What It Is
Disclaimer: In hindsight, I think this essay is didactic and bland. I’m sorry about that. Anyway, I’ll leave it here.
Analytical thinking is a dangerous tool. We can use it to distill problems to an essence, which helps us learn. We can also use it to create order in a disorderly world, which helps us stay healthy. But while analytical thinking—in the flavors of minimalism and utilitarianism and compartmentalization—can help you grow, it can just as easily help you get stuck.
The problem with these tools unchecked is that they can kill art. More specifically, they can make it a lot harder to create art, and they do this in two ways.
Solving the wrong problems
I love notes and lists. When my thoughts get too complex and too numerous for my puny human brain to handle, paper (or Vesper) is what stands between me and complete resignation to chaos. I believe the most important thoughts find their way back to you, even after you forget them—but that doesn’t make letting them go any easier. Writing them down gives me permission to do that.
But like any good coping mechanism, it can get out of hand. When I get stuck on something, I often turn to the to-do list, or outline, or board, or folder I’ve been using to organize it. And then I get stuck again, this time in a horrifying vortex of organization and reorganization. I seem to think that if I rearrange what I’ve recorded into a million different topographies, and reduce, reduce, reduce, until there’s practically nothing left, somehow, I’ll have gotten somewhere. It is true that, sometimes, rearranging the puzzle pieces can help you see the picture better. But it doesn’t do much when you haven’t created the picture yet. Organization is not a means to an end.
What’s worse is when this bleeds out of your to-do lists and into your everyday life. Just like you might rethink your notes in vain, you can rethink all of the objects you use and the ways you use them. There was a period of my life when I was so preoccupied with the idea of simple that once, while I was shopping for a new bike, I imagined getting one made of the least amount of molecules possible that would function as a bike. That is batshit crazy for many reasons, among them: Is there really a Platonically ideal bicycle? Is quantity of molecules among the criteria for a Platonically ideal bicycle? Could I really perceive the difference between a bicycle with X billion molecules versus Y billion molecules, and would it make a difference on my morning commute? Am I the biggest nerd on the face of the Earth (and do you still love me)?
You can’t live on a bicycle.
Technology amplifies this irrational behavior. In the physical world, to tidy up your house means to give everything in it a place that makes sense. In the digital world, to tidy up your house means to roll as much as you can into one ball, one folder, one screen, one app, so that you can look at that one thing and think, “Everything that’s important to me exists there.” (See: Breath.) But, of course, everything that’s important to me exists completely apart from my phone and the incredibly dense world of stuff I can access with it. Why do we feel like the whole world needs to fit in our pocket? Is it because infinity confounds us, or is it just another way to pretend organization is a means to an end?
If you’re looking for contentedness, I’d say stop worrying about your portfolio. […] If you expect to find contentedness there, you’re facing in the wrong direction. That’s about the past. You need to face forward. Personal satisfaction comes from putting yourself in a place where you can multiply the opportunities you have and make yourself available to whatever comes up. You want to be in a spot where you can respond to the world. If an idea hits you, then you can do it in some form. […] That’s my kind of contentedness. At this point in my career, I don’t care about getting more awards or whatever. I want to stay interested, challenge myself, and do things I think my friends and family would like. I want to be good to the people who like my work, help my peers do what they think is interesting or important, and make a living. But other than that, it doesn’t matter much to me. So, am I content? Yeah. But not for the reasons you’d think.
Organization is important insofar that a lack of it doesn’t get in the way of what actually matters. Simplicity will not save you. It won’t make you content.
Traveling toward nothingness
The second tar pit is this: Art relies on substance. If you approach the creative process with the reducing mindset of minimalism or utilitarianism, you’ll always fight against yourself. It’s like starting an essay by editing it—how can you create something when you’re constantly asking how you can distill it further? There’s too much to learn, from point A, the fragile kernel, to point B, the product, to assume that there’s a single, compact aphorism that might encompass it perfectly. When you make it that small, you deprive yourself and everyone else of the “god in the details”; no matter how great the greatest bits of an artwork, they are almost always lesser on their own. You couldn’t fit your favorite book in a tweet. You wouldn’t love it as much if it were stripped down to the sentences necessary for understanding its story. You might not cry during “These Days” in Royal Tenenbaums if it were the only scene in the movie, and even the most beautiful melody in the world means less without a song around it. The problem with distilling things to what we think is most important is that, sometimes, even the unimportant is important. And when we forget that, we begin to mistake the part for the whole.
I started writing this two years ago. I abandoned the first version when I decided I hated it, and when I revisited it this fall, it was really hard to make any progress. That’s because every time I tried to fit together all of the little bits I had collected, I could only think in disconnected bits. And when I finally got beyond disconnected bits, I could only think in grouped bits. Only when I broke the boxes that I had forced each thought into was I able to just write something. The tools we use to organize our minds are so important. But sometimes we need to just do it.
Even now, with all the heavy lifting done, I’m tempted by stupid simplicity: wouldn’t it be better to just tweet a link to Dustin Curtis’s What I would have written, which is shorter and more clear than what I’ve written, anyway? I could do that, or I could share what I think, and bring more into the world instead of less. There’s always more to say. And if I’m saying things because I think other people need to hear them, then I have another problem.
Face forward. Fuck efficiency. Build safety nets instead of boxes. And remember that the universe is sprawling, whether you pretend it isn’t or not.