The Golden Cage

In Art & Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland write:

"To demand perfection is to deny your ordinary (and universal) humanity . . . yet this humanity is the ultimate source of your work."

I have come back to this book often when I am once again confronting my own resistance to making. I read the words and wonder: What goes on here?

Most of us want to make good work, perhaps even exceptional work.

We want the line to feel right, the pieces to fit, the vision to say what we meant it to say. We notice what is awkward, unresolved, or poorly made, and we try to make it better.

There is nothing troubling about that.

But somewhere between wanting to do something well and needing to get it right, something changes. We begin trying to remove from the work the very evidence of humanity that gives it life.

We smooth the awkward places, correct the irregularities and remove the evidence of hesitation. Sometimes we continue working long after the work has stopped asking for our help.

What are we trying to eliminate?

Perhaps it is the uncomfortable evidence that an imperfect person made it.

A handmade object carries traces of its maker: a slight variation in a line, an unexpected choice, a place where one material met another and the solution was not mathematically precise. These are not always accidents. Sometimes they are simply the marks left by a person paying attention, making decisions, adjusting to what the material offered.

Ancient mosaics are full of such irregularities, tesserae that vary, lines that wander, forms that are not quite symmetrical. Centuries later, we do not necessarily experience these things as flaws. The work endures, moves us, and carries a human presence without being flawless.

So, when did evidence of the hand become evidence of failure?

Perhaps the trouble begins when the work is asked to say something more about us: whether we are talented enough, serious enough, skilled enough: whether we belong among the artists whose work we admire; whether someone else will see what we fear is there: that we do not know enough, are not ready enough, are somehow pretending to be an artist.

If the work is going to become evidence of who we are, we had better make certain there is nothing wrong with it. A flaw in the work may begin to feel like a flaw in us.

Perfection begins to offer protection.

If I do not make a mistake, perhaps I will not look inadequate.

If I stay with what I already know how to do, I am less likely to fail.

If I keep working on it, I do not have to decide it is finished. I do not have to let anyone see it.

The protection can feel reassuring.

It can also become a cage.

Its boundaries may narrow so gradually that we hardly notice. We begin looking outward for measures of what is good enough. Someone else's work becomes evidence against our own. Their ease, their confidence, their recognition, their apparent certainty can make our work suddenly seem smaller.

Then there is the voice that may have once helped us see what needed attention. It becomes harsher.

That is not good enough.

You should know how to do this by now.

Someone else could do it better.

Why begin if you already know it won't be good enough?

We prepare longer, wait for more confidence, postpone decisions.

Sometimes we do not begin at all.

Creativity asks something quite different of us. It asks us to enter a place where we do not already know what will happen. And then something refuses to go according to plan.

These moments can feel like proof that we are not capable. They can also be where the work becomes ours.

There is a peculiar safety in making only what we already know we can make. We may become very accomplished there. The work may be beautiful. It may be admired.

The cage, after all, can be golden.

That may be why it is so difficult to recognize.

From the outside, it can look like discipline, high standards, competence, even excellence. From the inside, something quieter may be disappearing: experimentation, surprise, risk. play, joy.

The desire to make something well has not necessarily gone anywhere. But perhaps, somewhere along the way, protecting ourselves from imperfection has become more important than discovering what might happen.

Maybe the question is not whether we should stop caring about doing things well.

Maybe it is simply worth wondering:

If nothing is allowed to be imperfect, what are we no longer allowing ourselves to do?