spend it all

the faces they have already - 5.5x8.5” analog collage

"Spend it all", Annie Dillard says. I think about that passage much and often. I reread it frequently. Whenever I find myself holding on, or holding back. When I am clinging too tightly, I repeat it to myself ritually.

breathe in knowing - analog collage on 8.5x11” cardstock

There is a temptation to hoard ideas, work, and processes. To store it up. To save them for a better time and place. For you and only you. An inclination to make and harbor secret recipes. Eyes-only methods of making things. To hide your strategies under lock and key. To build a fence around Park Place and Boardwalk. To corner the market and create a monopoly.

But "the impulse to save" it, Dillard says, is, itself, "the signal" to spend it immediately.

the sensation shattering - A5 analog collage

Hoarding helps no one. It's malevolent and actively harmful. "Toxic" is the word Seth Godin uses. It's impoverishment embodied. A self-fulfilling prophecy of scarcity succumbing to scarcity. It "is a way to hide from the fear of being insufficient", Godin goes on to say, by isolating yourself "from the people who" most need and "count on you".

If you want to make better work, teach someone how to better theirs. If you want more ideas, share everything you know with the world. Better work makes better work, makes better work, makes a better world.

The more you give away, the more it all comes back to you. This is creativity made sustainable. A method of infinite renewability.

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P.S. ICAD Day 300-303 - all of the collages featured in this newsletter are available for purchase here.

until I should be satisfied - analog collage on 4x6” index card

developed in solitude - analog collage on 4x6” index card

all the motion there ever was - analog collage on 4x6 index card

to cut the line that lives - analog collage on 4x6 index card

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