Doing nothing without intention

Often I feel the compulsion of conforming to certain notions of labour to be seen as productive, but let's just learn to embrace doing nothing

After two weeks of immense discomfort, I'm finally able to walk without the aid of crutches. The swelling on my right ankle has reduced immensely. I don't need to wear the ankle brace I bought in Sylhet. To be safe, I crutched my way through Dhaka airport onto the flight to Kolkata. We spent more time waiting to check in and then on board the aircraft than in the air. We took off around 9.50 am. The sun kept speckling across the wetlands below so that there were moments where it looked like rivers of lava sliding through moist crevices of the earth. It was spectacular. I flitted in and out of consciousness. By 10.20 am, we were making our way towards emigration.

This is my virgin experience of spring in Kolkata. It is utterly gorgeous, how the sunlight twists and turns and spills into our room. We're staying at The Lighthouse, near Lake Gardens, at an Airbnb run by a photographer, Rahul Dhankani, who rents out space to travellers when he's not using the property to host artist residencies.

It is airy and quiet and I allowed myself two days to settle in and transition from Dhaka, from my state of bodily weakness. I hadn't fathomed how when you're on the road for fieldwork, you need to factor in periods of rest; downtime not just for the body but for the mind.

Sometimes I wonder why it has taken me so long to figure out so many crucial details about how to live better. Because my ex was a photographer from a certain generation that valorised pushing the body in the service of artistic labour, I internalised that it was important to be seen as always working. I started to accrue guilt whenever I idled. If I binge-watched a TV series, or even did nothing significant. The day had to have meaning. I had to conform to certain notions of labour to be seen as productive. As I spend time talking to artists in their studios, I'm beginning to learn about what it really means to embrace doing nothing.

One artist, Munem Wasif, reminded me of what the great female artist, Agnes Martin, said once, about how she perceived the compulsion that drives one to make art. I looked it up later and found this excellent exhortation. "That which takes us by surprise — moments of happiness — that is inspiration." But it is also a directive. "Inspiration is a command. While you have choice that is not inspiration. If a decision is required that is not inspiration and you should not do anything by decision. It is simply a waste of time."

Then I found the quote Wasif referenced, "I don't get up in the morning until I know exactly what I'm going to do. Sometimes I stay in bed until about three in the afternoon, without any breakfast." For her, the staying in bed was elemental to her process of conceiving an image and then allowing it to inform her consciousness. Reading this reminded me of a line from a song by Solange, "Do nothing without intention."

I once said something similar, about how I wanted to perform the daily business of living from a space of desire, not obligation. But just as I only recently have been coming to terms with how long and arduous the process of unconditioning oneself from many entrenched patriarchal modes of thinking of doing can be, I am still addressing how my conception of productivity has been hardwired by capitalist frameworks.

One of the reasons I quit having a full-time job was because I wanted to resist becoming part of a culture that necessitated the selling of your time, imagination, and creativity by dehumanising you, making you punch in your entry and exit, monitoring your sick leaves and casual leaves, and how long you can travel for and when.

Once you subscribe to that system, you lose track of how profoundly it programs your behaviours and your experience of your own time. Before you know it the years go by until you realise you've been in the same company for years, and your growth has been both compensated and compelled by the promise of gratuity. Then, suddenly, you don't know what to do with your 'free time' any more, because you had gone so long without ever enjoying it.

As a freelancer, I repeated many of these mistakes, which goes to show that just because you elect out of a system, doesn't mean your behaviour will change instantly.

I'm still learning to put my self and my needs first, so that I can be present for all the people I love from a space of fullness, joy, generosity. If my ligament tear has taught me anything it is to respect my pace, my time, and not feel compelled to do more than my body is able to, to work with it rather than abuse it, to pause and facilitate moments of stillness, even at the height of my current nomadic predisposition.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper

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