I hate my thesis. I am predicting that this negativity will only be a temporary state of affairs because there was a time - quite recently actually - that I loved it. I couldn't get enough - each spare moment I was drawn back to the computer, double clicking on THESIS 2010 and feeling a real sense of achievement as I watched the then 130+ pages clocked up until it was completely loaded. Now I am so confused I don't know what I am really writing about any more, or I do, except that I am struggling to make it fit into the restrictive framework of academia once again. It has become so esoteric, and words like gnosis and numinous and genius loci have snuck in. I am only following my own truth of course, it's just that academia is perhaps less interested in truth and more so with a reasonably logical argument.
A colleague has recently taken another 'leave of absence'. His work is awesome and he is no idiot, but he is also struggling. Apparently as soon as his leave was approved he started painting....that has to tell you something. The arts are still obviously having difficulty fitting into the academic structure, not because artists are any less intelligent, but perhaps because it is a different type of intelligence that simply refuses the boundaries that are set for scientific rigour. I can make the rational arguments, I can also find references for them, but then my mind moves on, it's a creative thing, it gets bored trying to constrain itself and there are times when I can feel every fibre in me rebelling against the process.
This will pass......I will just have to keep repeating that mantra, because I do not want to waste 4+ years of research and writing and I still think I have something worthwhile to say.
image: digitally constructed (obviously), me superimposed on one of my paintings of the Gap.
