Making art is difficult.
We leave drawings unfinished
and stories unwritten.
We do work that does not feel like our own.
We repeat ourselves.
We stop before we have mastered our materials,
or continue on long after their potential is exhasted.
And so questions arise:
How does art get done?
Why, often, does it not get done?
And what is the nature
of the
difficulties
that stop so many who
start?¹
XXVI
Owl turned the corner
and there, by the stream,
is Coyoté
talking to himself.
Owl knew to move cautious
when these moods descend on Coyoté.
He listens,
waits.
Coyoté, oblivious, mutters in
slow strung bursts.
"... stories unwritten."
"..work that does not feel like our own...."
He kicks at a flat rock, sends it skittering.
"We repeat ourselves?!?"
Owl shifted his weight.
A twig snaps.
Coyoté looks up and turns,
"How does art get done?" he queries.
"What?" Owl replies.
"Art... making it... how?
Why?"
"Why not?" Owl asks.
Coyoté stares.
He reaches down for that flat rock
and flips it into the stream.
"Kerthunk!"
He looks back at Owl, shrugs, sheepish.
Then turns to the stream and wades in
seeking that flat rock.
Mumbling about slippery difficulties
and something about how they wash away.
Given a small
kernal of
reality
and any measure of optimism,
nebulous expectations whisper to you
that the work will soar,
that it will become easy,
that it will make itself.
And verily, now and then the sky opens
and the work does
make itself.
Unreal expectations are easy to come by,
both from emotional needs
and from the hope or memory of periods or wonder.
Unfortunately, expectations based on illusion
lead almost always to disillusionment.¹
"Yes,"
Coyoté whispers, "art makes itself.
Ah, mystery!
Wonder!"
Owl just muttered, "The answers you get
depend upon the questions you ask."²
And he turned back to his winged hunt.
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