New Environments

Sometimes new environments spawn new thoughts. If you dig a little deeper into this statement, you also realize there is a reaction to the new thoughts: You forget about old thoughts as you are inundated with new stimuli. Sitting in the Charles de Gaule airport en route to Vienna with a lengthy layover, I am able to consume new books, listen to new podcasts and watch new movies. The negative happens as well; I forget about the old music I was practicing yesterday, I forget about the old list of household chores in California, I forget to call and text those people not relevant to the new and exciting now.

Since I am actually writing this blog at the moment and am clearly not reading a book, I will spend the time to look at the paradox of choice. As I have a type of obsessive personality, I began to think of the age old adage that choosing to do one thing is saying no to a thousand things. I sit here “reading this book” as I choose not to answer email, write the next blog post(welp here I am), score study for the next musical gig, keep in touch with loved ones, work on an artist webpage, network for the future, and do important foundation work in terms of career. However, sometimes in the end, one can accept that your action is completely logical because it is utterly non-tangential to my dream. I could do all of those productive things listed above, but my spiritual being is calling me to read a new book. One logical hypothesis might be that new environments help with inspiration, dissolving any creative block that one might have. In my personal experience, new environments help break up habits and past mental baggage. They create a new framework to then continue the journey through life.

Now that my brain has created the excuse for reading this magnificent book instead of doing more productive work, I read this book perfectly content that is perfectly unproductively productive because of its novelty. Sometimes reading great books, like my current read “Just Kids” by Patti Smith is perfectly acceptable in the aura of a new environment. And possibly, just possibly this is actually beneficial to becoming an artist. My brain is tired, and although half of this might not make sense, hopefully clarity will come once I’ve reached my final destination.