nine :: progression

hello there. shari [who has a great interview with eireann today] and i return today with our documentary project. this week's word was chosen by shari.

SHARI'S RESPONSE

progression:

moving ahead, making progress, steps in a sequence. this week's word was a difficult one for me, and i chose it! i struggled to find this word in my everyday existence and learned that often progression is taking two steps back and one step forward. my first inclination was to follow the progression of a collage i was working on, to photograph it daily and to watch the progress, noticing the changes. yet i am a bit unsure of myself in this medium and i felt paralyzed. i left this piece on the floor in my study and continued to visit it every day but could not bring myself to keep working on it.

this week i thought a bit more about the word and suddenly realized that progressions are a big part of my everyday life. chord progressions! i am in a creative period where i love playing the guitar and writing music. click the link below to hear more.

link to song

progression for your ears but also for your eyes. i did a quick little watercolor piece recording the major chord progression for my song plums. this visual representation seems a bit like a secret code yet it means so much to other musicians. t picked it up and immediately recognized it as the chords for one of my songs.



what does the word progression mean to you?

MY RESPONSE

progression felt like a $10 word for some reason. i don't think i would say that in thinking about it's "normal" usage... but in terms of documenting it in my life it seemed a bit daunting.



i found that i was immediately drawn to nature - especially since it's spring and things seem to be "progressing". buds appearing, flowers popping, plants sprouting. you can't hold back mother nature..... or stop time from it's proverbial march forward.

i also thought about how progression in it's most literal sense means moving forward - or counting up. but as the word rolled around in my brain i wondered if that was really true. does progress fundamentally mean you have to go forward? can't things sometimes improve if you go "backward"? like the idea of living more simply. it's counter-intuitive to the notion of progress because it means to let go... of you gadgets, your crazy chock-full life, your desire to get a promotion [same word root] - but then again - couldn't just being more satisfied with what you have and letting go of cultural, social, self-imposed ideas potentially be PROGRESS?

in art it seems like sometimes the desire to move a thought process forward can actually impede the final outcome. i often feel like i am making progress when i re-visit an idea over and over and over - that upon reflection and not moving on i gain a better understanding of my materials, my vocabulary, my concept. i like this idea of progression in a multi-dimensional way. as if you can side-step, or crawl, or jump, or get to your progress how ever you wish.

then again - there's something sexy about progress isn't there? the future... technology... robots [hee hee].

what i did notice is that i like to place things in progressive order around me:



i like arranging things from big to small, or in numerical order, or in color order. it makes me happy - it makes me understand my surroundings. does anyone else do this?

i actually also thought about singing you a scale of notes... do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do... but i am shyer than shari and so you'll just have to pretend i did it.

finally i want to share this image because i had to show a client how you can change the stitch length on a sewing machine. we were talking about how to create a sense of depth with stitches and she didn't know you could alter the individual length of the stitch. it fits so perfectly with the word for this week. [and red on white is always a good thing]



hope your monday is progressing nicely!