I wrote my first poem in over two years yesterday. This led me to browse through my blog only to discover that the last real post was from over a month ago and the last bit of theory written over a year ago. For a blog ostensibly about the theoretical aspects of design, that is a bit less than ideal.
This is curious to me as I have written my whole life, in one form or another. To find myself in a place where I am not writing feels odd. I have been taking a lot in, expanding my horizons with new books and blogs, but the creative impulse around writing has not shown up strongly, if at all, for quite some time. The tapering off of the writing began about a year ago when, show after show after show fell through for one reason or another, most often economic. Had I been paying closer attention I should have seen the recession much earlier than most. But then hindsight is 20/20.
So much of my blog was as a process blog and when the process began to falter through producers running out of money, the blog ceased to hold much weight for me. I was not interested in chronicling the non-existent projects of now former producers so I was left with no there there upon which the writing could hold. Talking about upcoming projects that may well dematerialize seemed futile.
I was originally interested in theoretical discourses, but found the lack of engagement by other artists to be a little off putting. I began to feel that I was writing the blog equivalent of that zen koan about trees falling in the woods. Not that I didn’t have readers, but it was the lack of commenters that caused things to really wind down.
What is interesting is that in the last several months I have discovered a new depth and sophistication to my lighting work but have not been putting word to screen about it much since the overall momentum of the writing has been lost. The dance work I have done so far this year has been pleasing to me and my theatre work very much so.
I just got back from LA where I actually did some interesting work translating a show from a dance venue into a Rock&Roll venue. It was both technically and artistically challenging and the results were as good as could be expected under the circumstance. Later this week I begin tech for The Floating Lightbulb. While the lighting demands for this play are slim I think the result will be quite nice. The people are great, from the artistic team to the production staff at the theatre, so I am feeling good about the next stretch of time.
I don’t know if the writing impulse will return or if the tone and focus of this blog will change. Right now I am just becoming OK with not writing, not putting any pressure on my self to do this( I started because it was fun after all) and seeing where, if anywhere my writing chooses to go.
I know what you mean, in terms of writing falling away.
There are a number of your posts that I’ve wanted to comment on, but I barely have enough time to read blogs, much less reply to them (as is, if this theatre didn’t have wifi, and if the director weren’t running acting notes right now, I wouldn’t be writing this).
It’s not that I don’t want to be writing (I’m in the middle of writing two play scripts, one of which really should have been finished last year) but there are so many other things that need doing.
I find myself working so much that anytime I’m not working I’m simply exhausted. But, also like you, I’ve been really satisfied with my design work over the last few months; it’s some of the best I’ve done.