“I draw deeply from the quiet which has now been granted me. The mind has a more extensive and expansive leisure within the six surfaces of a room than it could gain outside. In fact, the smaller the place, the more extended the mind, for when the body is constrained the mind takes flight.” - Peter of Celle (12thC Benedictine abbot)
A couple weeks ago I embarked on a ridiculous adventure I dreamed up for myself way back when I was working on my MA: a solo transatlantic cruise for the purposes of revising my first draft of my dissertation. Naturally, I made comics alongside my dissertation work because it helps keep me from panicking too much and I knew I would want a record of the process.
Over the ten days of the cruise, I drew 22 pages of comics and I wrote 11,000 words of notes, ideas, and next-steps for my wobbly first draft. Looking at these numbers, this is exactly why I wanted to take this trip - to see how productive I could be in an environment where I had no responsibilities other than my work and no where to escape from it. My mind really did take flight!
It’s going to take me a little while to scan in and edit all the pages to share further, but I wanted to leave you with a little sneak peek until then! Because my dissertation was/is in a particularly chaotic and messy stage right now, I wanted to play with having the creative side of my work on the trip be more controlled and planned out - while still allowing space for what was to come as I had no idea how the trip was going to unfold.
My diary for the trip was broken into two type of pages: a daily log page and a running storyline of my dissertation work based on a 12 stage version of the Hero’s Journey because, as you might know, I love playing with constraints and structure. The daily log page grew out of conversations with one of my lovely UniBern colleagues about how a day might be encapsulated in such a way to build in both routine and space for the messiness that any adventure entails. Each page began and ended the same — with one panel for a sunrise and one panel for a sunset — and the section in the middle of the page was left open to account for the day as it happened.
The “Hero’s Journey” side of the diary was dreamed up in conversation with another brilliant friend and colleague and was an absolute delight to work on! I was drawn to this story structure for my diary as the trip I was undertaking was decidedly not epic (luxury ship, after all) and non-traditional (most people don’t end up dissertating) and I suspected pulling this unconnected ideas together would give me an entertaining route to explore the process and all the ups and downs awaiting me… and on a boat moving through 14ft waves, there were a number of those!
I’ve been home for three days and I am still extremely wobbly, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. I hope to have all the pages ready to share in the next week or two. Perhaps even a print version??
Have you ever planned an escape for creative reasons? Where did you go, what did you do, and was it successful? Did you go alone or with a buddy? I’m interested in exploring more art-escapes in the coming years!