Making Sense of Silence
In between fashion weeks, there is this lull. A deafening silence from the big players and fashion influencers. They hibernate until January comes. I’ve been hibernating as well, I’ve tried to take some well-needed rest and have been mostly trying to finish up the second issue of Fashion Review so it can be printed in time (still time to get your copy by the way!).
And then this part of my brain just refuses to shut up: what do you have to show for people after you’re done resting?
It’s a rather toxic relationship I have with resting, still, after almost 7 years of battling it, the thought that everything I do needs to make sense still exists, sometimes rather loudly. I suppose this is an artist's curse, because our lives are not promised, there isn’t a proper structure besides what we put in place and the rules we enforce, every single action feels like it needs to be a proponent to success, or else, bad things will happen!
Of course, the healthy idea is that resting helps you create with clarity when you start again, so in that sense, the rest, does actually serve a purpose even if you’re not actively creating.
But what if you have nothing lined up after you rest, because you’re too busy resting? Do you now have the right to panic? Now you’re spending even more time sitting idle after your period of rest, thinking and brainstorming, when you could have made things more efficient and done the thinking while you’re resting. So, the best plan of attack is to rest and then jump straight back into the production of whatever you’ve drawn up in your downtime. This saves time and gets your insecure artist life back on track the fastest.
Foolish, I know. It’s self-destructive, it’s insanity, but I can’t help but think that it’s the only way for me to move forward. Even when I rest, I have to rest ‘efficiently,’ not by optimizing my rest and with future mental clarity in mind, but to optimize what I’ll be practically able to produce after I rest, so my rest will serve as a slip road straight back to the production highway. This is me thinking out loud, and maybe sharing a rather unhinged mode of operation out loud because I am sure I am not alone on this.
So how well did I rest, you ask? It’s like I didn’t sleep a wink. I tried to make sense of the silence and was afraid of what would come after if I didn’t prepare myself for it. Now I am sitting in this post-rest lull, as I said, still dazed and exhausted because I spent too much time thinking about the next step. The current knowledge that I wasted time not resting and am now in need of more time before I can jump back into things, is as bleak as Manchester's weather.
Do with it what you will.