Sorry it’s taken me a little bit of time but real life often tells you to do things.
Hey there Sports Fans, Al here with the latest:
So throughout the last year, I wanted to address something that I happened to recognize that was happing after my last domestic move back into the old homestead that I lived in for a number of years.
During the whole of the lockdown due to the outbreak, the firing from work, the girlfriend breakup, the two residential moves, the rehiring at work, the election, the rioting, and the wildfires there has been one thing that has happened and I didn't even realize it.
It was the large amount books that I had collected.
The number of books that I ordered online (which doesn't include the music CDs and DVD sets either) astounded me. When sitting down in my new/old bedroom I began to take an inventory of this epic new collection of new and old art books. Some are things that have been out of print or have fallen into non-popular topics but all the same new for me.
Regardless of that how do these things figure into an artist's blog?
Good question, I'm glad you asked.
Since the lockdown of 2020 everyone was asked to self-isolate. Well, that isolation you had to fill it with things that were within reach of where you were sitting. And that means more than a couple of beers off to the side of your monitor.
Bingeing tv was quick to jump into but slowly faded as those shows watched disappeared quickly losing their long-term appeal. YouTube was the next on the list and that was good to listen to but the topics that were being brought up were more and more stupidity being brought up from Hollywood. Politicking both in the written stories and the cancellation of individuals because they didn't hold the same values you did really lost its appeal. That topic originally stemmed from a good place that became so reactionary, so self-involved that we were even told about it before the self-congratulatory awards (like the Oscars) were being preached at by an industry that is already hurting majorly. I know this for a fact because I was part of a mass firing from a theatrical chain that helped define Hollywood's importance. That kind of material just became boring after several months.
Done with it!
Tired of it all, I turned my attention to books of interest in topics that I had already had an interest in. Of course, Sci-Fi being the focus of it.
As you could see from the image of the books laid out on my bedspread a large amount of these are art-related books of artists that I hold in great esteem both in style and inspiration.
But there were others in the mix of podcasting which I am still absorbing and books of nonrelated material such as books on Nigel Kneal and the British sci-fi classic character of Professor Bernard Quatermass. Also in the mix was a book by Max Brooks who wrote the great and fantastic "World War Z" but this time about a cryptid that lives my neck of the woods, Big Foot.
A book by Larry Niven - Ringworld. A book that I had heard about for years but had never read.
So there is a large group of books to get through and though I have been able to get through most of the art books the written ones are taking their sweet ol' time.
If not the vaxing and being brought back to work I probably would have already gotten through many of these mini tomes but such is not the case.
I will say that it's a good thing that I was able to get a bookshelf to store all this material so I should have any issue looking for inspiration in the future.
Not really so much as a blog as a statement that Covid helped me with my collections.
Thank COVID for flipping my world upside down and every which way but at least I have some books that I can look at and read.