Craft and Constraint

One paradox of creativity is that the presumption of endless possibility suffocates creation.

Give an artist a blank canvas with the simple edict to realize the greatness lying dormant within? The result will be angst and agony. They’ll spiral. Jackson Pollock spends the end years of his life an alcoholic struggling to finish a painting. He dies an early death.

Conversely, come to them with a litany of impossible demands, an unreasonable timeline, go so far as to mandate the medium with which they must create and the output which they must realize? That artist may bitch and they may moan, they might throw daily tantrums, they may insult their patron for being an oblivious buffoon, they might even violate part of the brief as it’s ordained. But the outcome might be Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

Coming off a year of creation in which I followed my whims and built projects and explored subjects out of nothing more than my own curiosity as my guide, a question that’s been plaguing my mind has been: now what.

In the pursuit of the answer, I am reminded of one of the primary lessons I learned. The realization that maximizing the output of my creation over time lay in focusing on inputs which I controlled rather than their results which I desired. That creativity required focusing on routine and focus. Creativity demands repetition.

This leads me to my next paradox: repetition engenders greatness and, thus, the progeny of the banal is superlative.

And this has all led me onto the notion of craft.

I’ve previously had an adversarial relationship with Craft as a label. I can certainly appreciate beautiful objects and wonderful food and artful creations, especially when they are accompanied by excellent story telling. But there has always been something that bothered me about those with the gall to denote themselves craftsmen. Craft and craftsmen: it all seemed so overly serious. So self righteous. And here I am, but a man.

But if I am to continue down this path - one of creation, of routine, of inputs put before desire - then I suppose I must implicitly be pursuing craft whether I am willing to acknowledge it or not. That’s pretty scary to think about. It’s very serious.

And truth be told, I do think that on some level I am at this very moment closer to the artist looking at a blank canvas containing the turmoil of crisis within than he of focused rage and productive anger directed at realized creation. Less violent and self destructive than Jackson Pollock, I promise you. But not so dissimilar in my overall shape.

I’ve realized through my year of creation that skill is not sufficient for excellence. That excellence requires duration first. Repetition and routine must be sustained over a long period of time in order to their bear fruit. Excellence is never serendipitous regardless how it might seem so to an external observer. Brandon Sanderson tells his students to write with the expectation that their first two or three novels will be total garbage. Write anyway, he says.

And so I come onto the subject of constraints. If I am to define craft as inputs and repetition and sustained duration: what are the boundary conditions to my practice? Arbitrary as constraints might seem looking forward in time, I do believe those constraints will have been key to excellence with retrospect.

A culture that deeply celebrates craftsmanship - perhaps even to the point of fetishism - is Japan. The shokunin craftsman.

I remember my days backpacking and there coming across a barman in cold snowy Takayama and listening to his stories about tending to an empty bar, winter after winter, despite the financial hardship it entailed and the alluring offer of an occasionally visiting yakusa promising financial appeasement.

The dinners sat across from Akira-san, omotenashi personified.

The aging owner of a ramen stall who has dedicated his entire life to making nothing other than one bowl of sardine ramen. Surely, how many can there be who’ve chosen the path of sardine ramen? Nevermind! He assures you that his is sardine ramen perfected.

It’s all an absolutely jaw dropping degree of constraint; a constraint practiced and adhered and revered and persisted over a lifetime.

The problem is that those Japanese craftsmen oftentimes do not seem very happy to me. Even if I could have the foresight to tell you with conviction that sardine ramen was my destiny… I’m not sure that I envy that ramen stall owner. If you’ve watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi his apprentices spend a decade washing and cooking rice before they’re allowed to make eggs. And by then they’ve only just reached the second stage. Jiro’s son has spent 40 years in the shop and he has yet to attain the approving nod of his master.

And so: I don’t know. Constraint is a precondition to craft, but choosing constraint with foresight is a loaded decision, and the notion of constraint taken to its extreme, and the cost it imposes on its bearer, makes the decision all the scarier.

It all seems so hard. And that feels pretty crummy to say coming from a place of endless possibility.