The sweetest time
of the day is for me is its beginning. The whole day lays ahead, or at least the
afternoon and evening if you are a musician. I love to wake up without
any type of alarm, make the short walk to the other side of my
apartment, have some delicious coffee, and sit and review my many plans
and goals. The day is still filled with
such potential! The over-caffeinated brain begins to move at such a furious pace that the hand seems unable to keep up and commit everything to paper: a series
featuring silent films with piano accompaniment, a solo album, a novel,
new ideas for affordable housing, an exercise regimen, travel, and yes, even volunteer work is given some consideration.
Eventually the mind becomes overwhelmed by the sheer volume of ideas. There is an anxious feeling now; the coffee exacerbates this. With the
dark brew there is that special balance that must be struck: the right
amount gives energy and stamina to work at a project for
long hours, but too much and there is an inability to focus. A book is left open to a page while I rush to notate a fragment of a song, and then abandon that task so I can rearrange
the furniture in a manner that promotes better energy flow, then back past the neglected book to furiously type an email. To give a better understanding of how strong I like my coffee, my good friend and former roommate Alex Porter, after tasting a pot I had brewed, asked me, "could we make the coffee so that we don't instantly lose control of our bowels?" with all
drugs there is the withdrawal, and with powerful drugs there is powerful withdrawal, the
inevitable crash, and... more sleep. On certain days there is just the right combination of sufficient rest, a reasonable amount of caffeine and healthy food, and those days are quite productive. Many days however are like the previous paragraph, where there is much planning and little action (I have also written a post about putting off writing a novel). By mid-afternoon I can often be found sitting on the edge of my bed staring at the floor with a glazed expression, immobilized by the limitlessness possibilities of what can be done on any given day.
Procrastination in reasonable amounts does have some value. If I can sit in a chair and let my mind rest for an uninterrupted period of time, I will often get a flood of new ideas, as well as solutions to current problems. Perhaps what I am really describing is meditation, but for the purposes of this post I will label it "useful procrastination". I will end with a quote from Franz Kafka, a much better writer who, as you might expect, described the process more poetically:
"You do not need to leave
your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has
no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet."
