The need to do something, anything, is a common theme during the pandemic. The need to fill time and space with something, anything. Baking bread. Something, anything. rearranging furniture. Something, anything. This was a moment in Zadie Smith’s Intimations that is touched upon more eloquently than I could ever put.
Art has felt that way for me. It has always been something to do. But this “something to do” has never been a time filler. I’ve never created just to bide my time until something better came along to do. It’s just been the thing to do.
And in the simplest of terms, that is the only thing that I do in life that feels this way. No one asks me to make art. No one is expecting me to make art. It is just what I do.
