118. No Words For Art

People always want him to talk about his art. But to him the idea is absurd. Words don’t have anything to do with his creations. They want to know about his process, about how he goes from an idea to a form. But for him the art just seems to happen. There’s nothing there to talk about.

When he tries to think about describing his art, he comes up with a sentence or two at most. And then what? His work seems like nothing at all once it’s been reduced to words. The words seem to swallow it whole, almost replacing it entirely. But obviously his work is not nothing. He creates tangible objects that can be seen and even touched.

When he tries to think about his process he almost immediately feels awkward. For the process of creation is a private thing that feels separate from language. He needs to be alone with the work for it to emerge properly. To express his idea and make it real is a personal affair. To talk about process out loud would be like dissecting his soul. And that’s not something he wants to do.

He never shows his work-in-progress to anyone. Before it’s finished it might not even be anything. There’s always a chance he might end up junking it. An unfinished work is not quite nothing but it’s not quite something either. It has to take its final form before it gains its full value. When he can see value bursting out of it, then he knows it’s done.

But when the work is complete is when he least wants to talk about it. A finished artwork is a part of him that now has its own body. He doesn’t feel he’s in any position to judge it or give it a definitive meaning. Even the thought of doing so feels terribly wrong.

If anything, the time he would be most willing to talk about art is when his ideas are still just ideas. That’s when everything is purely theoretical and he hasn’t done anything yet. But no one wants to talk about that. The words end up being too abstract, too indefinite, and people want to know what it means.

He never knows what it means. It’s this obsession with meanings that he cannot abide. So he goes on quietly making his art, without uttering even a single word.