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a body thats all surface
Feb. 7th, 2025 09:55 pmhttps://www.smallpresstraffic.org/the-back-room-article/a-body-thats-all-surface
I keep scrap paper and a pencil on a shelf by the shower because my thoughts most often cohere while bathing. It is not possible to carry these ideas out within my body. I’ve attempted to memorize them, but no. I take one of the papers, stick it to the steam-adhesive wall, and write what arrives. The shower seems to be for external maintenance but is more crucially for looking inward. It would be nice if thinking could be done more often while dry. That there are sometimes dry occasions for thought — such as while riding my bicycle in traffic, or kneading dough for my challahs, or not paying perfect attention to someone who is speaking to me — indicates that ideas come best when it is inconvenient to write them down, in the middle of things. I’m grateful that putting a pencil and paper in the bathroom didn’t ruin the shower’s generative properties. Once I’m out I peel my damp notes off the wall and put them in a pile where they dry in rippled waveforms upon which my handwriting looks especially beautiful and illegible. Then I type them into a hopeful cloud document. I have noticed that no matter my purported subject, one of these notes always reads
Sometimes I think in words and sometimes I think in images.
good vs bad art
I keep scrap paper and a pencil on a shelf by the shower because my thoughts most often cohere while bathing. It is not possible to carry these ideas out within my body. I’ve attempted to memorize them, but no. I take one of the papers, stick it to the steam-adhesive wall, and write what arrives. The shower seems to be for external maintenance but is more crucially for looking inward. It would be nice if thinking could be done more often while dry. That there are sometimes dry occasions for thought — such as while riding my bicycle in traffic, or kneading dough for my challahs, or not paying perfect attention to someone who is speaking to me — indicates that ideas come best when it is inconvenient to write them down, in the middle of things. I’m grateful that putting a pencil and paper in the bathroom didn’t ruin the shower’s generative properties. Once I’m out I peel my damp notes off the wall and put them in a pile where they dry in rippled waveforms upon which my handwriting looks especially beautiful and illegible. Then I type them into a hopeful cloud document. I have noticed that no matter my purported subject, one of these notes always reads
Sometimes I think in words and sometimes I think in images.
good vs bad art
