Finishing stuff

A challenge for a chronic improvisor

I haven’t posted any long-form work in over a month. This is partly because, via Substack, I’ve serendipitously met a wonderful community of music-makers through Reid Sorel and Michael Gilbride that has pulled me towards deeper engagement with music.¹

The opportunity to make this pivot has been made possible by the willingness of my sentence-making efforts to take a little break so the finite cognitive energy I tend to muster could be leveraged elsewhere. Another factor, though, has been a limited ability to know when to call something a finished product.

This is a new challenge for me; during my corporate career, there was always a next iteration of the product we were building, so it was never done. It was only done for now. And, as long as we could say that it was enough improved to justify the resources we spent on it, and it continued to outperform our competitors, it was a success.

The composer should know where the end is.

It’s different with creative work. While there is also iterative versioning in the creative process, most of it is non-public. The creator must be the curator of versioning, knowing when to select the one that is ready for eternity.

Sometimes, just as in product dev, there is a time-box or budgetary constraint, but without that kind of guardrail, it can turn into a Zeno’s paradox, where each revision gets you a little closer but you never reach the finish line.

I struggle with this moment of commitment in music, even where my intuition is strong. As an essayist, I have less intuition, and so more concern about knowing when to call the question and release something into the wild.

What all the wise folks I discuss this with seem to agree on is that you can’t really answer the question about when something is done without clearly understanding your intention. And what I always hear, naggingly, in my self-talk, is that my intention is nothing more than vanity, whether intellectual or creative. I can always point to an objective that doesn’t center on vanity, but I always question whether it is really an objective or just a rationalization².

I wonder if part of my challenge with regard to intention stems from my skepticism about free will³. Being uncertain as to whether I can even intend seems like it could undermine my confidence in the sanctity of a creative intention.

Perhaps this is why my best work tends to be improvisational as opposed to developed. The beauty of improvisation is that you don’t have to worry about when it’s good enough because you only get one iteration. You may need to decide when the improvisation has run its course but that’s as much an act of discovery as of intention, in my experience. In fact, some of my most compelling moments of improvisation are those in which the intention is revealed in the process itself.

Perhaps I should stick with improvisation.

1. Much of my time and energy this month has been given to the production of a cover of “Blister in the Sun” for a challenge through MAD Records. This time-boxing is a much needed constraint for me. The MAD Records Monologue The MAD Records Sync-Stack

2. It’s also possible that vanity is a motivator as opposed to a goal: part of the reward system of feeling like you’ve achieved a worthwhile goal (making someone think a bit differently, sparking discussion, creating an emotional resonance, etc.).

3. Whole other rabbit hole I won’t go down now.