On Arriving

Most of what I make doesn’t begin with an idea. It begins with a kind of static, a feeling that something is trying to happen before I know what it is.

Some people think it’s a failure of discipline, that a real artist should be able to sit down and produce on command. I don’t think so. There’s a difference between forcing a sentence into existence and waiting for one to arrive already whole.

The waiting isn’t empty. It looks like nothing from the outside, but something is moving. A phrase surfaces, gets rejected, sinks back down. Another one comes closer. Eventually, there’s a line that feels less like something I built and more like something I was finally able to hear clearly enough to write down.

I don’t say this to make the process sound mystical. It isn’t. It’s closer to tuning an old radio, turning the dial slowly until the static resolves into a signal that was there the whole time. It’s important to leave time for happy accidents, and to let coincidence turn into good fortune. The Three Princes of Serendip would say the same.

What changes, once the line arrives, is small but total. Before, there was only the static. After, there’s a shape, and everything else gets built around it.

I don’t know how to make this happen faster, or how to find the magic formula. Creating takes exactly as long as it needs to, and the outcome, often uncertain, takes whatever shape it wants.

Serendipity, that is.