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Category: art

No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better

Published November 4, 2007 by cgerrish

Samuel Beckett

A link tossed in to the stream by Joe Tennis on Twitter, stirred up thoughts about failure. Joe’s pointer was to a blog posting on the process of creating computer games, and the ideal of setting up an environment where failure can happen faster and isn’t punished. That’s a unique idea in this day and age.

It brought to mind a quote from a late Samuel Beckett novel called “Worstward Ho.”

Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

If you intend to participate in a creative profession, whether it’s writing fiction, making paintings or plays, creating companies, products or software— you’ll need to learn to live in, and with, failure. In a sense, success is the failure that we’ve made an accomodation with. We shoot for perfection, and we always fall short. Dave Winer summed it up in 1995 in his motto for Living VideoText — We make shitty software, with bugs. Software must ship prior to perfection, in that way it’s like life. We must live our lives prior to perfection. If we wait, we’ll miss everything.

Failure is tied to risk. If failure is not an option, risk is not an option. If risk isn’t an option, only a very small kind of success is possible. The principle is the same as an investment portfolio. You can banish risk, but you can’t expect a high level of return. Risk is a requirement of potential high return. The same is true in any creative pursuit, if you want a big success, you’ll need to learn to live with risk and failure.

And not just live with them, but to call them friends. Learning how to fail faster means learning how to succeed faster. Creating a safe environment for failure encourages risk taking and exploration. It gets you there faster. But just as with success, not all failure is equally successful. Failures need to be crafted just as carefully as successes. Just ask Samuel Beckett…

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In Purgatory, heads protruding from urns telling the stories of their tangled lives

Published October 29, 2007 by cgerrish

“Play” by Samuel Beckett. I directed this play in college and must have read it a thousand times. This version is directed by Anthony Minghella, and is performed by Juliet Stevenson, Kristen Scott-Thomas and Alan Rickman.

It begins the trend toward minimal or no movement in Beckett’s plays. He imagined his performance pieces as living paintings. When he had a hand in them, they were specified very exactly. He didn’t view them as open to interpretation.

It’s a “love” triangle that plays out into eternity. Three souls tied together in pain and obsession. It’s the internal dialogue that stops time and space and supercedes the physical world. Some take the visuals to be literal, and therefore “absurd.” I view them as literal, or rather very exact, in their depiction of an emotional landscape.

Part 2

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Art Notebooks

Published October 19, 2007 by cgerrish

Moleskin Art Notebook

There’s some beautiful work on display over at the Moleskin project. I’m a big fan of the Moleskin notebook, although sometimes I find them too beautiful to write in. I don’t take snapshots when I’m on vacation, usually I’ll bring a sketchbook to record my impressions. People are devoted to the Moleskin, at times it seems like a bit of a cult.

Anything that gets people using a pencil or a pen to draw pictures—I’ve got to like. I’m immersed in the digital, but the things I find most valuable are original and unique artifacts from the hand of an artist.

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Appomatox, An Opera by Philip Glass

Published October 12, 2007 by cgerrish

Philip Glass

One of the great things about going to a premiere of a new opera by a living composer is that you have a direct connection to the life and times of the work. Walking into theater last night, I noticed that the guy in front of me was Philip Glass. He looked a little nervous. Frankly I don’t know how he could sit in the audience and just watch.

While I wouldn’t call “Appomatox” a masterpiece, I would say it’s a “must see.” It’s a very good and thought provoking piece. Robert Woodruff makes his opera directing debut and really delivers. And the set design has tremendous scale with visual and emotional impact.

Glass, Christopher Hampton and David Gockley are to be congratulated for their fearlessness in selecting a theme as big as the Civil War. It’s only through big risk that there is the potential for big rewards. It’s a big story that delivers on many levels. This county’s civil war left 600,000 dead, and that burden weighed down the souls of Lincoln, Grant and Lee. In a war where so many men die, it’s left to the women to tell the story and express the emotions of the nation.

Grant and Lee negotiated the surrender of the southern army and the basis for reconciliation. The opera goes on to tell the ways in which reconcilation failed. The negotiation was civilized and concluded in great hope. But we are only a nation of people—flawed, brilliant and inconsistent.

The orchestra was conducted by Dennis Russell Davies in his first engagement with SF Opera. A long time ago, Davies was the music director of the Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz. He’s conducted many premieres by Glass, and showed a real command of the music. If you’ve listened to a lot of Glass, you’ll hear many familiar themes. If you like Glass, you’ll like Appomatax. It probably requires several hearings for its full depth to come through.

All opera company directors are looking to broaden their audiences. They need to bring younger people in and win new converts. The house was packed and diverse. At the intermission, there was a real buzz. The opera provoked conversation and dialogue. I like seeing new work about american themes and history. There’s a lot of richness here that’s untapped.

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