I made reference to an "artistic drought" on my Eight Solid State infodump page. From about March to June 2020, I just couldn't make any art. I couldn't write music, I couldn't draw, I couldn't write anything more complicated than a tweet... well, more accurately, I COULD do those things, but I couldn't MAKE MYSELF do those things. I remember trying once; in May, I tried writing a song, but it never got beyond a chord progression. I felt I'd used and used and overused that chord into oblivion and nothing would be served by continuing. I tried to draw at several points during that time, but that year's sketchbook only displays partially-drawn manga faces and a morass of erased lines.
Mostly I was angry at myself for not quarantining with the rest of society. People on tumblr were turning out pages and pages of art that they'd finally found the time to do, and someone on twitter even turned it into its own hashtag, #quarantineArt. Meanwhile, what was I doing? Working. I was what they called an "essential worker", and there was absolutely no way I could do my work at home (given the type of work I was doing, the kind of paper output I had to deal with, I tend to agree with that). But, at the same time, I could PRETEND I was quarantining because of my uneven workload. They underestimated my abilities and hired 2 additional temps to do the same work, which meant that we breezed through the authorisations in a couple hours. I frequently had no work to do, so either I sat there in my office for up to 3 hours with nothing to do, got turned back toward the door when I arrived in the morning, or was rung up and told not to come in because there was nothing to do. I was technically not quarantining, so I had no reason to join the hashtag. I used to be a real "all or nothing" sort of person. Either I would start at the beginning with a real concerted effort, or I wouldn't participate at all. This is still something I'm trying to unlearn, but it made me feel like anything creative should have been done immediately on day 1 and any attempt at creativity from this point onward would be nothing more than a waste of time.
Honestly, I don't remember writing ANY of the songs on Eight Solid State. I don't know where they came from, I don't know what inspired me to make any of them. To this day, the songs from that album sound sterile to me; as though they carry no artistic weight of any kind. Superficially, they sound good, but at the end of the day, that's all they do. The only song I have any memory at all of writing is "Two Weeks' Notice".
I think that's what finally watered the drought; coronaquitting my job. The only thing that was good about that time was that I felt human. And, that's no small feat, I might add; I felt as though I was genuinely contributing to society by working there, I felt as though I had a purpose for the first time since I "graduated" high school. But, I remember having a protracted argument with myself over whether I wanted to quit my job because I was afraid of contracting COVID, or if I just wanted more spare time to sit at home and play Doom. I don't know whether it was the right choice or not, but I did eventually choose.
Anyway, that's what I meant by "artistic drought." Despite not joining the quarantine art tag, I did participate in inktober that year.
--2 July 2024--