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11/13/2003: "Unmade"

My friend tells me he is surprised that I have no interest in making art any more. I know the circumstances that led me to stop, but those circumstances no longer exist, so why don't I begin again? I generally say that I'm out of the habit, or more precisely, that I'm into a new habit which doesn't allow for making art, and that I have no strong yearning to go back to it. I've bought supplies, I have a pad and pencil by my chair, I still look at things with an aesthetic eye, but while my mind makes these little preparations , my hand and my will do not move. I don't imagine projects any more, I don't look at art and be tempted to imitate it, or talk back to it, I express my desire to make things in ephemeral tasks: there is beauty in a circle of chairs, calligraphy in the swath cut by a lawnmower, brushwork in the work of piling up brush. The loose arrangement of stuff in the dumpster might be a collage; is it any less so because it hasn't been glued down and authenticated?