Is it ready yet? by Slade Ham
How do you determine when you’re ready? I have a massive range of standards that I hold myself to on a day to day basis. I’m constantly debating the completion of everything. Am I ready to walk out the door like this? Did I pack everything? Did I remember all the ingredients? Did I proofread? Maybe I should tweak that sentence. Maybe this paragraph needs to be reworded. I want everything to be flawless when I decide that I am done. It’s the perfectionist in me. Things have to be ideal, or not at all. I live with this myth daily.
The artist shuts the door to his studio and molds the clay, adding to it, subtracting from it, shaping it. The audience arrives each day hoping for a glimpse of the masterpiece, and every day they are denied. “I’m not finished,” he says.
They return again and again, only to be met by the frustrated sculptor and turned away. Eventually the roles are reversed. The audience stops showing up. Their expectations are unmet. They’ve long since drifted off to other exhibits in other museums, and when the artist finally comes bursting out of his room and rips off the cloth, there is no one there to see it. There is a smattering of applause from a few passers-by, but little more.
“But this is my masterpiece,” he exclaims!
To them though, it is anticlimactic. The audience wants to see the process, to go through the process, to be a part of the process. They don’t have to literally watch you work, but they need to know that they’ve been given access to each subsequent achievement. We love our favorite band not because they put out one perfect album, but because we have been exposed to the entire discography, including the weird, whacked out experimental tracks. We like our favorite football teams even when they finish 1-15. It’s what made the Saints’ victory so sweet for New Orleans this year.
I loved you even when you sucked, we say.
The emotion that comes from the journey is what makes that destination worthwhile. The experience of believing that something is valuable before it proves itself to be is why we find the result so amazing.
I don’t have children, but I would venture a guess that people love their kids more because of the nine months they spent waiting for it. Certainly it would be easier to throw a few dollars in a vending machine and wait for a baby to pop out, but would you care for it like you would if you had to A) carry it yourself or B) deal with the hormones and emotional swings of someone that was carrying it on your behalf?
I feel that way about my profession sometimes. I tell myself that I’m not doing certain things I should be for several reasons, not the least of which is that I’m not ready. Not necessarily as a artist, but as a person. I have things I have to take care of first. Things I have to get in order. I’m just not ready. I use my career as a writer or comedian as an example, but you can fill in the blank however you’d like.
That’s not a green light to be reckless by any means, but it’s an admonition against being afraid to go on the adventure just because you’re not “ready” in your head. It’s like over-planning a vacation. Again, not that research and reservations and pre-purchased tickets don’t have their merits, but I can name quite a few experiences that I would have missed entirely had I not forced myself to climb unscheduled aboard a Tokyo subway or spontaneously take the autobahn towards France instead of back into Germany where I was supposed to be.
The truth is that our futures are ready for us now. Whether it’s a city you are avoiding or a promotion, or a person, it is a lie that you have to somehow get yourself ready. Whatever that thing is, it would rather be a part of the process. It doesn’t want the finished product. There’s no victory in that. It will still take you, the same way you would still take the vending machine baby, but it won’t be the same. We love the artist more when we are allowed to watch him work. We are so much more amazed when we know what he started with – that awkward lump of clay, the stark white canvas, a blank page.
That, we say, is what we came to see.
-S