draw things paint things write things make things, number 308 … failure

Best to accept it for what it is.

Good morning.   

Almost a week later and still wishing my suspicions about the American election’s outcome had been wrong but there you go. Sometimes the gut just knows. So many had held out hope that the answer to any question is never Trump. That even if you feel like DEI, elitist, party-machine politics is dissembling, lecturing or even toxic (a suspicion I often share), then the antidote is not ingesting a handful of fat, incompetent, venomous spiders. 

Does anyone need to be reminded of the consciousness-cratering spectacle of Four Seasons Total Landscaping? 

If only the mendacious effects were limited to that kind of comic blundering. But I think Trump Redux (This Time It’s Personal) is going to be a considerably darker. 

America is in for that kind of time, I’m afraid. On this Remembrance Day, it’s worth remembering that, for all their fine qualities, humans often behave badly, and throw away entire timelines by insisting on driving over the cliff. Consider the appalling circus of needless self-destruction that defined World War One, the war Canadians most closely associate with Remembrance Day (poppies, Vimy Ridge, Billy Bishop, all those British poets they used to teach in school), when Europe’s most healthy, vibrant societies lined up for suicidal performances like the First Battle of the Somme (over a million casualties for the prize of six meaningless miles) and Gallipoli (land on a beach, never get off the beach, die like flies, evacuate, accomplish nothing). It was the ruin of a generation, the lights of civilization literally going out. 

Of course that is the bottom/worst example. The total failure. And while last week’s election is certainly (hopefully) not that, I have all sorts of fears and sympathies for my American friends. They are, without question, a long, long way from the days of MLK and and Robert F. Kennedy. 

The Democrats failed and they need to figure out why. The ‘why’ is the starting point of the conversation and correction. 

As an artist I have a pretty good working relationship with failure. It hangs around, makes itself comfortable, asks a lot of questions I don’t always have the answer to. At least not right away.  I often make things that turn out to be wrong. I have an idea, follow it, and discover that it doesn’t work. 

I might have to put it away for awhile. Hide it in a drawer. Turn it against a wall. Wonder what the hell I am doing with my life. 

Art and craft fairs where you don’t make back your table. Literary readings to a crowd of six. Print-on-demand platforms where there is no demand. And so on. 

Sometimes the blame is elsewhere. But usually the fault lies in the work itself. Too dark, too busy, too muddled, not finished, not professional, not adding value. Line, colour, texture, form and space — I’m not saying there’s a recipe for these things, but there are certainly ingredients that need attention. Sometimes I make something that just isn’t very good. Prime over it, start again. Do better next time. 

Because the essential thing about art is that it is work without a great chance of success but it is worth doing anyway.

My favourite Great War poet is not Sassoon or Owen but T.E. Hulme, who wrote lines such as … 

A touch of cold in the Autumn night — 
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded,
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children. 

He was blown up at a place called Oostduinkerke, in Belgium, in 1917. Yet his work endures. Human ingenuity transcends everything, including time and place, including failure.

Good luck to everyone with their own failures this week, 
djb  

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
— Aeschylus  

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my Etsy store / my Big Cartel store / my Instagram / Kiss Me Deadly, original ending / We are undone, prepare to die / kid dances to impress / some careful thoughts on Instagram / what a piece of work is man / Happy Birthday, Jesus