on list-making & creativity

feat. personal qualms and marina abramovic

lists at large

Via slufoot.tumblr.com

I felt seen when I encountered this gem in Carl Jung’s “On Psychic Energy”:

“Man is not a machine in the sense that he can consistently maintain the same output of work. He can meet the demands of outer necessity in an ideal way only if he is also adapted to his own inner world, that is, if he is in harmony with himself. Conversely, he can only adapt to his inner world and achieve harmony with himself when he is adapted to the environmental conditions.”

List-making is a treasured personal strategy for exactly this. For maintaining harmony in my inner worlds and adapting to my environmental surroundings. A tool that guides both my existential crises and everyday flow (figure #1). A bridge connecting my psyche and my actions. A friend to phone when life feels messy in any sense at all.

Lists always have been and always will be an organizational backbone, and I feel only bliss in their ability to track my more logistical pursuits. When it comes to lists that track my creative and leisurely aspirations, though — creative projects to get around to lists, things to research for fun lists, books to read and films to watch lists — I struggle.

mini rant

Rick Rubin in The Creative Act

I do appreciate the concept of listing out creative and leisurely visions that center personal fulfillment. My thought to pursue a personally gratifying creative endeavor deserves as much (if not more) real estate and intention as my thought to “pay rent.” Recording anything on a list validates the thought, thing, or to-do and ideally creates more mental space to imagine fruition. But there’s a personal disruption that happens:

I want to write a love letter. I want to watch Cléo from 5 to 7. I want to create a physical document that memorializes my grandparents’ lives. →

I don’t have the time right this minute, so I’ll note these on a to-do list to avoid forgetting about it — to honor the desire. →

Ugh. There’s so much I want to do. So much to check off. →

I’ve lost the zest that inspired me to write a love letter or watch Cléo from 5 to 7 or memorialize my grandparents by inventing a need to “check it off” and creating an aura of obligation.

In short, I have yet to find my groove when it comes to list-making for the sake of documenting my inner, creative world, because lists = a need to complete, in my default brain. Time constraints and external demands in my outer world make total completion feel out of reach.

quest

With that, I’m practicing how to capture my creative and leisurely visions on lists without imposing an unnecessary pressure upon myself. A list as a living document. A container for my desires and pursuits where completion is not the central purpose. A list as something that serves me (and not the other way around).

lists as art

A live reading of Marina Abramovic’s An Artist’s Life Manifesto

Via this post, I’m letting myself dwell on how a list’s function can indeed span beyond tracking to-dos and revolve around creativity first and foremost. Gratitude lists transcend the pressure to complete, and so do lists that become a full-on artistic exercise, like Marina Abramovic’s An Artist’s Life Manifesto, which walks through her learned creative and ethical principles. Breaking it down to internalize it. Reimagining the list as a purely creative format.

fragments from an artist’s life manifesto

An artist’s relation to his love life:

• An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist

• An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist

• An artist should avoid falling in love with another artist

An artist’s relation to self-control:

• The artist should not have self-control about his life

• The artist should have total self-control about his work

• The artist should not have self-control about his life

• The artist should have total self-control about his work

An artist’s relation with transparency:

• The artist should give and receive at the same time

• Transparency means receptive

• Transparency means to give

• Transparency means to receive

• Transparency means receptive

• Transparency means to give

• Transparency means to receive

• Transparency means receptive

• Transparency means to give

• Transparency means to receive

An artist’s relation to silence:

• An artist has to understand silence

• An artist has to create a space for silence to enter his work

• Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean

• Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean

• Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean

An artist’s possessions:

• Buddhist monks advise that it is best to have nine possessions in their life:

  • 1 robe for the summer

  • 1 robe for the winter

  • 1 pair of shoes

  • 1 begging bowl for food

  • 1 mosquito net

  • 1 prayer book

  • 1 umbrella

  • 1 mat to sleep on

  • 1 pair of glasses if needed

• An artist should decide for himself the minimum personal possessions they should have

• An artist should have more and more of less and less

• An artist should have more and more of less and less

• An artist should have more and more of less and less

Different funeral scenarios:

• An artist should give instructions before the funeral so that everything is done the way he wants it

• The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving

• The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving

• The funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving

brief reflection & elements of interest

repetition

What does it mean to repeat the same rule via multiple bullets? What does it mean to name other rules only once? Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act frames a rule as a mere “way of structuring awareness” (212).

Perhaps the rules that claim space in multiple bullets signal Abramovic’s hyper-awareness of them. There’s an extra special tension in repeating “Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean” three times — a repetition-induced loudness brought to the visualization of silence.

imbalance

Additionally, the gesture to repeat certain rules and not others rebels against the notion that our relationships with rules are clean and linear; Rubin also writes, “Much of the artistic process involves ignoring rules, letting go of rules, undermining rules, and rooting out rules that we didn’t know we were following” (207). Repetition of the same list item disrupts the function of a list as a to-do tracker or a rule as something that’s set in stone.

I’m also interested in how select lists in the manifesto feature one rule (albeit repeated) and other lists feature several rules — more of a narrative and progression of rules. “An artist’s relation to his love life,” for example, advises only to avoid falling in love with another artist. By contrast, “An artist’s relation to silence” flows through understanding silence, creating space for silence, and visualizing silence. It begs the question of if “An artist’s relation to his love life” is inherently simpler and the single love-life rule is enough, or if Abramovic’s single rule is too essential to share space with other rules. It warrants its own stage.

iteration

An Artist’s Life Manifesto was initially published in Abramovic’s 2011 memoir, Walk Through Walls. In 2022, she evolved the work into The Hero Manifesto. This detail affirms the ability for lists and the ideas that make their way onto lists to live in flux.

Appreciation of evolution and multiple iterations also feels encouraged by Abramovic’s “Different funeral scenarios” list, which stresses how “the funeral is the artist’s last art piece before leaving.” There’s no need for a true end to our creation and recreation (of art, of lists, of ideas) until the day we die. There’s also freedom in how many of Abramovic’s rules are too profound or esoteric to be “completed” in any straightforward manner. Although the manifesto documents principles and not to-dos, there’s still a blissful impossibility of transactionally moving through it all that inspires.

concluding affirmations

• My lists serve me; I don’t serve them.

• I comfortably allow my lists to remain fluid and unfinished.

• I choose zest and ease over undue obligation.

• I’ll accomplish the creative and leisurely pursuits that I’m meant to accomplish.

• I’ll never be able to do everything I would like to do and that’s okay.

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