MJ Walters

Facebook - yikes!

I ummed. I ahhed. Then I did it. I joined Facebook.

I have strong mixed feelings about doing this. Working in IT, I'm as aware as anyone of the myriad of databases that hold our personal data - shopping preferences, bank statements, browser histories, credit histories, mobile phone logs, email logs - and as many times as people tell us our data will only be used for [whatever] purpose, it's still there. And forever if companies don't do as they should and stick to data protection policies.

And I'm uncomfortable with the way it walls off a large part of the Internet to a privately-funded enclave through which, at some point, investors are going to want to make some serious money. All  of that personal data will be there to lure us with marketing bait.

On the other hand, everyone is doing it, and I would love to try it :-) I feel like a starved child, my face against the expensive restaurant window glass, watching fat couples in evening dress eating chicken and dribbling juice down their chins.

But enough of my fantasies.

Facebook - I am yours! Let's see if you are worth the sacrifice...

A new journal

I have been keeping a journal on and off for 15 years, but it took a more serious turn in 2004 when I explored psychotherapy as a way to get through a period of stuckness in my life. I started writing down my dreams and analysing them - beginning a conversation with my unconscious that continues today.

When I started doing creative writing courses with the Open University, the first thing I learnt was to keep a journal of fragments, snippets and details to use in my writing. This was confusing - I already had a journal that worked very well for me, and when I started putting my writing in there too it got confused and muddled. So I started a second book, a parallel journal for creative writing.

Pretty soon I got annoyed at lugging these two A4 journals around everywhere. I tried leaving one at home, both at home, smaller journals, going back to one journal, and expanding up to three journals at one point. When the courses ended I had an A4 journal for my current piece of work and an A5 journal for my daily emotional work.

So why am I posting this?

I have changed things again. It's been a full-on couple of months with a new baby and lack of sleep, but my unconscious has been chugging away in the background trying to work out how to move forward now that I have no courses and no deadlines. I've changed the rules of engagement with my A4 'creative work' notebook. It's going to be more 'da Vinci', more sketchy, more free-form. I'm going to care less what I put in it, so I can make more creative mistakes. I'm going to stick more things in, use more colour, and generally try new things with it.

Not so different? For me this is a radical change. It's a change of attitude as much as anything. A journal is just a journal until something is put into it. And so what if I want to learn to draw at 36-years-old...? If not now, when?!

Incremental life changes

I have just finished reading a book that has knocked me off my axis by a couple of degrees: Art and Fear, by Bayles/Orland. That doesn't happen very often. I need to absorb some new information...!

Artist, designer, craftsman - part 2

I haven't been able to let this go. I felt there was something else in there that I wasn't quite getting...

The original problem I was exploring was this: what are the differences and similarities between artists, craftspeople, and designers? I was confused at my desires to be all of these things, but when I leave out the artist I am not satisfied. Why doesn't making software fulfil me in the same way writing a story does?

I think I have found an answer that works for me. Something can be beautifully designed, amazingly engineered, perfectly crafted, and yet not be artistic. The magic ingredient is self-expression, or symbolism. There are extra layers of meaning to a work of art.

A Mac is a beautifully designed object, but is not a work of art.

A Mac with a hammer through the screen, mounted on my wall, is art. It is art because you can interpret it, you can put meaning on it, you can wonder at what I was intending by it and what it means in relation to other cultural objects. The artist has given it meaning. It is one-of-a-kind, from my individual unconscious with some extra work to polish it up.

I'll leave copies of art for another day :-)

So the things about my creative work that I love are the meaning I put into it, what I learnt about myself from making it, and the infinite meanings that can be found in it (which I didn't intend!) when it emerges blinking into the light of shared culture.

An artist has to be a designer, or craftsperson, or engineer. But it doesn't have to be the case the other way around.

So - how can I be more the artist?