First a bit of housekeeping:

In 52 Weeks…

• 35 pieces of music
• 6 paintings/sketches
• 5 scripts
• 4 short films
• 1 animated .gif
• 1 sculpture

Also one other little detail… I announced that I was going to take part in the RPM Challenge back in the beginning of February. Alas that was not to be. I actually did create enough rough music to technically complete the challenge if you include raw ideas and such, but I decided not mail anything into them. Maybe next time!

So what to make of this little experiment in 52 Things? Pretty much everything I said at the halfway point still holds true. I guess I’ll conclude with a couple of final observations:

• It’s about the process, not the result. I’ll quote here a comment I made on my friend Dav’s blog, who’s also begun his own “52 Things”:

“For me, I have to keep reminding myself that doing anything creative at all is a victory in itself. Sometimes that thing you might think is lame is the seed of something larger. Other times it’s just lame, but it’s necessary lameness. It’s like you’re getting the creative dreck out of your system in order to make way for better ideas. Congratulate yourself for doing something (anything) in the face of (possibly) feeling like just saying “I’ll just skip it this week… it won’t matter”.” 2/11/08

• 52 weeks are going to go by no matter what. The question to ask is “What are you going to do with that time?” I look back and go “Damn, look at all this stuff I’ve made. Whether anyone else likes it or cares about it or notices it doesn’t matter. I’ve made stuff.” That feels pretty good.

What’s in store for the future? I’m not certain yet. I’ve loved the process and definitely think I’ll begin another similar challenge at some point. One thing I would like to do is thank all of you who have been so supportive through the last 52 weeks! (You know who you are! : ) Also if you’ve read this far I’d like to point you in the direction of a couple other creative folks who’ve started their own 52 Things… One is my friend Dav over at AkuAku who I mentioned earlier. The other is someone (whom I’ve never met) who left a very gracious comment recently… Go check out Siobhan over at Sew-n-So’s to see some very cool creations. To both of you I say please keep doing what you’re doing! It’s been incredibly inspiring to see the things you’ve made and I look forward to seeing what else you come up with. (I’ve totally been subscribed to your RSS feeds so don’t think no one is watching! ; )

If you’d like to say hello or ask me any questions about anything you’ve seen on the site, feel free to email me at thomas {@} 52things.org.

For now…

ts – 3/16/08

I see this dovetailing well with 52 Things. It provides another deadline and will force me to write more frequently. I’ve been very pleased with the progression of the music I’ve created here, but think it’s time to take it to another level.

There’s a nice spot down by the Hudson river near my apartment with good light. It was a pretty day so I headed in that direction. I sat down on this big stone and began playing with chalk. After a while I shifted to clay and started working with blotches of color pressed into the stone. I had no idea what I was creating, but it was very meditative to just work with color, texture and light. While I was finishing up and photographing the piece, a colleague rode by on his bicycle. At that point, I still had the word “ART?” stenciled next to good old Frederick.  (“Frederick” was a name I only came up with after my colleague looked at the piece and saw something in it that I hadn’t. At that point I had no idea what it was that I’d made…)

To be honest, I was a bit shy about having anyone look at what I’d created and found myself making excuses for the quality. I felt embarrassed to be caught red handed out on the Hudson river pushing clay into a rock. Writing “ART?” next to what I’d created was my way of apologizing. It was like saying “Yeah, I know this sucks but is it art?”. After he left, I decided “You know what, screw it. Let people look at this thing and make up their own damn minds about what it is.” I pulled off “ART?” and re-photographed. In the end, it’s enough that I spent time creating. What I ended up with was something that is uniquely my own. Whether or not it’s “ART” (or good “ART”, or bad “ART”) is immaterial. I made something, and that’s enough.

When I first began this piece my little voice was saying rather loudly “I suck at this!” I managed to plow through. It’s no Picasso, but I have to keep reminding myself that 52 Things was never supposed to be about creating masterpieces. It’s always been about simply creating. I kept painting and what I ended up with was a hell of a lot better than when I started.

Also, a major hat tip to my friend Dav. He’s recently begun his own 52 Things, and seeing the cool things he’s come up with has inspired me to take more chances in what I’m doing here.

I suppose that my first observation would be that times flies incredibly fast these days. It doesn’t seem like it’s really been six months since that first snowy week back in March. I’m more and more conscious these days of how easy it is to lose time. So easy to let days, weeks, months slip by. Not letting those days, weeks, months slip by is something I need to work on.

My second observation is that I’m surprised at how easily it is to forget the things you’ve created when you’re releasing them out into the wild consistently. This is probably a good thing. It’s good to have a record of what you’ve done, but it’s also good to create for the sake of creating without having to worry about the results. I’ve enjoyed being able to let go and let it be ok to write little 30 second snippets of music. It’s like each one of those is a seed that I could go back and revisit at any time and nurture and develop further.

The other thing about this journey has been that I’m repeatedly surprised by the process of creation. I’m learning to just trust myself and not judge as much while I’m in the process of making something. This has especially been true with composition. It’s so easy to think “Man, this sucks” while you’re first putting ideas down at the keyboard. I’m learning that if you get over that impulse and just trust that you’ll find something you inevitably do find something. Many times that crappy little idea that you begin with forms the foundation of something that’s much cooler in the end. You just have to go through the process and be patient. And if you can’t turn that idea into something right now, then set it aside and come back to it another day. Maybe you just need to be a different you to see the coolness in the thing you thought was crap. Your brain just needs to be older and more experience to recognize the tree in the acorn.

One final comment would be a little constructive criticism to myself. I am concerned that I’m not taking as many risks as I could with regards to the diversity of genres that I’m working in. One of my stated goals in the beginning was to overcome fear and to find out what it is that I like to do. After those first couple of weeks I settled into a comfortable routine of releasing short pieces of music. There have been a couple of forays into scriptwriting here and there, but I really want to challenge myself in the next six months to not settle for only doing the things that I’m good at. Music is the genre that I’m most comfortable in. It’s where the majority of my training lies. The thing is that I know I have other talents. I have other things that I love to do. I know this because in the past when I’ve overcome whatever the mental roadblocks were that kept me from doing those other things I’ve been extremely pleased by and proud of the results.

My challenge to myself for the next six months is to begin to think outside of the box. Begin broadening the definition of what a project might be. Let your creativity loose and play. It’ll be ok.

• Write a piece of music

• Write a piece of music

• Write a piece of music

• Write a piece of music