Ever Noticed...

That their stuff is S*** and your S*** is stuff?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

I understand that a lot of Occupy participants have been quoting Carlin of late, so I thought I would as well.

I have been suffering from just about the worst art block of my life. Because, partially at least, I can't stand to think of creating more stuff. Any more stuff. My rallying cry of late has been "NO MORE STUFF!" Even as I have ideas that I tinker around with how to make (in my head, mind you, because all of them require materials I would have to go buy with money I don't have), it feels like the idea should really be all that's necessary. The actual thing shouldn't need to exist. How do you make that a physical object exactly?

The overwhelmed effect is being squishily compressed by the fact that I'm hanging out with a guy who spends as much time on the internet in a day as I do in a week, or maybe more. And the internet is full of stuff. And, of even more interest to the guy, stuff about stuff. And people moving stuff around and taking referential stuff from other stuff, sometimes using a computer or a gadget to rearrange that stuff (Carlin on Gadgets also comes pretty highly reccommended). And as intellectually stimulating as his and my conversations are, the onslaught, which I know he is keeping to a minimum, is like being poked with a sharp stick. I feel like a tree snail pulling shut it's door, retreating ever further into it's shell, very much in danger of retreating so far as to lose hold on this thin branch of shared (sharable?) experience.

I did not grow up reading the newspaper or watching television. Instead my mom and I would drive the same route to school (about 10 miles) that we still drive almost everyday, listening to the same radio programs (Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Fresh Air.), which, let's face it, talk about the same things over and over again. As a result almost all of my media interactions have been those that are repeatable or repeated. I'm not using this as an excuse, but more to show that as things have entered my realm of understanding (physical things as well as ideas) they have been allowed to grow and change in a very slow, almost seasonal sense.

This new paper that we are supposed to be writing about our research kinda baffles me for these reasons. Not only do I not know what I'm really working on right now, but also I don't think about things in an automatically responsive way. I'm reading a book on art crime, but there's no chance I'm going to make work about art crime this semester, or if directly ever.

And with that, I'm off to swim.