creative work

today is Sunday and it's exactly 2 weeks since I wrote a post saying that I was having an unproductive day, and went on to write about David Foster Wallace. Last Sunday I couldn't write that, because there was some work I had to do, but this week, having just finished my latest work project last Friday, I'm having a couple of days off, so I can have an unproductive day.....but maybe 'unproductive' is the wrong word.

unproductive is a negative word ||| is spending time partaking of freedom of action and expression and the kind of disinterested (which doesn't mean uninteresting) pursuit of knowledge that is only possible when one is free to browse and sample - is that unproductive? Some of the best - and most valuable, in terms of monetary value and otherwise - work, is produced from that position. 

we call them 'works' of art or literature or music, but i wonder whether that's the right word. in any case, it's understood that this use of the word 'work' is different from its use related to what most of us do to make money. 

and there's no accountability for this kind of work. no one is going to keep tabs on your creative productivity or assess you against KPIs. nobody can really be your boss or your supervisor with this kind of work, because creative work is your own personal work. no one else is an expert in it. no one else knows what you're supposed to do. 

what we consume when we're not working, is other peoples' work - artists and sports-people of all kinds. that disjunction between what the artist is doing - their work - and how we perceive it - our enjoyment - is matched by a disjunction on their part, actually. that's the strange thing about creativity....the output corresponds to something within and resonates with it, but it's not a straightforward correspondence. The best example I can think of to explain this in terms of my own experience, is playing guitar. Writing is not the best example because, with writing, it's easy to imagination a direct correspondence between the output and what lies within...like, I'm expressing in my writing the issues and ideas that are on my mind. 

but with playing guitar, I found that, after I had learnt and practiced a lot, I got to a point where I could just play extempore, and improvise. And it felt really good to do that. What I was playing corresponded with something within me. 

introducing language adds another dimension, because then I think there's more of a correspondence between the artist and the reader/viewer/listener. There will be differences of course. If I write a song, that song won't mean exactly the same thing to a listener as it does to me, but I have more control over the meaning that they make from it than if it was just an instrumental piece. It would be interesting if we could somehow study this - if we could look at the work of, say, Beethoven, and see if there is a correspondence between his inner state in composing his music and the inner state evoked in the listener.