Zen and the Art of _______

Rereading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" gave me an idea: map out the route the author takes on his trip west. I'm sure it's been done a million times, but this would be my turn, for me, and why not? I got a little overzealous at first, trying to work out the exact route and mapping it on a Google map. Not only did that get old, it was pointless for at least two reasons. First, how the hell would I know if he took back road 1 or back road 2. Second, it doesn't really matter. That was his path and his experience and recreating the trip would be second best, at best, whereas traveling through the same general country and having your own experiences would be a million times better.

The great big discussion of Quality that drives the book really hits home. A long, long, creative block has kept me from doing any good photography for a long, long time. Did I mention that it was long? No way was I going to do some crap work just for the sake of doing some work, especially given my attitude toward a lot of art being produced (too much concept, not enough craft, more below on this.) Anyway, the problem comes down to what is good work and how will I know it, which Pirsig says you can't define but you do know when you see it. It's the result of right attitude, right practice, etc. Get your head straight, be open, and look.

This probably won't win me any friends, but that's cool. My problem with art started the last year of my BA program. I noticed lots of work that seemed of low-quality and by that I mean poorly thought out and poorly executed that got passable grades and maybe even some praise. This isn't to suggest that my own work was super awesome, but I did try and I did put effort into making the piece well-crafted. It usually fell short of my own expectations, but was well received by instructors and peers. When it hit me that some of my peers just wanted to get by and realized that with a lofty enough concept the execution could be shoddy, I was pissed. It's dishonest. It's trying to pull a fast one. And if you're trying to communicate visually with someone, you can't rely on an addendum on the wall explaining your work to pass the message to a viewer. Writers don't provide Cliff Notes with their books, that would be rubbish. Your work has to convey the message and if the idea isn't well developed it will show. If the execution sucks, it shows you don't care. Cory Doctorow was quoted as saying 'Ideas are cheap. Execution is hard.' Too true. The idea, or concept, whatever you want to call it, is only the start. If you stop before developing it fully and churn something out, what good is that?

This would be easy to dismiss if it were just students. I saw plenty of professional art photographers work to see the same patterns. Meh.

It doesn't have to be perfect, despite what that inner voice tells me; however, it does have to show a level of quality that indicates you care for the message. A level of importance has been imparted on it because of that and people pick up on that. Shoddy work is of low importance and low interest. It is low quality.

Damn, I have to stop because the book is still fresh in my head and I can see that I sound like it. So, I'll cut it off here and reconcile quality work with shoddy writing by positing that a blog is informal enough to act like a note pad and that's how I'm going to use it more often than not.

Sometimes you have to start with a single brick to start describing a building, to borrow from the book, or have someone point out what is in front of you before you can see it. Someone pointed and now I know where to start.