Food Stuff Consumption And Miscellany

Friday, December 28, 2007

slice of mushroom pizza
lg coffee (light/sweet) 20 fl. oz.
1 breakfast sausage dog (mustard)
1 cheese bratwurst dog (mustard)
1 "Bon Appetit" apple danish (net wt. 5 oz.)
2 pints of lager
can of orange soda (12 fl. oz.) same location
2 bottles of lager (12 fl. oz. each) diff. location
sm amount of coffee (light/sweet)
1 tunafish/cheddar cheese on pumpernickel-rye bread sandwich (tomato/onion)
1 roast chicken/bacon/provolone cheese on pumpernickel-rye bread sandwich (pesto/mayonaise)
bottle of water (16.9 fl. oz.)
3/4 pack of cigarettes


upcoming studio equipment purchases:

1 single burner hot plate
1 double-boiler pot


Art Obsessions

For artists to obsess about their art is desirable but also troubling. To obsess is to feeled pulled about by one's thoughts, agitated, distracted, and separated from other life matters of vital importance. To obsess too virulently is to walk alone in anxiety. But to obsess too little is to wall oneself off from one's own creativity. Maintaining awareness of this distinction is an artist's everlasting duty. Artists must obsess, but they must also manufacture their own shutdown systems, their own ways of giving the brain a rest.

"The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them." W. Somerset Maugham

"I wear myself out trying to render the orange trees so that they're not stiff but like those I saw by Botticelli in Florence. It's a dream that won't come true." Berthe Morisot

"The cypresses are always occupying my thoughts." Vincent van Gogh

"Wherever I go, I collect sand." Connie Zehr

"A mind too active is no mind at all." Theodore Roethke


For Art to come into existence, it must be obsessed about. Therefore I must cultivate a positive obsessiveness. But obsession is a dangerous neccessity. I will monitor my obsessiveness and strive to manage my anxieties: I want to obsess because I am working deeply, not because I am worrying myself to death.

excerpted from Affirmations For Artists by Eric Maisel
copyright 1996
published by G.P. Putnam's Sons (NYC)