Million Dollar Idea #179

Hot Dog / Cold Dog

Everyone: Hey, Dave! Tell us what we should like/dislike, please!

Me: OK

Hot Dog 
Haw-lin

A "mood wall" is something a lot of designers and artists maintain in some form or another. It's just a collection of interesting photos, objects, or whatever has caught their eye and been stuck on a wall. They either draw direct inspiration from them or just use them to work out a general mood they are hoping to convey in a work or a series of works. I have always had something like this in my studio just as a reminder of what has been exciting me aesthetically.

I found a website created by a couple of guys who decided to have their "mood wall" on the internet for all to see. They definitely have a specific aesthetic view point and the photos fall into a few different categories: design/art, clothes/fashion, interesting looking people, quarries/rock formations, and naked ladies. The last one makes the site unsuitable to be viewed at work.

It's updated regularly and is a good way to pass some time and treat your eyes without any words to get in the way. There's no information on any of the photos (although I do occasionally find photos that have been plucked from other websites I frequent) and this adds to the allure. Purely visual.

http://haw-lin.com/

Cold Dog

Dust / Sand

Once in a while, usually in spring, the winds whip across Mongolia and Northern China stirring up the dessert sands. The sand is then caught up in the prevailing eastwardly winds and eventually drifts across Japan. This week we had a rare fall visit from a cloud of super-fine dust which, once inhaled, is as unpleasant as you imagine it would be.

Add to that, there is heavy construction going on where I work. They are tearing down concrete walls and rebuilding more earthquake-resistant ones. A good idea since we had a big earthquake a few years back, but it has filled the air with pulverized concrete dust. Not to mention the futility of holding a conversation class over the sound of jackhammers.

Add to that, I have had a string of colds that have turned into bronchitis this year.

Add to that, multiple other daily airborne attackers I face as a weakling nerd.

Bad times for my respiratory system. 

I've Got a Reason

The ridiculous idea that I could move to Japan, get a job that pays adult wages, have a studio and make art making the center of my life again is seeming slightly less ridiculous these days. Pictured above is my studio overlooking Nagasaki harbour. It's pretty much in what you'd call downtown. I feel a bit more in the mix than I did when I just walked back and forth between work and home - both in residential neighbourhoods that are shut down after six o'clock. Now I also take the bus downtown almost every day!

Nailing down reliable places to buy wood, canvas, paint, etc. is turning out to be a challenge. Nagasaki has no real art supply store so I've turned to the internet. It's been hit or miss in terms of quality but I hope I'll find that one decent place and stock up.

I hope to have an artist site up soon (no really) to show off what I've been doing, which is nothing worth showing so far. If you are keeping track, that will make a forth semi-neglected website. A mini internet empire of procrastination.

The Fog

It's a 40/60 split between feeling sharp and dull.

My mind can feel clear and focussed. I can articulate long, complex thoughts. I can interject witticisms into a conversation faster than I can think. Did I say that? Wow! I'm clever. On some days I feel, while maybe not like the smartest man in the world, at least like his wise-cracking sidekick. I am living up to my potential. Using all my gifts with deftness and agility.

At other times, a fog rolls in and my thoughts are muddled. Conversing is a chore. I make tired jokes just to fill the gaps left by my inability to say anything of remote interest. I'm just watching the clock, marking time until it lifts.I just want those days to end. Watch TV and hope that I will wake up bathed in sunlight. I try not to take out my frustrations, my disappointment in my failure to get out of mental first gear on those around me. Sharing makes it worse. I feel like half a person, semi comatose, throwing away days from the ever-diminishing pile of my allotted days on earth.

Since I can remember, I've moved back and forth between these two states: control and frustration. As a teenager I came up with the image of a smudged pencil line to represent the less- than -prime- self feeling. It's not a black hole of despair, it's nothing so dramatic - just a dirty smudge.

The sharp days, however, are seldom put to good use. If I can muster the discipline to use those days in the most constructive way I can, I think the foggy days will feel less like one more unproductive step towards the grave and perhaps more like a well deserved break, a downshift from top gear, shade from the bright glare of my full potential.

You take the good. You take the bad. You take them both and there you have it.