Dilemma Of The Mood Board

For me, the entire month of August was dedicated to the herculean task of de-cluttering. With the doom and gloom of a never ending monsoon and olfactory reminders of moss and decay— it was time that the unnecessary was shed and the necessary was, well, rearranged. But to your amusement, this decluttering was not really for physical items that I own (we do that another day…always another day), in fact—this reordering is specific to a different category of belongings: mood boards.

 

the dilemma of the mood board

As creatives, we are largely attracted to physical representations of our ideas, our thoughts and our moods. With access to these photo references becoming easier and quicker than ever, I feel that we may have stopped thinking on our own and ideating from scratch. Because ideas and thought processes are so neatly packaged and readily available for us to consume, it’s become reflexive for us to screenshot or ‘save’ everything that resonates with us. This habit not only completes our thoughts , it also brings a lot of thoughts into existence. But are we hoarding these photos and memes and videos? Our mood boards are increasing in volume at a speed unmatchable to our conscious utilisation of them. If we are mindlessly saving and archiving this material, where exactly is it sitting in our axis of space?

Maybe this is just a me problem, but lately my saved content was becoming an entity of its own and I felt that it needed some attention. Unsurprisingly, this material exceeds just instagram or pinterest saves— it includes my notes section, the books I’ve started, the podcasts I have downloaded and the movies I’ve promised to watch. Although not occupying physical space, these things have slowly been piling up somewhere in a back alley of my waking mind where I felt/feel the need to ‘keep coming back to’. There is also a feeling of urgency to commit to myself that I must come back to this material, absorb it and learn from it. So this month, I took a blind step into the world of my mood boards, all my archived content, all the articles I wanted to read but never did and all those saved links in my phone. And just as one would enter a cyclone ridden closet— I needed to go step by step and start from the bottom: put everything out on the floor and just

sit. with. it.

 

Being surrounded by all this material on multiple screens was a visual representation of my cognitive patterns— illustrated time stamps of my hyper stimulated brain. It was almost like I was getting to know parts  of myself all over again, revisiting my state of mind in the moments when I hit ‘save’, observing how my thoughts and choices may have changed over time and simply curious to see how these lingering pieces of information added value to my present life. If I hadn’t come back to these references, was there any point of ever documenting them?

Do we feel a sense of security when we screenshot or save a piece of image or reference, a sense of ownership?

With all this material saved and stored, are we more confident in our intellectual dispositions? Is this material validating our ideas and thoughts that we have never been able to share?

Have we lost the ability to feel inspired in our need to accumulate?

 

The concept of inspiration has evolved massively in the last 200 years. Where artists first sought inspiration from the tangible environment around them, creatives now have a much more fluid spectrum to look toward. More often than not, our sources of inspiration are now coming from reflections of reality which in most cases are other pieces of creative outcomes (in the forms of visuals or different media). I am aware that it may seem I am hinting at the debate of originality and copyrights  but I want to make clear that this is not that discussion. This is a step or two before—a more philosophical, softer take on the idea of inspiration. It makes me wonder, at what lengths are creatives to go to in order to justify their sources of inspiration? And if the access and ownership of creative and intellectual property is so democratic— where do we draw the line for the labour of originality?

The thread below reads accurately to my feelings while writing this letter.

Back to the decluttering. It was a mentally charged, emotionally complex and funny experience. Sizeable patience was required along with a lot of screen time—but it felt necessary. I felt the burden of this stored energy in ways that I can’t precisely describe. I scrolled through pages and pages of posts that I neatly and painstakingly categorised into folders titled “health” and “movement” and “words” and “music” with the heaviest being: “random”. A lot of the material was unarchived, deleted and removed from junk. Many articles were read, songs heard and pictures gazed at. So why was this an emotionally dense experience?

Because it was material that I had chosen to consume and re-consume. It was enormously mentally stimulating to come in close contact with ideas that I once had and forgot about. Visions that I had spent energy into constructing and then lost sight of. Words that had once moved me to tears and/or laughter that I barely indulged in re-reading. It was self reflective, nostalgic and ceremonial to see a physical mapping of some parts of myself  laid out in 1 x 1 squares gridding my screen. It was also empowering to know that once I was done, my thoughts and ideas would be successfully catalogued under subheadings, just as how I would ideally compartmentalise all my thoughts and ideas—plucking from these folders on a as-per-need basis.

In a world where memes and grids have become an integral part of the netizen vernacular, where are we making space for our thoughts and ideas that fall outside those parameters? The next newsletter will be taking this question a bit more seriously and will look at the the cruciality of ‘the image’ in the world and business of fashion and lifestyle. Till then, here’s a few links for ya 😉

• The word ‘“philistinism”
• History of the grid: “The grid has long played a central role in the development of art and design due to its organisational nature; acting as a matrix for controlling the placement of elements” 
• 128 things about the city. Loved this alot
• Advance Copy’s podcast episode with Priyanka Kaul titled “Embodying All Parts of Self with Priyanka Kaul”
• This easy homemade coconut milk recipe
• My spotify playlists which I treat as a mood menu
  

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  ON BARO MAG

If you have any thoughts about things shared in this letter, would like to forward this to a friend, or none of the above: I would love to hear from you in the comments or as a reply to this email.

Till next month,

M

 

p.s.👇🏼 a look at the thumbnail of the ‘random’ folder

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By Malaeka

A documentation of action via visual culture, sociology, fashion, politics, literature and music

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