My Jandek Plague Journal: 4/1/20 "Stopped"

"I thought I was just layin down/But really I’d passed some time/Where did the time go?" This is an experiment in spontaneous creation. Like Tom McHenry's comics that he set to upload as soon as he'd saved them, this is about making the work of creation into work. The wait for inspiration, the endless crafting, revising and restarting, all the ideas abandoned because they stopped feeling new before they felt finished. All of them means of avoiding the work so I never have to deal with the efforts of completing and owning something, to put my name on something and accept responsibility for its presence. It's just passing time. How much of Jandek is crafting and how much are we hearing his learning process as he goes? Why not make an a cappella album, why not do an hour-long piano improvisation, and why not record and release every experiment? The lesson is learned whether the experiment succeeds or not. Learning is part of the work. -4/1/20. "Stopped" from Worthless Recluse (lyrics) (one week earlier) (one week later)