A lot of my time this week has been spent in a state I’ve decided to call “Untangling", which I will define as:
un·tan·gle
verb
gerund or present participle: untangling
1. to be deep in the editing process of a complex or particularly frustrating project, requiring one to tease out awkward clumps and breaks and tangents that inhibit the smooth progression and clear thesis of the final product. this is often an emotionally or even physically taxing process akin to flow state, but with a less successful connotation.
Since work has been so painfully slow this YTD, I’ve tried to fill my days with useful and/or enjoyable tasks such as: updating my website (useful), learning the piano (enjoyable), finally getting my Oregon State Driver’s License (useful), giving myself another tattoo (enjoyable).
This week I spent a considerable number of hours trying to write a song, because songwriting is an art form I’d never even dreamed of attempting, and I was curious to see if I could pull it off. And folks, the jury is still out!
I was working on it obsessively for probably three days. We’re talking full on untangling mode - writing and rewriting and watching youtube videos on chord progressions and googling “what is a pre-chorus” and probably annoying the hell out of my neighbors. Now I am in the phase where I hate literally every part of it except the bridge and even that is a little angsty for my comfort. You will likely never hear the song but the fact that I’m trying this at all is a little ridiculous and funny so of course I wanted to share.
It seems that this year I’ve been hell-bent on trying things I know I’m going to be bad at (snowboarding, for one). Some part of me is just begging to be humbled, and in my boredom I’ve felt more than happy to oblige. Maybe it makes photographing easier, because comparatively, at least I know I can photograph. At least I know I can hold a conversation. Or maybe it’s the opposite: my years spent learning my craft have built up too much pressure, and I’m at the point where I feel better failing at something I’m not expected to know how to do, than kind of succeeding at the one thing I should know how to do better than anything else. Maybe I’m just trying to cultivate more play and curiosity in my life, and the keyboard sits right next to the couch so really this was a pretty natural progression.
Anyways, when I got tired of that futile pursuit, I found myself bouncing back to my laptop to perform a different kind of untangling on an old project I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with. Old projects require a special kind of untangling, because instead of creating something bad and realizing it’s bad as you go, you’re returning to a problem you thought was all smoothed out and shiny, only to find a nest of knots you didn’t see before. All of a sudden this isn’t adding up, and that needs to go over there, and good god how many people looked at this before and still failed to catch this glaring grammatical error?? It’s obviously satisfying to run some oil through the ends and methodically pull apart each snag, but at the end of the day you’re still just combing through knots.
That’s what these slow periods are for I guess. In busier times, I might spot that rogue piece of gum lodged in an otherwise healthy head of hair, and decide to just shave the whole thing.
I’ll leave you there before this metaphor goes any further off the rails. Hope your Saturday was… well conditioned?
Jordan