 All right so good evening and welcome to another video and today I'm going to do something that I've been running away from for the longest time or you know trying as much as possible not to attempt but I feel like I should do it right now and I'm going to be reading something from Zadie Smith's book well an essay from Zadie Smith's book book Intimations and the backstory to this one which is also I run it to the title of the particular essay I'm going to read is the fact that I was thinking of what to do this week or today right now this video you're watching and I settled on reading a part of a book and I wanted to even title it Random Chapter and Jazz and so am I looking for something to read Elaine suggested that I read something from this particular book which the writer Zadie Smith wrote during the peak of the lockdown and dedicated or decided to give yes all to charity so it's a good thing and it's an essay about something to do and why we do the things we do especially during that time and even now it's just something we do or something we have to do and so I'm going to read off this essay right about now and hopefully you do enjoy it as much as I would and if you do can you give it a thumbs up like this video and the purpose of this particular reading is just to spend time with you this Saturday night that's why I decided to have it released at this time just spend time listening to a read out and while away time while I keep you company with some soft music and something to do from Zadie Smith so I'm going to start let's cue the music and get to it if you make things if you're an artist of whatever stripe at some point you'll be asked or may ask yourself why you act sculpt paint whatever in the writing world this question never seems to get old in each generation a few too many people will feel moved to pen an essay called inevitably why I write or why right and the which title you find a lot of convoluted more or less self-regarding reasons and explanations I have contributed to this genre myself only a few of them are any good and none of them including my own see fit to mention the surest motivation I know the one that I feel deepest within myself and which when it's all said done stripped away as it is at the moment seems to be at the truth of the matter for a lot of people to wit it's something to do I used to stand at podiums in front of my own at podiums or in front of my own students and have that answer at the tip of my tongue but I knew if I said it out loud it would be mistaken for a joke or fake humility or perhaps plain stupidity now I'm gratified to find this most honest of phrases in everybody's mouths all of a sudden and in answer to almost every question why did you bake that banana bread is something to do why did you make a fault in your living room well it's something to do why dress a dog as a cat it's something to do isn't it fills a time out of an expanse of time you carve a little area that nobody asks you to carve and you do something but perhaps the difference between the kind of something that I'm used to and this new culture of doing something is the moral anxiety that surrounds it there's something that artists have always done is more usually called off the rest of society and by mutual agreement this space is considered a sort of charming but basically useless playpen in which adults get to behave like children making up stories and drawing pictures and so on though at least they provide some form of pleasure to serious people doing actual jobs the more utilitarian minded defenders of art justify its existence by insisting upon its potential political efficacy which usually is overstated artists themselves are especially fond of overstating it but even if you believe in the potential political efficacy of art as I do few artists would dare count on this timeliness it's a delusional painter who finishes a canvas at two o'clock and expects radical societal transformation by four even when artists write manifestos they are hopefully aware that their exigent tone finally borrowed only echoing and mimicking the urgency of the gorillas demands or the activist process rather than truly enacting it the people sometimes demand change they almost never demand art as a consequence art stands in the dubious relation to necessity and to time itself it is something to do yes but when it's done and whether it's done at all it's generally considered a question for artists alone an attempt to connect the artist's labor with the work of truly laboring people is frequently made but always strikes me as a tenuous as tenuous with the fundamental dividing line between the question of the clock labor is work done by the clock and paid by it too art takes time and divides it up as rc's fit it is something to do but the crisis has taken this familiar division between time of art and the time of work and transformed it now the essential workers who do not need to seek out something to do whose task is vital and unrelenting and then the rest of us with a certain amount of time on our hands not to mention an economic time bomb which for many people exploded within the first few weeks within the first few days one of the radical political possibilities of our new revelatory expanse of free time as many have noted is that it might create a collective demand to reassess and reconfigure as a society how we protect the rights of those whose work exists only in the present moment without security or protection against unknown futures the most obvious of unknown futures being sick leave the rest of us have been suddenly confronted with the perennial problem of artists time and what to do in it what strikes me at once is how conflicted we feel about this new liberty or captivity on the one hand like pogs who have been lifted out of a body of water our little limbs keep pumping on as they did when we were hurrying off to our workplaces do we know how to stop those of us from Puritan cultures few work must be done and so we make the cake or we start a gardening project or we begin negotiation with the other writer in the house for those kid free hours each day in which to work on something we make banana bread we sew dresses we go for a run we complete all the levels of Minecraft we do something and then photograph that something and not infrequently put it online reactions are mixed even in our own hearts even as we do something we simultaneously accuse ourselves use this extremity as only another occasion for self-improvement another pointless act of self-realization but isn't it the case that everybody finds their capabilities returning to them even if it's only the capacity to mourn what we've lost we had delegated so much it seems it would follow that writers so familiar with empty time and with being alone should manage the situation better than most instead in the first week I found out how much of my old life was about hiding from life confronted with a problem of life served neat without distractions or adornment or superstructure I had almost no idea of what to do with it back in the playpen I carved out meaning by creating artificial deprivations within time and the kind usually provided for people by real limitations of their jobs things like a firm place to be at nine every morning or a boss who tells you what to do in the absence of these fixed elements add makeup things to do or things to abstain from artificial limits and so on running is what I know writing is what I know conceiving self-improvemented schedules teaching day reading day writing day repeat what a dry sad small idea of a life and how I suppose it looks now that the people I love are in the same room to witness the way I do time the way I've done it all my life for me the cliche is true the only way the only way out is through trying to preserve some space for yourself in the crowded domestic sphere feels like obsessively cupping your hands around thin air you carve it out the time you need after much anxiety and debate and get into a separate space and look between your hands and there it is nothing an empty victory at the end of april in a powerful essay by another writer or tessa mosfet I read this line about love without it life is about doing time I don't think she intended by this only romantic love or parental love or familial love or really any kind of love in particular at least I read it in a platonic sense love with a capital L an ideal form of essential part of the universe like beauty or the color red from which all particular examples on earth take their nature without this element present in some form somewhere in our lives there's only time and there'll always be too much of it business will not disguise its lack even if you're working from home every moment god gives even if you don't have a minute to spare still all of that time without love will feel empty and endless I write because well the best I can say for it is it's a psychological quirk of mind developed in response to whatever personal feelings I have but it can't ever meaningfully fill the time there's no great difference between novels and banana bread they are both just something to do they are no substitute for love the difficulties and complications of love as they exist on the other side of this wall away from my laptop and is the task that is before me although task is a poor word for it for online writing is terms can't be scheduled pre-planned or determined by me love is not something to do but something to be experienced and something to go through that must be why it frightens so many of us and why we so often approach it indirectly here is this novel made with love here's this banana bread made with love if it wasn't for this habit of indirection of course there will be no culture in this world and very little meaning for pleasure for any of us although the most powerful art it sometimes seems to me is an experience and a going through it is love comprehended by expressed and enacted through the artwork itself and for this reason has perhaps been more frequently created by people who feel themselves to be completely alone in this world and therefore wholly focused on the task at hand than by those surrounded by loved ones such art is rare we can't all sit cross-legged like buddhist day and night meditating on automate matters or i can't but i also don't want to do just do time anymore the way i used to and yet in my case i can't let it go old habits die hard i can't rid myself of the need to do something to make something to feel that this new expanse of time has been wasted still it's nice to have company watching this manic desire to make or grow or do something that now seems to be consuming everybody i do feel comforted to discover that i'm not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for nor what is to be done with all the time aside from feeling it so yes that's the end of this particular essay i hope you enjoyed it and hopefully i can read more or a couple more essays or chapters like this in time but if you enjoyed this particular one make sure you hit the like button and i wish you a lovely evening and i'll catch you in the next video adios