“Daily Rituals: How Artists Work” – First Thoughts
September 24, 2014
The book I am currently reading, is a book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work 
I am skimming currently on my first pass, skimming through the book, and immensely enjoying it. As I do so, here are some observations, in no particular order, which jumped out at me:
- Most of these people, these artists featured in the book seem to be addicted to substances – alcohol / tobacco / coffee / drugs (usually amphetamines) – and seem to depend on these for their creativity
- Most of them have other people (wives / sisters / parents /servants) to take care of them (cook / look after children if they have families/ do laundry etc..)
- Most of them are men
- Of the people who are women, most of them are single or don’t have kids
- For most of them, their creative pursuit is what they did full-time.
a. Is this a sign of the times? Is it crazy that in our present everybody is expected to ‘hold down’ a ‘real job’? In the 1800 and 1900s doesn’t seem like this was expected. I’m not sure – something to be researched.
- Almost all of them took long walks at different times of day, sometimes multiple times.
- Most of them seemed to entertain quite a bit – either at home or go out to pubs / theatre
a. This was quite surprising to me.
b. A few, of course went the other extreme way and became hermits
- Seems like most of them slept very less / had issues sleeping / issues with insomnia
a. Was this a side-affect of substance ingestion?
As I re-read this book and savor it in detail, I’m sure many more thoughts will come up.
One thing I am bummed about is that there seems to be no examples for this category – women, with a full-time job in a non-creative area, kids, family and still trying to pursue creative fields. I wonder if in today’s would, there are such women movers and shakers? And I wonder how their daily routines look like?
Readers, can you point me to any such women?
Book Source: Public Library
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