The mole diagram

Back in art school, I had a dream where I was trying to explain to my friend Greg a tension I was feeling with my studies. I went to art school to focus on being a painter, but once I got there I also joined a martial arts school, started my if-you’re-going-to-get-a-degree-in-painting-you-have-to-learn-how-to-code bargain with myself, and was still writing all the time. I was supposed to be painting, but The Thing I was Trying to Do seemed to pop up in all those realms.

So in the dream, I drew a diagram on the wall of my studio to explain what I was trying to say to Greg.

The idea was that for each thing you get interested in, you start digging down as you get further and further into it. But the tunnels aren’t perfectly straight, and sometimes you get into something deep enough that it intersects with another tunnel by surprise, and you get a cave-in where a big shared conceptual space opens up. You’re painting with paint but you realize you could do the same thing with thread. You develop a studio practice, but it turns out the mental state and the sensitivity you need there is also what you need when you practice Taiji. That kind of thing.

At the time, my big complaint was that there’s certain levels, like a waterline, that if you dig past them everyone down there expects a certain fluency and commitment to whatever that particular tunnel is about. If you’re down that far in a couple subjects without making connections, you have a really long mental journey when you’re switching between disciplines. You gotta go all the way up one tunnel, across, and back down. I remember really feeling a palpable sense of disorientation going from long days in my studio to learning basic programming concepts and even just learning how to survive sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time.

Anyway, when I got to the studio that day I told Greg about the dream, and then I drew the diagram on the wall, and he totally got it. That was satisfying.