Thursday! 3-12: What the Bible and a Chipmunk Reminded Me about Art

V3, I12

I’d like to start this week with a Bible verse that’s been in front of me for a couple of weeks.

But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

— James 1:4 (KJV)

I’ll come back to that, but first let me tell you about Instagram. As you know, if you have an account there, that the platform loves to throw “suggested posts” at you. Usually, I scroll past them¹, but one caught my attention. Some photographer²had made a small figure out of twigs, fabric, and an acorn and set it in front of a chipmunk burrow. Once it was set, he focused his camera on it and waited. Eventually, a chipmunk crept out of the burrow to investigate, and the photographer snapped the picture, which I’ll admit was awfully cute. I don’t know how long the photographer had to wait for the chipmunk³, but I’m sure it didn’t show up in a couple minutes. Most likely, the picture took a fair bit of patience from the photographer, not only to wait for Charlamagne to show up but also to make the little figure and to find an occupied and active burrow.

I don’t want to be one of those “well, back in my day, grah grah grah” kind of people, but that sort of photography isn’t exactly what you find in bulk on Instagram. You don’t find it in bulk anywhere, which is about to be the point. Good art takes patience. Good art doesn’t happen fast and it surely won’t be “content” when it arrives. Back in the day, auto companies made beautiful cars on assembly lines, but each car came from hours upon hours of painstaking design and testing. Artists made art and the assembly line made copies. I guarantee you, Acorn Chipmunk Photographer isn’t getting cute wildlife pictures every single day. The art isn’t always there⁴.

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I’ve been watching the stuff produced by the various AI programs. Some of it is good. All of it is fast. None of it is art. Might it become art later? Maybe. I’m not at all certain and, if I had to push cash money on it, I’d say no because art requires a human soul⁵ and an AI program is never going to have that, nor will one ever replicate that. Good art requires patience.

This isn’t a lecture, though, but an encouragement. You may be stalled a little bit on a project. You might have run into a patch of sticky mud and things aren’t moving along as fast as they had been, or as you want them to. That’s okay. Good art requires patience and, as the quote says, when you let patience be what it will be, you move your art a bit closer to perfection.

Did I say perfection? Yes, and I meant it. Perfection here on this Earth doesn’t mean a state of flawlessness⁶ but the state of completion, and as much as we knock perfectionism⁷, we should strive to make our art perfect. That means finished. Perfect art doesn’t need any more tinkering and touching up. Perfect art stands on its own and does what you intended for it to do, plus a couple things you didn’t intend. Thing is, though, you don’t get that quickly nor can you magic that into existence. Perfect art — finished art — takes time, trying, and correcting. It needs learning, diversity of knowledge and experience, getting out of your bubble, and taking chances. Mostly, it just takes time. What vexes perfectionists like me (and maybe like you) more than the nagging sensation that we left one critical flaw in our art is the overwhelming itch that we must get it exactly right quickly. Of course that’s not true, but learning that lesson takes time.

So let it take time. Don’t worry if you aren’t making the music you want to make right now. You will. Keep at it. Don’t sweat that chapter that isn’t falling out of your keyboard the way you envisioned it. Write it out and come back to it. You’ll turn it out just fine. The painting that you thought might take an afternoon? It’s fine it you don’t finish it for another couple of days. You need that time. Your artistry and creativity need time.

Good art requires patience. Getting to that perfected state of finished can make you itchy and fidgety, but that’s okay. Patience will have its perfect work, if you let it. That’s what the Bible and a picture of Charlamagne tha Munk reminded me.

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What I Wrote Last Week

Jimmie @JimmieWrites

Drip drip drippity drip Is the patter that spatters Down from the lip Of the eave without reprieve Until I want to flip Out.

Jimmie @JimmieWrites

The morning is sunny and isn't it funny It wasn't like that before. That day was dreary and groaningly weary- Making -- a terrible bore. That's just how it turns as today yearns To be not like the day before They each one connect much as we expect, More than we ever asked for.

1. Or, if I have time, tell IG that I don’t want it to suggest any posts to me, ever.

2. I don’t think I paid attention to the screen name. Like I said, I don’t pay much attention to suggested posts. ARE YOU READING THIS, INSTAGRAM?!

3. Whom I will name Charlamagne tha Munk.

4. The preparation is, though, and so is the attempt to create art, but that’s a subject for a different newsletter.

5. That, also, is a subject for a different newsletter.

6. We won’t be flawless until God makes us so, which comes along later.

7. Rightly, by the way, because we perfectionists chase flawlessness and not completion.