E + I = 0

“Ladies and gentlemen, the management of Lesser Blogfordshire would regretfully like to announce that, temporarily (at least we hope temporarily – your own views on this may vary), our energy and our inspiration are zero, and all services in the area of bloggeration are hereby suspended for the foreseeable future. Any enquiries you may have about this matter can be forwarded via the usual channels. We apologise for any convenience this may cause.”

You might have been expecting some kind of announcement to this effect for a while now, ever since I started suggesting that barrels were being scraped and things were running on empty, but I’m not quite ready to give up on telling you of my little adventures just yet, although, after a solid three month daily pounding of your braincells into pulp with my incessant babble, perhaps it is time to slow things down a little and take more time over my meanderings and put a little more thought into them, and stop forcing myself into a daily ritual I can’t possibly maintain.

Look at the sums. They can’t possibly add up.

There is (surprisingly) a lot of science that goes into all of this artfulness, and ultimately, as sure as entropy is entropy and the total heat death of our universe is inevitable, occasionally the mathematics will tell you that it’s time to take a step back, and pause before soldiering on.

The sum of all my ignorance

This can be best demonstrated using the formula
E + I = 0, where ‘E’ represents the energy and ‘I’ represents the inspiration.

The more widely used and more familiar variation of this formula may also be expressed as
m(E + I) = 0 with ‘m’ being the motivation.

This is known around Lesser Blogfordshire as the “me-myself-I” variable, to distinguish it from the other which is sometimes also called the “ee-aye-oh” formula which is not to be ever confused with the “ee-aye-addy-oh” formula which, of course, is always positive due to the addition of the ‘addy’.

There is also the reaction factor to take into account. For example, if  e > r (where ‘e’ is the inputted effort and ‘r’ is the response or reaction to that effort) then ‘e’ becomes infinitely greater which ultimately determines the longevity of the creative flow. Reaction has been steadily reducing recently (you only have to take a look at the graphs…) probably due to a perceived diminishment in the quality of the basic product. You will just have to believe me when I tell you that to achieve such a lack of quality on such a consistent daily basis takes a great deal of effort. (Note to self: This self-deprecation stuff is starting to get tired… but then, I AM tired, so…)

However, despite my now obvious singular lack of understanding of the higher end of the field, I have always quite enjoyed mathematics. Well, mostly. Apart from that “A” level “applied mathematics” examination paper which still remains the longest and least productive three hours that I ever spent on this sad little planet. Pure mathematics did interest me and, despite having forgotten most of what I ever learned, still does in a small way. Perhaps the reason that cricket first attracted me were all those statistics, and the only thing that has ever interested me about football is the complexities of the permutations and possibilities of all those numbers in the tables.

Over the years I’ve worked with quite a few people who insisted that they were terrible at maths and that you don’t need it for artwork anyway, but for me, art and mathematics have always been inexorably intertwined. After all, you can’t build a model spaceship from scratch without some knowledge of geometry, can you?

Maths was always essential for layouts. How many degrees to rotate your element, how many lines of which size of type will fit in a certain area, etc. Nowadays, of course, a lot of the actual calculating is done inside the computer, but that doesn’t diminish the mathematics of it (and aren’t all digital processes just a row of 1s and 0s anyway?) and all those lovely 3D computer generated characters are built on the most basic of geometric forms.

There remain flaws in the mathematical arguments against persistence in bloggery, but then aren’t there always? After all, maybe the total heat death of our universe isn’t inevitable. Ultimately total expansion requires energy and with so many variables can there ever be a moment where there is no possible reaction in a single atom somewhere out there? Movement requires energy and a total collapse would require energy, so maybe all that static is the remains of previous universes sitting there stagnant whilst ours expands to fill the space…

Or something.

As to the mathematical argument, well maybe the motivation is the most important factor, although without effort and inspiration, no amount of motivation will multiply that above zero. So, inspiration seems to actually be the key to it all. Sadly, if I were to try and regale you with the humdrum realities of life in Lesser Blogfordshire, the monotony would become apparent very quickly, so the odd embellishment and dredging of the most dim and distant of memories becomes essential to the whole experience. 

So, this is a long-winded and roundabout way of telling you that things are going to change just a smidgen here in this dark corner that we spend so much of our mutually shared time in. After all, as a great philosopher might have once said if such things had been around at the time, “Blogging just for the sake of it is like being a broken pencil - ultimately pointless.” The batteries need an input of energy and the braincells need time to start to think again and I may well be trawling through my back catalogue of some half-written, half-witted half-thoughts for a while to see what is there, or my may very well just shut up for the odd couple of days whilst I wonder about how to continue with these efforts. Who can tell how that will turn out…?

I’m toying with trying to be “pithy”.

What are the chances of that?