frenetic

do you ever have so many thoughts in your itty bitty head that it feels like all that gray matter is going to ooze out of your ears, down your neck, into your shirt, and eventually end up in a big, oozy puddle on the ground? good thing the floors are school are concrete and the carpet at home of the incredibly-ugly-yet-hides-everything-and-anything berber variety. you won't even be able to tell i oozed. brain barf time, so as to prevent the above from happening.

it's midterm week[s]. my studio midterm was last week (SO nice to have it first and out of the way). had a math-ish midterm today. have a rough draft for a midterm drawing due tomorrow morning (yay procrastination via blog!). some people don't have their studio midterm until late next week (3 midterm weeks?!? i know.). the air in the halls (or one big hall, in the case of our school) is charged. well, it's not just charged, but there's actual frenetic activity everywhere. glossy boards go up, then down just in time for someone else's glossy boards to go up (i prefer matte or satin paper as i tend to fingerprint-up all those expensive prints as soon as they roll off the plotter). models are strewn about, i mean carefully placed, everywhere. half scale chairs and their accompanying gigantic drawings fill a room. large installation pieces, some reminiscent of the chair george clooney built in burn after reading and some destined for their ultimate home at coachella later this spring are tripping hazards for a day until they're moved back to someone's desk.

i'm so frustrated because i think too many things too quickly. i'm not saying this to tell you how smart and wonderful i am. in fact, i am saying this to show you the messy, non-linear crazy. frenetic in the head. i think faster than i can write. faster than i can draw. faster than i can say out loud (and you wonder why i talk so fast...my brain is already usually 3 unrelated steps ahead onto the next tangent). faster than i can type. faster than i can model in the computer. and way faster than i can model in foamcore/chipboard/musem board/sticks/et. al. ideas spew forth (the more the better as 99% of them aren't worth much or that useful). frantic, almost paranoiac, compulsive hunting & gathering of research happens as fast as i can grab all of it with my grubby hands (or mouse). analyze this precedent. analyze that project. diagram this. diagram that. think about this. overthink that. radicalize this. make a statement on that. before i can output all of that in some constructive, concrete manner, KABLOOEY. gray bits all over the floor, ceiling, walls, and even in your shoe for you to discover way later when you feel something annoying lodged between the side of your shoe and your pinky toe. gray all over the place, but it yields no Architecture. it doesn't even yield architecture. oh wait, it doesn't even yield a fully finished foamcore model or remotely resolved drawings. all that is left is me. stuck. stucker than stuck. still hacking at foamcore.

i heard stan allen speak tonight. smart dude. smart dude who theorizes and gets built. the pace of his talk was quick. clipped but thorough. almost frenetic but always within his control. flip forward two slides, flip back one, flip back to the first, flip forward two, laser pointer circling here, there, everywhere almost faster than my eyes could follow. this is the first time this semester i stayed through the entire length of the lecture and stayed awake. nothing against previous speakers--i just was less sleep-deprived this time. plus the chop-chop pace of mr. allen's cadence clicked with the pace in my brain, creating a funny kind of harmony that kept me awake.

all of my favorite pens are running out of ink this week. small but infuriating. adding to the panicked pace as it always happens right when i NEED to write or draw something in danger of being immediately forgotten if not inked instantly.

sometimes i wish i was a scarecrow. most of the time i'm glad i'm not, despite the crazy.