Working through "it"....

On one of my recent Amazon binges, I picked up Paul Pope's 'Pulphope'. Along with being a visual feast of process/progress, the book offers itself up as a semi-philosophical manifesto onto the artists own limitations and connaissance...

I've only gotten to read a few of the passages so far but there was one in particular that I really enjoyed... and after talking to many of my peers, thought was pretty relevant to our current state of learning;

"You can't afford to only work when you feel "it". "It" is that precious quality which lets you make artwork which is better than good and sometimes "it" allows for work which is truly inspired. I learned early on, you can't rely on "it" to get you out of a mess. It is capricious and wispy, disappearing for periods at a time, sometimes only half returning, or returning for only half as long as you need it. It's also a problem to have to work without "it". That is a killer. Too much of that kind of thing will sink you into a strange kind of self-loathing, hard to describe, but which makes it hard to face yourself in the mirror. And sometimes it just inexplicably goes away. But you can get "it" to come and stay with you when you have great discipline and work hard without distractions. That is why I've always like working for three days straight, and why I built a trapdoor for "it" so it can come and go quickly when I lost the three day luxury. I find if you keep on working until "it" comes back, "it" always does eventually. It eventually gets curious and wants to see what you've been doing while it was away."

On that note, I will have some examples of my own recent rendezvous' with "it" to throw up soon...

take care.