That post on apophenia got me thinking about my "creative environment" and I'm not sure I really have one. The last major project I completed was my master's thesis, and most of that was written on my laptop in a basement apartment while my then boyfriend/now fiance was playing Final Fantasy. When I got really into that paper, it was like I couldn't stop writing no matter where I was. Even if I had ten minutes before class, I would pop into the computer lab to pound out a few more sentences of whatever paragraph I was forming. It just never seemed to stop flowing within my head.
For my other major projects like poetry sequences and elegant bits of physics, I remember the computer screens sometimes, but more often I remember the head space I created instead of the physical space I wrote in. Sometimes the physical space around the computer was enjoyable, like my summer dorm room in Cavanaugh, but more often than not it was a cold, gray, fluorescent lit alcove in a science lab. Which doesn't make any sense, because when I'm cold I shut down.
It's been cold and rainy here in Philly, and since the first warm spell they turned off all the heat at school. Which means that lately I've kept a beaker of boiling water on a hot plate next to my keyboard to keep my hands from freezing. Yet another reason to teach science: the easy availability of miniature space heaters and humidifiers.
No comments:
Post a Comment