Pushing the Last

I've made my art post for the day, and am high on hours, but want to attempt this parcel of thoughts anyways so I don't neglect it completely.

The whole of Sunday was delicious for my brain on at least three different threads, and I hope to visit all of them eventually, but for now I focus on the things I discovered about the human spirit.

The big ideas I like to approach often involve tacking words onto concepts that are uncomfortable being defined; following where I am headed requires being open to overlaps and intersections and omissions. Even though it doesn't start the journey from wholly common ground, I open with a quote straight out of my sketchbook:

Somewhere near the heart of art is the spirit that makes what we're doing more important than heat or food or sleep. It happens on both ends, for creators and audience.
But, like anything else, this spirit can be a source of downfall and destruction as well as a source of uplift and creation. Our humanity is found in things that lift us beyond the animal here-and-now and moves us to a place of thought + ideas + imagination.
These things are difficult to say because they are not complete definitions or exclusive applications of the ideas.

What a cobble's knot to untangle.

Somewhere near the heart of art is the spirit that makes what we're doing more important than heat or food or sleep.
Most directly, this ties in with Goldworthy's comment in Rivers and Tides about not feeling the cold when he's working with icicles in the snow and the work is going well. The impulse to engage with something that has meaning, while not a basic need of subsistence (food, shelter, etc), dampens those needs. A neuroscientist could probably tell you a particular chemical is being pumped into the system disrupting biological systems. I am not an expert on such things.

But I am an expert on this feeling of being unable to let go when I have something to express. Right now, for example. If I laid down I would be exhausted. If I went to the kitchen I would be ravenous. But I am neither of those places, and many times over I would rather be here, trying to explain myself, than taking care of those things. It doesn't always happen with "explaining" things. This happens whenever I want a project to reach the next stage. I get tunnel vision, and coding or drawing or writing or knitting or sewing... all these things have the potential to be more important than eating or sleeping.

I don't believe this phenomenon is unique to art or a requirement of art, which puts me in a tricky situation as I want to make sweeping, generalizing statements. Balance this on a knife: forces more potent than instinct are involved when creature comforts are forgotten.

to be continued...