Letting the paint dry

Sat listening to Moddi sing 'Matter of Habit', an Israeli song banned from the radio for suggesting that killing isn't the best thing to do and we should cultivate love.  Controversial indeed.  Have just got back from dinner at some friends' house and talking about music and sharing thoughts about art.  He is a painter and I've been telling him about my ink drawings, which are spontaneous expressions of unconscious gesture which through blindness and egotism I have come to consider essentially meaningful and been knocking them out at a rate of knots.  He takes as many months over his paintings as I take minutes.  He said he is thinking about the idea of letting the paint dry - giving time to give a considered continuation of an ongoing process of discovery that is making a painting.
     I don't know how to give time to a painting.  I can sometimes work on writing for long periods of time, but painting has always been what my tutor describes as 'expedient', which is a nice word for hurried.  I'm in the process of getting a new studio and want to use it to work on one picture for a number of weeks at least or even months, which means a completely new approach to painting.  Where every mark is thought out and exists in relation to the whole.  This is obvious to some people and even second nature but I find it really difficult.  I want instant gratification, which is unhealthy.  I don't think anyone achieved much in a moment that hadn't taken years of work to run up to.
   I've been playing music with another friend, David.  We want to make Arabic jazz-punk.  We are warming up playing guitar and clarinet and sometimes organ and hand drum.  We've had a few practices and I'm realising if I want to play the clarinet I'm going to have to start playing scales! Good heavens - scales.  There's a reason people drill through these things.  It's so you can know the keys enough and the rules to give a framework to expression.  Unfettered expression without rules is usually messy and incoherent.
  Along with the scales and the considered painting I have a new month resolution to start cycling. We'll see how this goes.  Even if I just get off the sofa to cycle up the road and back it would be a start.  There's enough going on in my life that I need more discipline and focus to progress and just keep above water.  I've been having a hard time mental health wise recently and have made a few bad decisions that have had repercussions.  I need to find a way forward.  I might start keeping this blog more often.  Blog reflections, manageable exercise, musical practice, painting regimen.  Go!  Come back and find out how I'm getting on, and if I ever got off the sofa.  Now I'm going to listen to the end of this record, have a cup of decaf tea and read my booklet about sleep hygiene in bed without looking at my phone every ten minutes.  Bye for now.