it's always been a dance
Every day you go to your desk. To your studio. To the place and time that you create. To the when and where of what you make. And if you're working with honesty, with openness, if you're working truthfully, then you're also working dangerously.
You work in the absence of an audience. In the absence of applause. In the absence of praise. "These are times when it’s better not to be watched" Georges Simenon says. When there's not even a fly on the wall. When there's nothing. Just you. Taking chance after chance after chance after chance. Looking for the one mistake that creates a change.
"You try out movements you’ve not been trained to do", Simenon says, and you get it wrong again, again, and again. Clumsily. Awkwardly. You fail in new, wondrous, and interesting ways.
There's no finesse to it. No beauty. No grace.
It's grit and persistence and momentum. Sweat equity compounding with interest.
Dizzy and punch drunk from every trip, ever hit, every fumble. From every failure and fall.
Nothing matters more than getting up again, if for no other reason than the sheer, obstinate "fuck-you" of it. For you, there's no other option.
[P]ushed forward by your own mass," Simenon says, "you make headway".
The ungainly act of your stubborn insistence is it's own kind of elegance. Your poise emerges from your messy relentlessness. The refinement of your imperfections perfected through the indomitable will of muscle memory.
Some where along the way you realize it isn't a fight, it never has been. It's always been a dance.
**Special thanks to for his guest post on that encouraged me to read Pietr the Latvian by Georges Simenon.
P.S ICAD Day 83 - 86
P.P.S. - Here’s the last square piece I wanted to make for my submission to the Perfectly Squared Exhibition at the Five Deuces Galleria in St. Petersburg, Florida.
“Taking chance after chance after chance after chance. Looking for the one mistake that creates a change.”
Such freedom in this! Permission to experiment.
this is lovely. yes for me, there is no other choice.
other than to choose to flow rather than fight.