First steps

​The first step is always the hardest when making something. I’m not sure I’ve ever made something so it could remake me as Elaine Scarry suggests, not in any conscious way anyway. In any case, I’ve spent my time today in trains and on cafes (I wrote this the wrong way round but on reflection, quite like it) trying to trick my brain into unlocking its creative juices – with mixed results. I’ve been jotting down various streams of consciousness and decided to dedicate this first day to writing.
 
I’ve often found reflecting on my work and talking about it helps shape my own understanding of where I was mentally when making it, so in some way, I can relate to Scarry.
 
After working on a text-based project late last year and after looking at your work Peter, I wanted to work with text, something that I’ve wanted to incorporate into my work more and more. With that in mind, I started the day by thinking about Scarry’s quote and theme ‘dissent’. I started writing from the word dissent and then took key words from each writing exercise to start the next. Eventually this brought me to the topic of – voice and language in a body of text.
 
So I find myself at this point, thinking about when dissent is present in a text and what a performance gives a piece of text. It’s funny that you’re looking at contemporary politicians, as it is something that came up during my writing (in the context of performance and delivery of a text).
 
This is the most exciting yet daunting point in the creative process and I can relate to your struggle – the struggle to understand, the struggle to create and the struggle to make. I think my biggest struggle will be evolving any writing into something other than a piece of text, which is where I seem to be heading.
 
*I did take some pictures to go with this post but the scribbles in my notebook seem as un-photogenic as their writer.