The Great Wall of Creativity
This is about procrastination. Putting it off. I've often met people who are going to write a book, make a film, record a this, paint a that, design a what-sit or other. Many people plan too much and too long, considering somehow that the time spent on that will magically seep into the work, improve its quality like wine. They do this so long that, in the end(or long before then!), the main thing they are doing is THINKING about writing, not ACTUALLY writing. It becomes part of their self image that they are in a STATE of being about to create. But, then, 3 years goes by and they have, in reality (this reality, the one we are standing in now) only written 20 pages. This is not surprising, because being in ‘the state of about to create’ is a warm, comforting, pleasant thing. The attraction is quite understandable. There is the idea, as George Orwell said, that all books are failures, so that the IDEA of the book will always be more beautiful, fun, poetic than the actual book you make (or film or painting web site design or app or whatever). Therefore why bother doing it??? Might as well just keep the 'perfect possible' book in your private mind, and love it… rather than caesarean section this imperfect version of THE book into the world - dirty, deformed and crying out for attention.
Franz Kafka wrote in his short story ‘The Great Wall of China’ that the makers kept putting off the building of the wall because they thought that future generations of builders would be so much better that they would be bound to tear down the crap wall you’ve being building, in order to make a far superior one. So, why bother actually building the wall? The problem, of course, is that if all the future generations also think that, the wall never gets made. It’s postponed into the perfectable future… which never arrives.
Jorge Lius Borges writes that this state is perhaps THE purist artistic state: "Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon." ( From his essay "The Wall and the Books" ). What a wonderful sentence! If artistic thinking involves, at it’s core, ‘the imminence of a revelation which does NOT occur’, then it is always about the work you are ABOUT to do, the book you dream of writing.
But, as I say, if we always put off building the wall then there will be no wall… and the barbarians will come flooding in. Therefore, despite all the above, we pick up a brick... and build our imperfect wall.
This is about procrastination. Putting it off. I've often met people who are going to write a book, make a film, record a this, paint a that, design a what-sit or other. Many people plan too much and too long, considering somehow that the time spent on that will magically seep into the work, improve its quality like wine. They do this so long that, in the end(or long before then!), the main thing they are doing is THINKING about writing, not ACTUALLY writing. It becomes part of their self image that they are in a STATE of being about to create. But, then, 3 years goes by and they have, in reality (this reality, the one we are standing in now) only written 20 pages. This is not surprising, because being in ‘the state of about to create’ is a warm, comforting, pleasant thing. The attraction is quite understandable. There is the idea, as George Orwell said, that all books are failures, so that the IDEA of the book will always be more beautiful, fun, poetic than the actual book you make (or film or painting web site design or app or whatever). Therefore why bother doing it??? Might as well just keep the 'perfect possible' book in your private mind, and love it… rather than caesarean section this imperfect version of THE book into the world - dirty, deformed and crying out for attention.
Franz Kafka wrote in his short story ‘The Great Wall of China’ that the makers kept putting off the building of the wall because they thought that future generations of builders would be so much better that they would be bound to tear down the crap wall you’ve being building, in order to make a far superior one. So, why bother actually building the wall? The problem, of course, is that if all the future generations also think that, the wall never gets made. It’s postponed into the perfectable future… which never arrives.
Jorge Lius Borges writes that this state is perhaps THE purist artistic state: "Music, states of happiness, mythology, faces belabored by time, certain twilights and certain places try to tell us something, or have said something we should not have missed, or are about to say something; this imminence of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon." ( From his essay "The Wall and the Books" ). What a wonderful sentence! If artistic thinking involves, at it’s core, ‘the imminence of a revelation which does NOT occur’, then it is always about the work you are ABOUT to do, the book you dream of writing.
But, as I say, if we always put off building the wall then there will be no wall… and the barbarians will come flooding in. Therefore, despite all the above, we pick up a brick... and build our imperfect wall.