One of my sketchbook spreads from the endless rounds of meetings last week- I'm thinking that it was from Monday's DPI meeting. After awhile though, the water pitchers tend to look the same.... people like to sit by/behind me at meetings to watch me take notes. It may *look* like doodles or not paying attention, but this is how I think, and how much more would I of retained from school if I had been allowed to do this all along- from the get go, instead of being exiled to the hall for a messy desk and unorganized notebook. I remember painstakingly recopying my notes over and over again so they looked like Linda Rovders, who was the 6th grade paradigm of neatness and order. Left to my own devices, my 7's and Z's were crossed, drawings meshed with words and my handwriting shifted dramatically. My messy desk was filled with scraps of stuff, papers, crayon bits, things I held on to for one reason or another- not that neatness isn't a virtue, but...well, I would of gone for the organized desk I think if I was allowed to keep my notes the way they were. But according to school it was wrong, and I struggled with that all the way up to college 2, where Dr. Suggs introduced us to the concept of sketchbooks as notebooks. And looking back, my first sketchbooks (the college ones, not the old sketchbooks- for I had kept drawing sketchbooks all along) were compartmentalized, timid.... lots of boxes drawn around information which was another thing I did to accommodate my notes way-back when. (boxes around notes was *also* unacceptable and I had to recopy... so was underlining and if highlighting would of been invented, that no doubt would of been as well).
But this is how I think. In pictures and words all tumbled together, and when I am drawing I am thinking and translating the information my way. I can look at this and remember the discussion, the references- and yes, the water picture. (and confession- I was pretending that I didn't know what meeting this was from, but that is a lie- I know exactly. DPI at the Mad Boar, discussing ES for the zillianth time. The supposedly 'big epiphany' of the meeting was the realization that 'everything connects'- something else I could of told you long ago.)
Everything does connect. In my mind, there are not compartments between math and science, art and history and music and cooking and ....everything. It leads into one another, intersects in the most delightful ways, and some connections I understand, some I just see, some I have yet to discover. But the all of it is there for the looking- and all you have to do is pick a string and follow it. Easy. The only danger in it is a) getting to deep into the connections and thus losing time and b) people looking at you weird when you try to seriously explain that you can connect 'Someone in the Kitchen with Dinah" to African Diaspora, Japanese marketing strategies and pre-Victorian London....and modern cartoons, though most people get that part. It all goes together in my brain...and sometimes I get all tangled up trying to explain that. And when I teach students, it is the weird bits they love to know, so I'm always tossing that in. Especially if it is surprising, generally unknown and vaguely naughty. (Or what does Walt Disney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barbie dolls have in common?) But enough of that.
Today is a day where I have to work. Yesterday I ended up with a rest day, mostly sleeping (and dreaming in Swedish with subtitles, which is strange even for me), watching tv with the manz, painting in my sketchbook (different from the thinking pages, but painting while I watch a show- how I relax the best). Napping. A bit of thinking, but nothing seriously productive- and today I need to remedy that through concentration, focus, incentive. It is almost spring break, and there is allot of ground to cover before then~
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