Since I dropped out of university after my first year, a good six or seven years ago, I have sorely missed having to complete projects. One of the problems I had with school was that there was not enough alignment between the work they wanted me to complete, and the work that was interesting to me. That said, the completion of any project, even one that is only marginally interesting, forces me to go through the entire creative process, push through the difficult stages, and reach the satisfaction of having carried it through to completion. Plus, when given the structure and the framework of an assignment that I know I must complete, I find I inevitably discover within the process opportunities for creative expression. 

Over the last few years I have gone through several iterations of starting creative projects and abandoning them; and certainly, the abandonment was partly due to ADHD and a generally low ability for carrying things through to completion. However, I think the better part of the explanation is that those were necessary first attempts, but did not yet constitute vehicles adequate to the task of carrying out into the world the currents that flow through me. The role of such a vehicle is twofold: it must be relatively well aligned with the real flows to be carried, and it must ensure the continual and consistent completion of the creative projects that carry the flows. Let’s call the first function affinity, and the second one execution. As I mentioned, formal schooling was excellent for enforcing execution, but the projects executed had a fairly low coefficient of affinity with the “real flows to be carried”, that is, with my true interests.

The vital role of a creative project is to carry currents through me and out into the world. I can get very excited about ideas I have or understandings I come to, but if I do not incarnate them within a project, they remain in a state of undifferentiated potential. The great benefit of an undertaking like this one is that it can be a direct extension of my true interests, and it can shift freely with those interests; but as we have seen this is only half the problem. What is still needed is a working element of the machine whose function is to ensure that projects are completed regularly. This executive element of the productive-creative machine acts somewhat in opposition to the affinity/alignment function, insofar as it says to the latter: “even if you have only managed to bring expression into low or moderate alignment with true intent, you must execute the completion and publication of the project”. But as Blake says, opposition is true friendship. In ensuring the regular completion of projects, the executive function of the machine overrides the affinity function’s tendency toward perfectionism-paralysis, and prevents the whole vehicle from stalling out. Perfect affinity between the project and the flows to be carried by the project is always the goal. But any hope of attaining that goal presupposes great skill, and great skill can only be developed through consistent practice. So, even though a strong executive function may reduce the coefficient of affinity of a given project, it will tend to increase it over time through ever new iterations.

Last month, over the course of a very dedicated couple of weeks, I read Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. It became clear to me as I was reading that this was the most important, exciting, radical, and functionally useful book I had ever encountered. But it was also extremely difficult. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be re-reading Anti-Oedipus, and writing about it as I make my way through. This process will be the executive structure for the creative-productive machine that is this website, at least until I have finished this particular project. There are 31 chapters in Anti-Oedipus, and my default plan will be to write one post per chapter. My project is somewhat inspired by these excellent reading notes by an unnamed person associated with duke university. I stumbled upon them when trying to understand some particularly difficult terminology In part 3 of A-O, and found them very helpful. So the first project on this website will be creating a series of articles that constitute my close reading notes for Anti-Oedipus. I am calling them reading notes both because I want them to closely follow the chapters of the book such that they can be used as a companion to the text, and also to allow myself a fairly low level of formality in writing them. Both of these will also help me get used to writing again, and help balance the executive function against the affinity function as I get this machine up and running. More soon.

Patrick