I spend approximately 90% of my non-sleeping hours in collaboration or conversation with others. From the moment I wake up and say good morning to my partner, I enter into almost hourly context switching – different people, different problems, different conversations. Then, when evening descends, it’s back to dinner-table conversations with loved ones before a final good night and preparing for doing it all over again tomorrow.
As my day job has progressed from maker to manager, the way I split my time (and the resulting way my attention has had to adapt) has not been optimal for the art practice or deep thinking. In the last few years, alone-days have evolved as a circuit-breaker to try to help me adapt to straddling the art and non-art world which I inhabit. They are a stand-in for what I’ve lost in the process of ‘advancing’ my software design career – solitude.
It’s not a very creative term for it, but alone days are literally that – an entire day that I spend alone and disconnected from technology. Armed with a simple pen, notebook and perhaps a magazine or novel, alone days provide an immediate and short-lived space to let the mind wander. They are days that involve me reflecting on and synthesising the last few months of focus and effort. What did I learn? What did I enjoy? What should I try to avoid repeating? What should I do more of? They are critical not only to my mental health, but for re-focusing my attention on what’s important for the coming few months. Without these alone days, it’s easy to drift; to become opportunistic rather than intentional about how I spend my one, precious, unrecoverable resource – time.
In a world that is shouting endless slogans, truths and non-truths, one where media companies and individuals are constantly vying for and trying to commercialise my attention, alone-days have become my defence mechanism. I don’t know if it’ll be sustainable or, as the world continues to hyperbolise and intensify it’s demand on my attention, I’ll need more of them. But, right now, they actively create a space for that ever-elusive state of silence. It’s only through quieting the world that I can start to hear the thoughts that are charging through my own mind – it turns out that, for the artist, they’re the most important ones. It’s the voice that others want from us and are too busy to listen to for themselves.