A Few Thoughts on Why I Color
As I’ve been whiling away the hours typing like a madman with a machine gun on the book, relaxation has become a luxury (though I try to indulge at least daily). There is an unending logic to the work I’m doing: critical, research-oriented writing that dissects a methodology that hasn’t been invented yet. I have to find answers in the gaps between media, make connections to past events to tie together the present and potential future of storytelling.
In short, it’s a lot of fucking work. And I don’t get to write “fuck” at all, so forgive the fuckiness of this writing. Fuck fuck fuck…
To relax, I’ve turned to simplicity. Yoga and meditation are great (a mental lifesaver that reminds me that the only constant in life is breathing — until you’re dead), and so are video games (stress relief while saving the world). Video games fulfill an inherent need to be rewarded. The very act of writing is an exercise in short-circuiting a deep rooted need for a reward system; instead of gold stars and “A” grades, I seek only awesome head shots.
But my ultimate relaxation is in coloring books. A box of crayons and things that beg to be filled in. It helps me think, it helps me short circuit over-thinking (in a fascinating paradox). It just forces me to do something.
Over the past several few months, I’ve been around kids a lot more than I ever planned on. I’m not what you would call a “kid person” by any stretch of the imagination, but I can’t help but enjoy seeing the fruits of a kid’s artistic labors. Dinosaurs that are colored with no sense of logic, no sense of line. Just color vomit on a page. They don’t care if it’s good. They care if it’s fun.
I color as a way to help me short-circuit that logic of “constantly between the lines” that becomes deeply rooted from your first multiple choice test. I color as a way to “just do,” to not care of it’s good, but to relish in the work in front of you. I color as a way to finish things; coloring book pages beg to be completely colored before moving on.
And, when I inevitably return to the work at hand, I can approach it with a clear mind, with a somewhat retuned imagination, one that isn’t afraid to go outside the lines (indeed, the very presence of lines in coloring books is what makes them fun — it’s all about creating within chains (as Nadia Boulanger said), and knowing when to break free of those chains to add surprise and color); a clear mind that won’t stop coloring in those blank book pages with words and ideas, rocketing towards completion.
