DMI Stream of Conscious Essay

My dad (Da) always referred to “stream of conscious” as “stream of unconscious” which I think makes more sense than the former - or at least it feels like it makes more sense if that makes any sense. Writing everything on your mind can be a handy technique. I spent a year writing a full page when I woke up each day and I noticed I was having a lot of stress dreams along with grinding my teeth at night. What was I thinking about? Was it my future? Is this something that everyone in their twenties goes through? I grew tired of writing about dreams of being back in high school to take a test I did not study for and abandoned this daily journaling in favor of drawing.

My sister Maura gave me a small red book for Christmas which happens to be the exact same book I gave her. The book I gave to her is Maira Kalman’s version of The Elements of Style Illustrated - a book I actively avoided my whole life until I finally understood the grammar rules thanks to the whimsical paintings and drawings by Maira. The book my sister gave me is the exact same dimensions and color, but blank inside. Mostly blank, there is a portion of the book with lined pages in the back, and a whole section of perforated tabs for book marking books, magazines, piles of papers, writing fortune cookies to stick in those cookies when no one is looking, or whatever. I’ve been dilligently sitting down each morning to draw in the book from my sister Maura each morning no matter how late I may or may not be running (biking) to work.

Jerry Seinfeld mentioned once that he has a calendar - a huge, ginormous wall callendar - and a big red pen for tracking progress with writing. Each day he writes something, anything, ramblings, musings, all sorts of things, and gets to draw an “X” with that huge smelly sharpie in the day. The idea is to form a chain. It gets addictive and I am 25 days into it and I see the appeal. My nana kindly gave me a goofy Easterseals calendar about nature that I have hidden in a drawer, each day I get to put a big “X” on it with one of my red-ish, violet-ish pens that I never knew what to do with (can you put them in the recycling bin?). It’s satisfying to punch out a new drawing in a book my sister thoughtfully picked out for me. There was a day when I missed it and it occurred to me that does not matter as long as I draw on anything and piece it together in the book.

There is something about this process of working in a short burst each day that feels rewarding. Grabbing a hold of an idea and giving it a moment no matter where I am and looking back on all the stuff I come up with over the weeks builds connections between the ideas, new approaches, blow of steam, whatever. I find this more useful than sitting down each day to pour my guts out in a journal style book, but finding a middle ground will be useful.

Today I thought about the different kinds of play out there. The first area I spent time with is around the free-form no rules kind. In Calvin & Hobbes they often played a game called Calvin Ball, which has no apparent structure but rules are introduced every second. There is an enormous level of bureaucratic thought and self preservation in the game except winning is not an option. This afternoon I watched a ping pong match at work and marveled at the rage of the competition. Both of these are forms of play, but one has a leaning toward competition, crushing your opponent, beating them and outperforming.

I always enjoy sports and games but when it comes down to going head to head and whoop some ass I tend to get it handed to me. What’s that all about? Is losing and winning an essential part of playing games? Do we only play to win? I often play to mine. Mine for ideas, inspiration, deeper thinking, new skills, etc. I read as a kid about this basketball player who would practice without the team in a gym with the lights turned off, wearing big leather gloves, and dribble with a racket ball instead of a basketball. Why would anyone do that? How can you see the ball with the lights off not to mention touch it when you have giant gloves on? I gave it a shot in the basketball court near my house and it was next to impossible at first. I had this huge level of frustration losing the ball left and right, but slowly it began to make sense and I developed a better handle for where the ball would bounce and I could get a bit fancier with it over time eventually bouncing it around my back, between the legs, off the wall, behind the back and between the legs in reverse, etc.

The real leap came when I would switch to using the basketball. It felt like dribbling a yoga ball after bouncing that tiny blue ball in the dark for so long. I got a better feel for the handle and it made me want to begin using my other hand more. The process of messing around with the ball in a new way encouraged me to try another technique entirely. There is something in this experience of learning a small skill that gets you hungry to try another related next step. There’s an internal competition that I find much more interesting than playing against someone.

The competition between my present self with my future self is constant. Future Self says things like, “Hey, take a break and watch a movie”. Most of the time this is not in Future Self’s best interest. I have to redirect the present self to do anything else, use the time as best as possible to constantly make and think and absorb and research and learn new tricks. This is no small task when there are no shortage or boundaries for distractions at home or work or school. Finding focus is an interesting situation now. By interesting I mean annoying. Building projects and opportunities takes a ton of work that is hard to quantify, filter and focus into something real.

A few years back I began to feel sick to my stomach with TV & Netflix in particular. Clearly these suggestions are base on math, some kind of algorithmic equation of, “somebody bought or rented this movie you watched so naturally you will like it too”. No actually, these movies you suggest make no sense. I watch Steel Magnolias and liked it but I don’t want to see Beaches - what does that movie have to do with me? I like Jack Nicholson, is he in that? I didn’t think so. I feel the same kind of goofball suggestions at work when I log into Facebook, Spotify, Last.fm, and more. I grew up around my Grand Da who would take us on his record collecting trips to yard sales around town. There is nothing like the search/the hunt/the quest and coming across a new surprise that you never new about, never thought you would like or encounter. How do you design for that? Is that even possible to make something as rich and dense?

Recently I’ve been hanging out with my twin 7 year old nephews which is a blast. Around the holidays they were into Christmas books and we read the classic Polar Express one evening before bed. As I was reading the book I found myself getting bored knowing how the story develops so without missing a beat or ever letting on I started to insert new lines into the story to see if they noticed. This proved to be wildly funny for them and my wife and demanded it to happen over and over again. There is something in that experience - retelling a story and tweaking it to the audience so they will stay engaged. I wonder if there is a way to make a project out of this?

One of my coworkers is a semi-serious UX Designer has the best laugh around and making him howl is an accomplishment. I started writing down in a calendar anything that made him guffaw and who told the joke. After a while we had this list of jokes that we would look back on and out of the hundreds of laughter moments, the funniest ones obviously rose to the top. There is something about laughter and its connection to understanding a concept that I’ve been obsessed with. Laughter is the best kind of I-get-it moment.

*5

patfalco:

check out this mural I helped Fish McGill with on the 3rd floor of the tower building at MassArt. He’s one of my favorite artists and it was a lot of fun working with him, be sure to check out his stuff!

if you’re ever in the MassArt area stop by the 3rd floor of tower and check it out!