COLUMN The Disease of Being Busy by Omid Safi
How exactly are we supposed to examine the dark corners of our soul when we are so busy?
Staying up until 2 in the morning to meet a deadline: desperately gluing little pieces of printed paper to collage an image of Florence Nightingale with her dress, a candle, and a cutout of my face (?) to accompany a biographical report I'd written for submission to the LA County Fair. 18 years later, I am cutting and pasting tedious bits of paper together into the dark hours of the night making god knows what, something to do with psychogeography (?) and sea level rise. It is my habit that I love. When the doing becomes something for the sake of doing though, it dies a little. Maybe this is what dying a little inside means, when the heart and soul are lost. I forget that I'm alive, buried under an epic pile of tasks, so I have to remember why I am doing something, why it might be worth the hours of my life gluing, writing, sitting, that I will never get back. Then it's not about being busy and it becomes easier. It is hopefully a way in, to examine those wonderful dark corners that don't exist anywhere else.
No comments:
Post a Comment