14 June 2014

[#art] A Change of Carrier

3112.
I've decided to join the messenger-bag generation.

It's cool. I'm usually a few years late to just about any party, anyway.

If you don't know if I'm hangin' around or not, you can usually tell that I'm here if you see my backpack. It's a habit I picked up never-you-mind how many years ago and I've probably kept too long, but in an unfriendly world that don't love you back no matter how hard you love it, you have to have your security blanket.

We all do, I think. I fancy I'm just a bit more honest about it than some. Then, I care less and less what anyone thinks about what I do as I move through this part of my life; I'll do what I can to cope.

My backpack has been part of my identity for a long time. It holds a lot of things that are important to me that I want to keep near; the sketchbook I'm not drawing in; the book on creativity I'm not reading or using, the art supplies I'm apparently hoarding up against the apocalypse. But backpacks encourage a sort-of hermit crabbish-ness, in which I carry my notional studio on my back. As long as my right shoulder isn't killing me (how I've avoided tendonitis all these years, I can't tell you) I figure I can carry anything. Or everything.

Whether or not I can kickstart my own engine, a touch of parsimony is called for, I think. Will it improve my creativity at all if I don't figure I have everything I need and inspiration will spontaneously combust from inside the recesses of the thing?

I don't know.  Anything's worth trying once.

I also have a taijtu (see illo) patch that will simply look stunning on the flap.

And so it goes.

2 comments:

CountZeroOr said...

Oddly enough, I used to carry around a messenger bag since High School, but I've switched to a backpack after the bag started to wear a hole in the bottom (about 10 years).

Samuel John Klein said...

Oddly enough to-the-power-of-2, the same thing caused me to start to look around for a replacement backpack, and then we figured why not go the bag route?

I use the hell out of my packs. I usually use them until the padding is out of the primary strap (usually the one that goes over the right shoulder) the zippers begin to break on a regular basis, and holes start to appear in the bottom. This last worthy had all three.

Right now, I'd say there are two big benefits that are manifest, after a couple of weeks of use; 1) as I intimated in the post, I've had to be more parsimonious about the stuff I carry. I tend to hermit-crabbery, carrying a whole bunch of stuff whether or not I'll need it. This has reduced somewhat. and, 2) having both hands free while walking and actually standing up straighter … the years of backpackery have induced, in me, anyway, the tendency to slouch forward.