On making a thing visible

There’s a particular kind of feeling in keeping a practice solitary. You test things alone, in a room, and no one checks your work but you. That has its own honesty. But it also has a ceiling.

Getting a practice ready to be visible isn’t a single decision. It’s a stretch of time long enough to pass through several different versions of yourself. Some days it’s confidence, the work is good, it’s ready, why did I wait this long. Other days it’s the opposite, a slow unraveling of every choice.

But none of that is the truth of the work. What becomes does so by becoming. Not by being complete on arrival.

So the grip loosens, you exhale, and the thing is placed into the open. This too is ritual, as honest as any part of the making.

“Let it be something that implies nothing but itself.”
— Austin Osman Spare, The Focus of Life

The excitement comes from watching what grows from a seed sown, a dream dreamt in the real world.