Living in a Dream World

As a graphic designer, pretty much all the visual work I do is for others. It tends to be done with deliberation and purpose, towards a particular destination and on a fairly strict schedule. It's a journey with a map and a timetable—although it may involve occasional spontaneous side trips—and it tends to involve a whole lot of other people on the tour. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I'm actually even a traveller, or if I am the bus driver. :)

As an artist, the work I do is more often just for myself... but I find it challenging to break out of the corporate design routine and allow myself some relaxed visual playtime, to wander along an unexplored path on my own, for no real purpose and with no fixed destination in mind, just following where inspiration beckons.

(Note to all the professional fine artists out there: I'm definitely NOT saying that design is work and art is play - they each require elements of both... just that for me, the playtime part of my design work always seems to be done with one eye on the clock and one hand on the wheel.)

It occurs to me that dreams offer a great model for play in the creative process: in dreams, we seem to be able to explore the world in a completely different way. We suspend our logic and belief systems and just go where the dream takes us.

I'm pretty tired this morning, and really not all that keen to wake up completely—or to work hard at writing anything sensible or profound—so instead, today I am simply sharing a series of images from a colourful dreamtime journey, a play-time exploration from the seed of a dream-like image, a reflection of departure from the office at the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of the winter. 

Toolbox - Part 2

I may have been wrong yesterday.

But first, a little tangential information about my blogging process: sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, the churning images of my semi-conscious brain get channeled through fingers on a keyboard into semi-coherent thoughts, dancing characters on a glowing screen—the only light in a dark room—not quite penetrating sleepy eyelids. Still, sometimes the ideas seem to flow more smoothly before the sun rises, before distractions creep forth from the shadows and emerge into daylight.

Although this process generally works for me, it can be a little bit like living in a dream world, where everything seems to make perfect sense...until we wake up. There are times when I stop in my tracks an hour or two after I've posted something, my brain now brimming with new or expanded thoughts, born of more sober or prolonged reflection... and wondering if my initial ideas had quite finished "cooking" before I sent them out into the world. I mean, I do think a blog is meant to be more like a stream of consciousness than a master's thesis, but still... :)

Yesterday at 5:30 in the morning, my brain was singularly focused on the tools we choose and what they say about us. I ended the post with a thought that the most important thing might be how OFTEN we use those tools... but later in the day, my thoughts stumbled back to a more obvious and telling measure of individuality and creativity: HOW do we use the tools we have at hand, and to what end?

After all, there are those who, for whatever reason, have access to all of the finest tools... and some who, for whatever reason, have access to few or none of those tools. There are some who guard their tools jealously and others who share them freely...and those who borrow from others blithely without a thought of return.

Even the opportunity to choose the tools we have in our toolbox is not universal. My own luck and abundance of choice may have temporarily blinded me yesterday morning to the realization that not everyone has access to abundance; and that interpreting something about a person by the tools in their toolbox might be limiting.

Tangling with this realization from another angle: even if everyone had identical tools and opportunities laid out before them, the results would still be different: one might build a wild and masterful invention; another would construct something familiar, safe and useful; and yet another could spend the whole time straightening out bent nails. One might revere the contents of the toolbox so highly that they doubt their own ability to use each thing properly...even to the extent that they might lock the box up and hide it away; another might select a tool carefully, use it respectfully, clean it and put it back in its place until the next time; while yet another might hammer away with reckless brilliance—or not—before carelessly losing, breaking or dropping the tool to the ground... and some unfortunate and unhappy one might grab that same tool to break, to destroy, to obliterate.

Why do we sometimes restrict our efforts to harmless—or worse, harmful—purposes? Why is it that we can sometimes do amazing things with limited tools, while sometimes we only produce limited output with the amazing tools already at our fingertips?

Today, I say that true value lies not in the tools themselves or how often we make use of them... but in HOW we use them, in what we choose to build: in determination and imagination, followed by action, leading to positive results. 

So what's in your toolbox... and what are you building?