Why Are You Rushing This Chapter?
On the tyranny of getting things done — and why some chapters ask to be lived, not finished.
Having tried so long to “get through” this chapter, I allow myself, finally, to be in its heart.
It strikes me that too much of our lives are coloured by this dubious notion — that something must get done.
Yet it’s only by living long enough with something that you understand its nature. How it is trying to form you, and you it.
This is why I love art projects.
Because over time, they start to shape us.
For all the travails of my own life, I remember its chapters.
There is no mirage, no blur, no dissolution.
Art stamps your life. It imprints mangled cracks in you, drips in its molten iron, brands you, then exits, not as a wound, but as the gift you offer.
Yes, our gifts are given not just from the delirious joy we aspire to in our delusion.
But just as much, our gifts are converted darkness.
Art is your response, and creativity is how it is wielded.
Sometimes with our creative projects, we fall off. We never complete them, or life pulls us in a new direction.
The weight we carry is as much for the chapter we never quite completed as for the artwork that never found its way.
Often, when we don’t complete a project, that chapter fizzles into the next, and we feel that our life has lost its delineation.
The trouble is that the longer time inches forward, the further we drift from the Self we were at a project’s inception.
The pain in the project is that you become someone new during its making. Its burden is that you must always answer to the you that you were.
My God, that can feel grating.
I go through that now.
Today marks day 1020 working — sometimes more, sometimes less — on the Chromatic Zero project.
What began as an album has grown like a hydra — now also a book of images and a book of words.
I am different to when I started, and attempting to complete it means answering — and fulfilling — an older part of myself.
Sometimes I want to cut it off.
I have never changed so much during the course of one project, or learnt so much.
The I that I am today no longer feels the same as the I that set out.
And yet, I am still within its chapter.
It is my task to complete it. Because I must answer not to the me of today, but to the man who felt at the end of his musical life when the project started.
You could say that the me of today is his answer — who feels a greater sense of peace, and of presentness.
Who feels that I am not at the end of my journey, but at its beginning.
For now, though, that new beginning must wait as potential.
I want to honour that past Self, not just for what he has — and still is, very slowly — creating.
But also because I believe it will help other artists who feel at the end of their road, whatever age they are.
If anything, I believe that inner journey is a rite of passage.
That to be an artist is to live and die many times in our lives.
You may feel that you are in a certain chapter today. And you may well be challenged by it, even tortured.
I don’t think that art has to be torture.
But I do think we are always underprepared for how we experience time within the chapters of our lives.
Especially nowadays.
If your project is taking time — far longer than you or the world imagined — let it.
Yes, you have to keep chipping away.
Yes, you have to show some dog.
But you also have to be in it.
That is not just about your To-Do lists, and it is not even about the nauseating boringness of everyone only feeling human if they are moving towards their goal.
No, art is not a productivity manual.
You have to experience, to the very depth of your soul, the life you find yourself in.
You have to feel it.
Goddamn, that means allowing your life to catch up, too.
This chapter is not about the final dot at the end.
You have to write down the wisdom you are accruing as it plays itself out upon your spirit.
That is where the good stuff is.
Where what you have to teach will one day come from.
And the space from where — however it writes itself in its cryptic calligraphy — art is born.
Why are you rushing this chapter?
With love,
Jim
Last year I imagined having an all-in-one workspace for Substack. It became a far bigger project than I first imagined, and took me six months to build. I was shocked at how helpful I found it and, after some consideration, decided to release it so that my community could use it too. You can explore it here:
If you’d like to speak for 15-minutes to see if “The Substack Workstation” is right for you, feel welcome to book a call:
I used to rush through life…until I realized I didn’t have to. Working from rest now, is such a gift. But I’m not going to lie, I’m working on a huge collage that I’m getting only one step at a time. There is absolutely no rushing this thing…and I feel like I want to rush it. Thank for the reminder. I obviously needed it.
The thought that I am behind on a creative project often pops up, but I try to remind myself of all the times in the past where I had to wait for that next step suddenly appearing to move me on - finding a collage image, hearing a quote, wise words from a friend, an insight from nature. Oliver Burkeman writes about inspiration showing up just in time, not in advance, and I think that's true. Everything unfolds at the right time, we just need patience and to keep paying attention . . .