I got the Bonk!!

The other day we had supper with my friend Larry, a keen cyclist. Not just an old toppie donning a lycra suit because he doesn’t know what else to do with his retirement, but a one – time USA Olympic cyclist. We brought with us a large bottle of peaches. Fantastic! he said, these are the best thing to eat when you get The Bonk.

The Bonk is when you’re 20 kilometres into a bike ride and you have a total blood sugar collapse, with 20ks still to go. Hitting the wall and all that. Outside of physical exertion, how about creative endeavours: writer’s block, lets say – or blogger’s block, in this blogger’s case.

Us painter types are frequently under the threat of The Bonk. Like a tokoloshe hiding under the bed, it lurks behind every painting we do. I recently began a set of 28 small works. The first seven went pretty well, but on painting number 8, I suddenly had no idea what I was doing, The colour was out, the composition was kak, I had no idea about tonality, I didn’t even know how to draw. It was The Bonk.

Only the day before I’d thought I was in control of my destiny. Nah. When you get the Bonk, you stop trusting your instinct, and a downward spiral ensues. Pissed off about the waste of time and energy, there’s nothing for it but to scrape the whole thing down, muttering the well- worn mantra “in order to be creative, you have to be destructive.”

At this stage you’ve just gotta put the whole thing behind you. Back in the day, my strategy was always to go to a bar and spend a long time there. Now I’ll just get the hell out of the studio and park out on the beach with a flask of tea. Who knows, I may even go so far as to do a bit of plein -air painting for a change. Meanwhile, how about those bottled peaches?

tokoloshe : a malevolent gremlin of African folklore