“There are many benefits to being an artist that I’m grateful for, but if there is any downside, it might be that I’m never able to ‘shut things down.’ There are very few breaks from working or thinking about working; there’s always a project in my mind, something I’m working on at the moment, or a new potential project down the road.”
                -Brian Rea, in introducing Death Wins a Goldfish

                A few weeks ago some friends and I sat outside, shaded by a beautiful brick and ivy wall, talking about rest. About rest rituals. We decided to try purposefully doing nothing for five minutes a day. Sit outside. Relax into the branches blowing. Lay down and enjoy the cool hardwood floor. (I haven’t done it everyday, but I’ve done it more since our conversation, and it’s lovely to have a community engaged in creating shared practices). A few days later, as I lay on a bench looking up at the leaves, I had a thought. It seemed like a good one. Like maybe something I should write down. And I realize, whenever I go into a rest space, I’m usually looking to take something back out. I’m looking to make the rest useful, to create something from it. Some writing or art, or an idea for a class I’m teaching. I told that to my friend and she said, “Azlan, that’s bad.” And we agreed. And we laughed.
                So I don’t want to do that anymore. Not all the time. I don’t think this is particular to artists. (Many of the teachers I know would relate to Rea’s idea of always being on).. I think this is about a culture of producing, of mining ourselves for whatever precious metals or at least burnable coal we might find. And I don’t want to think of myself as a mine. So that thought I had, lying on the bench, it fluttered away on the leaves. Exactly as it should. I breathed.