Mark Bittman, whose NYTimes column I read religiously, has a great article titled So Your Kitchen is Tiny. So What? While the focus of the article is on kitchens, the overall message can be said for any type of creative pursuit. It is easy to let ourselves make excuses for not creating. My favorite excuse is that I don’t really have a studio. And of course when I do, I don’t actually find it to be that useful, nor does it inspire me to be any more productive. In fact most of my major projects have been entirely conceived and accomplished without a studio. The unfortunate secret to creating is simply discipline and a little bit of elbow grease. That is all. Everything else typically falls into place.
Also of note: I love that the accompanying photo to the NYTimes article is an easy-bake oven. I clearly remember making peanut butter cookies from scratch and successfully baking them in my easy-bake. So really all one needs is a 100watt light bulb and they’re set.
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I remember copying out the text below while I was in college. It is from an introductory essay in a large coffee table book on the artwork of Barbara Kruger. It is a shade hyperbolic, yet perhaps not. In either case it amuses me. And the holidays are upon us now for better or worse.
Mental notes in the houseware department of Wal-mart. Yes. Wal-Mart. You can get anything you want at Wal-Mart. The fact that you want it already means you are already dead. Last Christmas I had an epiphany at Wal-mart. No. That’s a little grand…It was two weeks before Christmas. Each department in Wal-Mart had its own Muzak system blaring Christmas carols, and each department manager apparently, had decided to program a different medley of carols. And as you walked through Wal-Mart, these competing festive audios melted together into a completely dissonant sour, even terrifying mélange, as if Stockhausen had decided to do a Christmas album, you know something, it was perfect, it was almost art, and no one in Wal-Mart seemed to notice they were being subtly encouraged to go home and commit suicide.
This is a fantastic blog of the morning routines of famous creative types. What is most striking is that despite variations among the routines themselves, there is absolute rigor and discipline in all of them. Everyone seems to be getting up at dawn. The work seems really unbearable—which I can relate to. I never trust artists who actually enjoy what they do. Women writers especially seem to fare the worst, having to squeeze in work between diaper changes and early morning feedings.
