The sweet ritual of cleaning up
After almost 7 months of searching for a new home I officially moved apartments today. Needles to say, I could not be happier, considering how difficult it has become to find a solid, let alone decent flat to rent in our capitol after I had moved abroad about a year ago. But as great as the new home is, the best part of moving there wasn't the move or the big red retro fridge I always wanted to own (or rent) and now do, it wasn't even part of the new environment. It happened in my studio, where I used to live, almost halfway across the country.
It's the same as when finishing a painting project, I don't celebrate on the canvas or even in front of it (sure I take several long glances, letting it all in and silently feeling great about how much of a good thing I made from scratch), but for me the celebrations officially start when I am cleaning the brushes. It might not be what everybody else does, but clean-up for me is a ritual that defines the official end of work, and as such the completion of a project. It is a sacred thing, as far as sacred goes in an atheist's vocabulary, that produces a kind of peaceful excitement. And the same goes for my digital work. My desktop is always absolutely clear; nothing on it apart from a carefully selected background of trees that my girlfriend can't but to make fun of (it usually takes me weeks to find the right balance of mountains, vegetation and rivers on a landscape photograph to be used as a wallpaper on my Mac - after 4 years I have a collection of 4 images in total). But as soon as I start a project, all the work is done on my desktop and intentionally so, because it just feels that amazing to colour tag, and archive the finalised files and click delete for everything else at the very end. I guess in the end, similar to how Ivan Pavlov used clickers to train his pets, it really is all in the clunking sound you computer makes, when you wipe everything clean. And I can't but to remember one of my favourite quotes (though it is a blatant overgeneralisation) We're All Just Monkeys In Shoes.