Thursday, January 15, 2009

Nothing

A day of nothing. My first day of nothing of 2009. I've been trying to do some backing for that song below but it's proving difficult so I'll probably forget it, for now at least.

Creating something and implementing that creation are very different, yet I seem to only want to do both at once or neither. With some art forms like films, the creation part takes hardly any time, but making the thing will take years. I can write lots of songs on paper in one day, but recording just one takes many days, so I wonder; is it better to spend time inventing ideas on paper while I've got an active mind? Or spend longer getting the results just right, making a small number of beautifully finished things? I tend to lean towards the former at the moment.

Any artist working in a "slow" format needs to answer those questions. Commercial artists often use market forces to answer. But what if the art is the most important thing? Would it have been better if Leonardo da Vinci had painted more finished paintings at the expense of the designs for inventions he could never have built?