Rule no.0036 – Strategic Patience
from the unpublished: 4,040 Rules of Art Conduct
This post is based on responses to the previous article Rule no.12 - Things Accumulate
Rule no.0036 – Strategic Patience
It is all about patience and believe me I have spent a lot of years developing it. At this point I am thinking of it as a strategic approach, to not work in sprints but more like a lifelong marathon runner not really a marathon runner - forget running - a lifelong walkabout, at the speed of a saunter with the knowing that accumulation will do the trick all by itself. It is trustworthy. You don't have to overwork it. Which means you can be more contemplative, more internally peaceful and just move along at a slow steady constant speed and never burn yourself out and still be always at work without rushing.
This really opens some new conceptual vistas because you can take your time, think it over, spend a lot of time working things out, develop skills and be willing to take on potentially massive lifelong endeavors (like being an artist or a writer). I think about it as thinking in museum time that projects across centuries instead of seasons.
(related: Rule no.0037 – Think in Museum Time)
As artists we can get frustrated that things don’t move faster, that we cannot move faster. But it might be a better strategy to move slower, think over a longer vista of time. When you think about big museums they are not looking at the moment (although that is often included) they are looking across an entire culture or a time frame of centuries, even millennia.
As artists – seeing in that context of the big picture - we can benefit from thinking of our work in relation of the broader culture and our place in the expanse of time. We are all just a tiny piece of the whole thing. A few artists or writers will become famous as poster boys and girls, maybe even for a long time, become a part of the cannon so to speak. But only a few or else the general narrative becomes too unclear and confusing when there are too many players. As time goes by circumstances and perspectives are constantly being sifted, reduced and distilled to the narrative of a future generation not yet born. None of us has any control over any of these processes nor can we anticipate how humanity will develop or for that matter even understand how it is currently developing because we are in the middle of it.
The idea of developing 'Strategic Patience' is an interesting way of thinking. I know when I was younger, I wanted to build, build, build. Maybe it is just enthusiasm driven by impatience. But then you get worn out. Then I thought; ‘Wait a minute, I can't keep this pace up! I am going to have to change my rhythm or something’.
In the early years it is hard to realize that you can go slower if you are willing to commit to the long run and have faith that there will be a long run. Now I say, 'If you have to keep a to-do list you are doing too much.' But some would say that is a little extreme in the other direction. Still, I move slowly and peacefully through my day shifting from painting to collaging to writing and back to painting, etc. from morning to night and taking care of the documentation and the little things of daily life a bit here and a bit there. Then every once in a while, clean things up and reorganize if things start feeling a little chaotic or out of sorts.
If I hit a block in one thing I have two or three other completely different things going to switch over to. So that I am never blocked or frustrated. I just come back a little later. I think I got that idea from Picasso who was a production maniac. He took breaks from one thing like a painting by doing another thing like drawing and then came back to the painting when he felt refreshed. They say he produced six works of art a day on average from birth to his death on April 8th, 1973, at 91 years old. I was a junior in high school then. That was a lot of accumulation.
from the unpublished: 4,040 Rules of Art Conduct