Up Late

Focus

Good film makers create visual drama when they “pull focus” on a figure in the foreground letting the background blurr or visa versa. Pulling focus forces the viewer’s attention to change from one subject to another. The past few weeks have been a trying time and have left me feeling blurred. Out of focus.

Somewhere in the back of the creative cavern of my mind, where I plan and design the artistic projects and their “to do” lists, I have been thinking about focus. F-O-C-U-S. It seems to be an integral part of what actors and musicians call “The Hunger” or “The Fire”. That drive and fortitude that keeps us going when the odds as usual are against our success. Focus is another name for that energy.

Perhaps when an artist looses “The Fire” they’ve simply lost their focus. Having that fire for me is what keeps me going beyond just punching the button and working for the money. It is a hunger for excellence. It is not so much about ego, or an “I have to be the best” thing. It is a striving to experience the combined rush of giving it my all and the challenge of seeing a work completed that is as good as I can make it. Well maybe there is a little bit of “watch this” involved. Maybe.

The Fire burns in artists to push us beyond the practical nature of graphics and into realms of imaginative and the truly creative. Somewhere in me there has always been a post-it with these words “Keep the Fire burning” It is The Fire that also gives me strength to reach goals. Like a runner without a finish line eventually there’s no point and we’d just stop running. Age brings experience and strength to the creative “muscle”. My creative part is like a marathon runner, or weight lifter. Lean and mean. It has been well trained like any pro athlete. But. Age has also brought a comfort level that is something of a dampener to The Fire. If one gets too comfortable there’s no need to work out so much or to continue to feed the flame. Age says, “Hey, don’t sweat it. You paid your dues. What are you doing working so hard, relax. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone. That’s good enough.” As the saying goes, “Good is often the enemy of Best”. Age brings confidence but also the slow creep of mediocrity. “Good enough” is like a drizzling rain to The Fire of creativity and excellence. It can rip the soul right out of a work of art faster than anything.

Most artists know there is a sister to that rain. It is more like a rising flood of inky black water. Depression. Early on I fought this monster and eventually found a pattern. I would work on a painting struggling to get it right, emotions would peak with the finished work and as I stopped to admire the completed work I would slowly begin a free fall into despair. I began to realize how the depression seemed to follow each work of art. And that it was simply a recoil from the high of the satisfaction with the completed work of art. At the time I was learning so much on each piece that I was thrilled with how good it looked compared with the last one especially. The joy was immense and so was the following depression. There may have been some sleep deprivation and hormones involved as well but the pattern was clear after a while. Each time I would pause less and less between works until the valleys got shallower and the falls not so far or so deep. No, I didn’t quit learning or reaching in my craft but I was developing the emotional stability to be a professional artist. It was becoming more of a job. Not drudgery but a career I could sink all my teeth into.

Focus. What has me thinking about focus and why after all this time? I’m feeling my creativity is scattering, blurring, spreading too thin. Thin is a bad analogy because that implies less when actually there is more creativity available-too much at once it seems and I’ve become too adapted to turning on a dime with multitasking. Working in Newspapers and Commercial Art I picked that ability up fairly easily and honed it over the years. My position now is a multitasking multi-project work week as well so I am well suited for that part of it. Being spider quick with ideas is advantageous. Not that I’m spider quick But I strive to be of assistance as fast as I humanly and creatively can be. As do my colleges. This dodge ball mentality though has given me a slightly negative side effect. The ability to focus as intently as I would wish is lessened. This is not a loss of focus as in “Hubble Space Telescope major fix required”. There are simply goals I have set that looking at my state and as a marathon runner I see where I am “physically” and I know what I have to do to get where I need to be before the race. The focus I need is to go from pen light to laser. I don’t just want to burn ants with a magnifying glass. I want to cut steel into Art Nuevo.

I know this may seem trivial and even boring maybe, but in a way, writing this blog is part of the process of focusing. The daily tasks we need to do, the maintenance of life, is my least favorite part of life. Sometimes I wonder why there is so much maintenance involved in life but we’ve all got our pet peeves. Working on boring things gives us a little time to focus mentally I guess. Chores must be done unless we’re super rich and if you are then please send someone over to clean up my garage so I can get down to Focusing.