Shelter-in-place / Focus
Much has transpired over the past few weeks.
We are in a time of change in the world - there is a growing viral pandemic, and the city of New York is expecting a shelter-in-place order in the coming days. This will mean that everyone stays put, and all the stations will most likely cease to operate going out of the city in an attempt to maintain a city-wide quarantine.
Every movement people make outside opens the possibility of viral expansion. Funny, before all of this I was looking up viruses because of a food poisoning episode from a chicken dinner, and learned about everything YouTube had to provide concerning epidemics, flus, bacteriophages, you name it. Then COVID-19 was identified in New Rochelle, NY. I was prepared! Sure, I watched a really terrifying documentary on the flu of 1918, that killed millions in every densely populated city and posed a higher risk for 25-40 year olds (imagine that). I learned that the 1918 flu was one of the factors that turned the tides of WWI. Everyone was affected. Soldiers who were already tucked in muddy trenches, trudging in perma-wet bacteria filled boots.
Meanwhile, today, Fran and I sit comfortably in a studio apartment in the financial district of NYC, taking glances out the window in amazement of how quiet and empty the streets of one of NYC’s oldest neighborhood. Fran and I were already maintaining a self-imposed shelter-in-place ordinance starting March 12. It’s almost been a week of staying indoors. It’s been tolling on my mental health, mainly because I am a creature of movement and new stimuli. I need to be mentally challenged frequently or I create problems for myself to solve. Fran seems to be doing fine.
This week we have been exploring the concept of focus.
Focus is really important. Both of us have our moments of creative scattering, which can be great for prepping the mind and exercising its mental plasticity in a lateral direction for an in-depth focused bout of creative work like writing a scene or building a backstory for a character. If you want to master a craft, however, consistent time and focus at exercising the craft is required. So you have to reallocate your usual scattered three to four activities toward the one craft you want to strengthen. Tough challenge for us scattered people, but also extremely rewarding.
Tim Gula and Moebius both used the technique of automatic drawing to exercise the part of the mind that works for you rather than against you. You know when you submit to a blankness of your mind, a spontaneous expression that your mind sees is allowed to form without repression. You learn to focus your mind’s eye through this practice. It’s a territory of your mind that is rarely connected to the real, physical world. So when you put it down on paper it becomes real, a tangible visual expression. It allows your mind the relax, letting your mind walk its inner world, and hike the neuro pathways that are already there.
You can do this with musical instruments as well. I do this with piano for example. It brings your mind back to a childlike view of things and keeps your ideas fresh, connected with the present. I can imagine that people who employ this practice find the craft enjoyably rewarding, and experience less annoyance or stress often associated with those unexpected mistakes that perfectionists like myself can feel --it can be so irritating especially if I forget to take the necessary breaks!
Watch Tim talk and show this technique in action in the Proko video below.