Survival Creativity: Return to Pencil and Paper
Tara Donovan Haze, (Stacked Clear Plastic Drinking Straws)
Luis Buñuel’s daughter once said he never would have had a creative outlet without the invention of film. (I think the interview is part of the Phantom of Liberty DVD extras.) But he wasn’t just lucky to be alive in the era of filmmaking — he was lucky to afford a camera, to find collaborators who didn’t bail on him, to have the time to make a picture.
Those are luxuries that many of us can’t dream of, even in the era of Flip video and desktop editing. True, you can fake a student ID, borrow equipment and use FinalCutPro for free. But the human capital, the coordination, the time, the planning. The depending on other people. It’s not that easy. You can’t rely on any outcome. There’s nothing a creative person can rely on more than a pencil and paper.
If you are enslaved to expensive tools, you cannot be creative in a down economy.
When everything is unprecedented, nothing can be relied on, nuclear holocaust seems in no way outside the bounds of possibility, we might one day wheelbarrow a stack of bills to buy a coffee, and some of the sanest among us are stockpiling soup cans — nothing is as critical as the cost-free transfer of ideas from brain to paper.
Survival Creativity.
If your tools chose you, they can also choose to leave you if you can’t afford them. But everyone has access to pencil and paper. Everyone can archive their thoughts in the most basic form available.
Tara Donovan Untitled, (Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue)
Many gold medal runners come from third world countries. Not so many divers, fencers, skiers, or golfers. Why is it, other than the ease of running. No required uniforms, no required equipment. You don’t need to ask your friend, (leisure time is a scarcity too in poorer countries.) All you need to run is your own body.
In the west, we get hung up on sneakers for overpronators and iPod-plugin pedometers. In actuality, running is the sport that anyone can do — and do well with natural gift and determination…. Like writing and sketching.
The artist who needs 50 tons of steel for the next project is vulnerable to a choking of his creative talent due to grants denied and such things. The one who can make something powerful with nothing more than paper and pencil knows no matter how hard life gets, he can always create.
For writers, it’s difficult not to rely on a keyboard. No, not for want of internet or email. But for transcribing ideas as soon as they happen. As soon as I retreat to my notebooks, I get frustrated. I can’t write as fast as I think and sit and watch as the end of my sentence gets lost in the jumble of ideas I’m trying to jot down.
Cursive handwriting is understood an antiquity, but writing at all feels unnatural to a digital native. And that chicken scratch I’m guilty of, no matter how hard I practice, is largely unintelligible — even to me — after I’m finished.
“If everything we do still had to be done by hand, there would not be enough hours in the day” aregistration manager tells the BBC in an article about the “Slow death of handwriting.” More on the subject from Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey.
Modern writers are making writing more expensive. A laptop isn’t a necessity. Nor is a coffee and scone at a quiet cafe as you poach the neighborhood wifi. I should be able to write as well in a dark, cramped room in the worst neighborhood with no heat and no light. If not better than I do, say, at Starbucks on my Macbook.
Ironically, after splashing out recently on a new one, I can’t get in my proper writing form. My wrists, even after three weeks, haven’t adjusted to the new keyboard. I feel more mechanical and disconnected from the process. Sort of like it feels going through a daily routine without a good night’s sleep.
Tara Donovan Haze, Strata, 2000-2001 (Elmer’s Glue)
Michael Agger, one of my favorite tech culture reporters, (“How we read online”, “Thoreau’s Worst Nightmare”) has another provocatively titled article “Kill Your Computer” for the Big Money:
[Quicksilver] presents itself as a powerful “program launcher”—allowing you to load Web sites, find phone numbers, and e-mail files with a few keystrokes—but it’s really a philosophy. If you become adept at Quicksilver, you reach a state of wei wu wei—acting without doing. Here’s how the site puts it: “Quicksilver becomes an extension of yourself; the process fades away leaving only results.” Ohm.
This philosophy seems right to me—in my experience, the best computer is one that disappears when you are using it. Many of us who use computers all day don’t really “like” computers. We just want the box to work—i.e., get out of our way so that we can get things done. Sometimes, with your computer, it’s unclear who is serving whom. Watch as the user attends the computer during program installs, crash recoveries, and tedious system upgrades. Watch the user clean the hard disk and cure it of viruses.
I just still haven’t got a handle on this button-less touchpad and the keyboard feels just a little too smooth, too indefinite. Which is why this post is probably a little jerky to read. But maybe it is better to be ever vigilant of the device with which you engage your ideas. A reminder that one should not rely too much on it.
Forget for a moment that digital cameras, video is getting cheaper and cheaper at a higher and higher quality. For some people a $300 camera is still simply unaffordable. If the worst collapsitarian fantasies come true a camera, just $300, will seem even more decadent.
Which is why its important to preserve one’s skill with pen and paper. Worst comes to worst, you can still create.
Previously:
- Handmade Looking Writing
- Saying Yes and Hearing No
- Reading Only Devices: Why iPhone, Kindle, and Tablet PCs Might Mean Smarter Blog Comments
- Crazy Artists, Crazy Authors, and Blog Comments as a Slush Pile Unfiltered
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