Thanks again for the thoughtful video, and your response - I was particularly taken by your approach to information and its uses. To return to the issue of procrastination and information trawling, I think it's all too easy to become consumed by quantity and scope, the range of sources. The thought that if one can only gather a greater cross-section, a greater cross-fertilization of ideas, aesthetic approaches, or whatever it is that you're gathering, then things will fall into place. This winds up as a kind of teleological fallacy - idle completism - which, for a hungry mind, can lead into an infinite rabbit hole with no sign of the exit (or dragging back the treasures found into daylight).

So I like the idea that information without relevance has no meaning - that its value is not in any attempt to gather all of the resources available, snapshots of all of the possible facets of the crystal, but rather to make transformative, inquisitive use of a given source to stretch horizons and further personal ends. One is a form of alienated curation or subdued terror, another a mode of personal alchemy.

It's very easy to get locked into those synaptic ruts that keep us mentally flabby and complacent - to fall back on a familiar repertoire of assumptions, touch points, and assured, trusted influences. Equally, it's very easy to fall into habitual patterns of collection, archiving, laying out the pieces of the puzzle until we find ourselves drowning in them.

It seems quite easy to identify over time the difference between an artist motivated to continue interrogating themselves, their reality, and their work and one motivated by fame, trends, or the trappings of artistry. The work of the former contains a kind of guiding undercurrent that pushes through a multitude of forms and approaches. That of the latter sticks complacently at the point at which they received the greatest praise or recompense, or else borrows the latest garments from the latest emperor. I'm not referring so much to form, but rather the uses of it - either continuing to have form serve inquiry, or have form masquerade as inquiry or replace even the illusion of inquiry. By artist I mean anyone committed or engaged in production, be that of thought, cinema, music, design, documents, code or furniture.

I guess that's one example of your thoughts on our alignment to our existing competencies, and those that we project as being required of our dreams and wishes. There's a small death in the marriage of the two, which some will ease into comfortably, and others feel spurred to disrupt and reevaluate.

The key component seems to be, as I think you're saying, action and then - most significantly - reflection on that action. The transformative power of reflection after the fact in shaping the next phase of doing. A lot of us make our way into a familiar groove on one side or other of the balance, and feel the reverberations of the resultant disequilibrium even through the familiar comfort they afford us.

Apologies for the novel-length ramble - once again you've supplied plenty of things to think about.