January 7, 2021

I've had topics written down in my Panda Planner for three days straight. I keep transposing them onto the next day. My planner is in my backpack across the room. So maybe I will talk about those topics. Maybe I won't. 

I watched the Jean-Michel Basquiat documentary the other night ("The Radiant Child"). Basquait came to New York in the late 1970s, and the doc mentions how artists then and there did everything. They painted, wrote, played in bands. It sounded really nice. Patti Smith talked about that in her book as well. She and Mapplethorpe did everything. It sounds nice. I'd like to do that. I know I can do that. But it seems like an impediment to "artistic success." To being able to get together a specific portfolio. Also, it would be nice if a bunch of people were doing it. (I was going to say "everyone" but ha. What am I talking about.) It feels risky to be taking time doing all that. Photography, painting, guitar or something. Just do it if you want to, Amy. I know. Sheesh. Whatever. 

On my walk to work, I was thinking back to that tour in the botanical garden and how they showed us the ferns that don't flower because they were around prior to the evolution of flowers. If you were able to time travel, it might be cool to go back to the blooming of the very first flower. (Although flowers probably came about so gradually that the first recognizable "flower" would look like a pink leafy gland or something.) Talk about a success. We, humans, are still enthralled by them. Putting prints of them on cool hoodies and stuff. The advent of a true blockbuster. The first plant that flowered could truly truly get it. 

I don't think the flower thing was even one of my three topics. 

Omicron variant is going crazy these days. My husband and I are going over to a friend's house for dinner. Potentially dicey. Pickups for Helen's Dead got pushed a week, otherwise I'd be on set this weekend. I've been trying to be focused and settled in my life lately, but it's hard. I feel two ways about it -- both that if you look closely everything is interesting, enough to appreciate and enjoy forever, and it feels like nothing really matters, that it will be impossible to ever be satisfied. That everything is dull with only brief peaks of worthwhile excitement. Okay, time to go.