch to architecture. I just wrote it. I want to switch to Architecture. I want to make buildings. I want to learn simple, intelligent, affordable, eco friendly ways to provide shelter and surroundings. I want to be challenged. I want to be an artist. I want my skills to inform my art. I want to learn. I want to learn. I want to learn. I want to be challegnged. I want to challenge myslef to overcome obstacles. But I also need obstacles to overcome. I want to know. I want to want things. I want to discover what I want. I want to fill my head with knowledge. I want to draw and to build and to think and observe and to let go and to hold on and to put my brain to good use. I want purpose. I want to go against the grain but to do that I have to first find a grain. Why is it that the joy of creating hits me so strongly? Is it just creating? Or is it something more? I have ideas I suppose, but right now I feel uninspired. Stagnant. If I devote myself to heavily to art production then what do I make my art about? Scratch that. The fact is, just don't know what I want to do with my life. And studio's aren't helping.

I need to be more aware of what I'm thinking. And I need to listen to what I'm saying

Wednesday, Sept 30th
I just spent the day in studio with Meryl working on our welding projects. She's great. Anyway, I found it much easier to write about Meryl than other people. I wrote her thoughts as I supposed them to occur after we left eachother. I think it was so easy because Meryl always seems to say exactly whats on her mind. She so easy to read, because she reads aloud. I really enjoyed writing today. I noticed also that I created a little dialogue between my thoughts and the thoughts that I was writing for Meryl. By giving her a different attitude than my own, I created something to disagree with, and to dispute. But to dispute it I really had to examine it closely, evauluating its merit, and so on. That was my favorite part. While I'm contemplating leaving sculture and I'm getting fed up with school, Meryl is enjoying every minute of it. The more I wrote, the more I found myslef leaning towards Meryl's way of thinking. This also caused me to admire her more as a person.