The Constant Drip, Drip, Drip

Snippet of Correspondence with Nico September 13, 2022

Snippet of Correspondence with Nico September 13, 2022

I sometimes think about how many of our moments through the day are spent for free. By that I mean, the moments that we are doing nothing or nothing worthwhile when we could be creating something, making some art object, capturing wealth. I have found that there are a great many available moments that are wasted.

Our free moments are actually costing us something. Depending on our monthly expenses divided by the minutes in the day, each minute is costing us that much. There are 43,800 minutes in a month. If your monthly expenses are $4,000.00 that is a little over 9 cents a minute, it is costing you to live.

I experimented in 2019 with making asemic writings in any moment when I didn't have anything better to do or even when I was doing something else but could still draw/write/paint, like when having a conversation or watching the news. Sort of like doodling. Since I had the intention to do it, I ended up making nearly 900 works on paper over the year beyond my normal creative activity. They are all laying around here in a box. I have not tried to sell any of them but I did publish a lot of them as several books. Here are a lot of them: asemics.org

If you think about it, I have these hundreds and hundreds of drawings that I would not have otherwise made and any of them that I ever sell in the future is income from otherwise 'wasted' and uncaptured or unexploited moments from 2019. You could say it will be income out of thin air.

So, this is something interesting to contemplate.

Using this idea, for instance, you could constantly be dreaming up new lyrics or writing something or drawing something in all of those same spare moments by creating a systematic intention and commitment to doing it. Like a challenge to capture those moments that are always slipping away, slipping past us never to return.

A creative person needs a butterfly net and the cases to collect them in. A lot of the time, it can be just collecting lines that you like and then do the arrangement later. Probably you are doing this already. But, like I mentioned when you were here, you have to create the basket or the bucket to collect the constant drip, drip, drip into a document or in a sketchbook or on sheets of paper, whatever, so that everything, all the resources are accumulating in one organized place for future use. It is about getting it on paper or in a recording, or into a digital file. Documenting, privatizing and commodifying the creative atmosphere around you. That is your bag of diamonds, your provision generated from passion. This is a process for creating a self-sustaining creative lifestyle.

Getting it to market is a different thing, a separate issue that you figure out later when you are trying to figure out what you are going to do with this ever-growing accumulation of self generated resources. It is about the organized accumulation of creative production. Once people see the accumulation then a market starts to emerge and develop.

Collectors love to collect things, can be art, can be books, can be songs, ideas, rocks, anything For a collector, the collection is their art object. But you must create the things they can collect. Potential is infinite, production is limited to time, creative energy and organization.

Thanks for reading. This is a completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books and/or become a paid subscriber

Please leave a comment below! Would love to hear from you.