On riding the curve of your craft
The other day I came across this meme.
I think this format has been around for some time, but me being the grandpa that I am I hadn't really encountered it. This one has to do with your wardrobe, but the general idea here gets at something important and weird for those of us who have a creative practice or craft.
Say you're a songwriter. (This is the analogy I've chosen, but feel free to insert your discipline — be that design, poetry, or quilt making). As you deepen your study of that craft, you begin to identify patterns and attributes that shape your understanding of whether a song is good or not. You start to notice how certain chords provide an emotional lift, or how word choice and delivery enhance meaning and impact. You start to learn how the sausage is made. Eventually you find yourself in the middle of the curve.
This meme tracks with my experience. I've found the middle to be a deeply unhappy place. Once you accumulate enough knowledge about your craft it somehow becomes a burden. You begin to know a lot about what makes a song good, and it becomes this checklist. You measure and evaluate your writing against an ever-growing, ever more nuanced set of criteria. At best, this makes writing a great song a more rigorous (if arduous) process. At worst, you've created a little cop inside your head that makes you unnecessarily anxious, and that often stifles your ability to write entirely.
Then there's a breaking point and you start to slide down the other end of the curve. You realize that all these things you know about good songs can be helpful, but they don't serve you if you think of them as being essential or mandatory. So you begin to cut yourself some slack. You trust your gut and your ears. You choose chords because they sound good. You choose words because they feel right.
Sometimes being on this end of the curve is accompanied by a little twinge of guilt. You worry you're not as committed to the rigors of your craft. You worry you might be losing your edge.
I think most of the time these fears aren't really warranted. While the left and right sides of the curve may bear a passing resemblance, the right side is a different place. When you work from that place you still somehow have access to a sensitivity and understanding of what makes a song good, but that understanding is no longer at the front of your mind. The little cop is still riding around with you, but they're off duty and chilling in the back seat.
When I think about my favorite works of art — especially art that appears simple on the surface — a phrase I often return to is "that felt earned." For instance if an actor turns in a moving performance, I find myself saying it "felt earned." What I think I'm trying to articulate there is feeling like a person is practicing their craft from the right side of this curve. They've found the simplicity that exists on the other side of complexity. There are a few things from the Buddhist tradition that this stuff reminds me of. Zen practitioners talk about "washing away the stink of zen" — shedding the pretension and intellectual attachment that often accompanies a spiritual breakthrough.
At the beginning of a project, sometimes a client will say something like "Ultimately, I just want it to look cool." The rigorous, craft-oriented part of me hears that as a red flag. But there are two other wolves inside of me that both say "Hell yeah brother. Let's fuckin cook." My favorite clients are either:
a. Willing to ride the curve with me — to think deeply about the how and the why, and then to let it go, or
b. Trusting and patient enough to let me go through that process on my own.
Weirdly, I feel like this subtle quality of earned-ness is yet another attribute that makes a song good. I also think it's something both songwriters and listeners are sensitive to. It could be wishful thinking, but maybe songs made with AI are DOA because they seem stuck on the left side of the curve. I've said it before, but longcutting is where it's at, and some things only lie on the other side of an effort made. I think this quality (what should we call it? Simplexity? Earniness?) is one of those things.
Speaking of making an effort, thanks for reading this. I'd be curious to know how much of this maps onto y'alls experience. Hope you're doing okay out there. See ya next time.
Recent Work
Some of what has recently flown the coop. To see more, you can always head over to the home page.
Whiskers on kittens
A few of my favorite things.
Wolfgang’s is an insane, incredible archive of music posters.
Speaking of cool archives, here’s one dedicated to the graphic shirt. Via Julia Fletcher.
Jessica Hische has been so helpful to me and my one-person studio in the past, and these business tools formalize a lot of her invaluable advice.