Yuck, yum, whatever
On protecting early-stage work
“Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo.”
–Walter Benjamin
Someone asks, “How is your thing going?”
You might be bursting to talk about it.
You might crave validation for your efforts.
You might want feedback to give your ideas shape.
Incubate your idea until you’re one-fifth through.
In its earliest stages an idea is tender.
It may absorb the meta of other minds.
Foreign agendas may permeate the foetal work
And potentially destroy it.
You can’t learn to drive in a parked car
And too-early feedback can stall your engine.
A tree can handle an axe blow;
Seedlings need extra care.
The first trimester of a work is particularly sensitive.
Be skeptical of reductive opinions in ten-dollar capsules:
“Too atavistic,” “Too truculent,” “Too rebarbative.”
The work will change; all it needs is time.
The early part is more interrogation than creation.
Guiding a stethascope over your disparate inner voices
And listening with the intensity of a safecracker
Trying to liberate his own precious psyche:
Fear: what asks to be known?
Anger: what protests the status quo?
Joy: what longs to be celebrated?
Sadness: what asks to be released?
Arousal: what longs to be made?
The final question pulls you into your gut.
The truly wordless voice
That speaks only in “yuck, yum, whatever.”
You Pursue the whole body yes.
In the end, the idea might need to die,
But the work must pass through You before it passes to Them.
You are the first audience, the first critic, the first believer.
Trust yourself before you trust the world.