Containers

In my writing practice I use the container principle. I’ve mentioned the rudiments of the container principle in my blog before; but I was thinking about it in a different way in the past month, and then something someone read to me from the David Lynch memoir that tinkled that little bell yet again, and so…

…well, here it is. The container principle is a practice I picked up from my meditation circle, where one creates a specified container around the period of time in which one intends to do creative work. Two hours, four hours; twenty minutes. Doesn’t matter. You set a time for yourself, during which you’re going to apply yourself to the work, and then apply yourself within that time (and in my group’s practice, also, you commit to communicate in no other way during that time; you communicate solely with your work, no emails, no web sites, no answering the door. You get the idea).

Now here’s the dirty little secret / something I’ve worked out in the past few months: it doesn’t actually matter if I use the whole container, or call the process early, because it turns out that isn’t the point.

In my writing practice, for example, 9-12 pages of work is plenty, by which I mean, usually by the time I’ve done that much writing I’m pretty much tapped out and well into the region where Diminishing Returns is the law of the land. The next set of ideas needs to cook; the brain has to shut down and/or focus on other things. (It’s amazing how much one can accomplish with a shut-down brain, honestly.)

And if that twelve pages takes, say, only 90 minutes of a 2-hour container; or 3.5 hours, if I’ve set aside time to write for five? Cool, call it. The point of the container, it seems, was never to promise myself X hours of uninterrupted productivity, but rather to promise myself X hours of uninterrupted time. It’s a letter I write to myself that says “no matter what, you can keep going until the bell rings if you want to.” If the good (words in my case, but it could be any kind of creation) are coming, you are free from obligation to stop yourself. Nothing else will happen in that period; or if it does, it can wait.

This spaciousness, I am belatedly understanding, is the actual point of the container. We put a box around the time to create a sense of limitlessness with that selfsame time. It’s strange, paradoxical, and lovely.

Becoming bored

The other thing that is broadly good for being creative (and, probably though I can’t be certain, for just generally being alive) is the aforementioned mental downtime and/or following one’s own whims around without, at all times, a clear sense of purpose. This, as I’ve written in the past, is difficult to practice. Part of it is difficult to practice because it just is, and part of it is difficult to practice because even though it just is, we dumb humans went ahead and made it like a trillion times harder, by basically gamifying our own attention spans in the 21st century.

All of which led to me asking to this month’s most revealing question:

Why do I take my phone with me when I go to the bathroom?

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: who doesn’t like a little reading material in there? But like… when I’m taking a piss? I take my phone with me when I’m standing with my dick in my hand for thirty seconds? I can’t go thirty seconds without checking BlueSky or Variety? What??

I’ve been linking to Anne Helen Petersen a lot lately and, well, that ain’t gonna change. But this piece — “The Social Media Sea Change” — reminded me of another really important thing, which is just that, broadly and generally, the human race has forgotten how to be bored. And that might seem fine in the moment — who likes being bored? it’s boring! — but I bet has really disastrous long-term consequences.

Since I’m in a protracted ethical dilemma with regards to the use of pretty much every social media site I patronize, for example, I have spent a lot of January being like, fuck, what do I do with this newfound non-phone time. It’s fucking boring! Just staring at the sky and whatnot! And yet, truly and yet, how many precious years of my cumulative lifespan have been spent resisting that boredom to no real end, while simultaneously angsting about being hurried, pressed, and overall unable to simply move at the pace I am comfortable with?

Per Petersen again, “How obvious, how painful, how hilarious, that two things that most of us feel most stifled by — our lack of time, and our phones — are deeply fucking related.“

Meanwhile, here is the exact opposite type of time to that which I described in the container principle: containerless time, and it feels stifling. A precise, stopwatched 90-minute writing session feels like a horizon full of nothing but sky; but five minutes alone with no phone to scroll through feels like being pressed under a blanket.

We have gotten it all deeply, deeply wrong. Ideally, with time, my synapses can re-learn how to be.

Further reading, watching, and doing

• I’m reading Fourth Wing, and, uh, holy fuck 🐲💦

• Anora takes the top prize at this year’s Online Film Critics Society awards, in which I participate. (Deadline)

• This piece about what it meant to be a teenager in the Tumblr era really got me in the heart. (I think in some ways I was a teenager in the Tumblr era; I was just, like, 20 years too old.) (Alexandra Leaving)

• Catching up on the Star Wars, I did a couple YouTube videos in January, one where I proposed a new model for Haslabs, and one where I opened the Acolyte retro figures. (Giant Green Space Hand)

• Oh by the way: Star Trek XIV is bad. Real bad. (Letterboxd)

• But wait! There’s good news! (The Byte)

• Shōgun is great, everyone knows Shōgun is great, but with all respect to Lady Mariko, Shōgun‘s greatest delight is Fuji’s mini-arc, which is delightful, and sad, and amusing, and is the lynchpin of the series’ devastating finale. Much love to this character and this actress.