Golden-Weavers

I was in a meeting yesterday about making something, and was struck during the conversation and on my drive home with how simple things can be if you allow them to be. I tend to think of the world in loops stitched together, and I’ve found that the more basic you make each one the better the result is. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. For me, a poem starts with an emotion or an experience or an observation (if there’s a difference between those three things). Then a loop runs that starts matching words to one of those three by holding them up to one another and testing their symmetry, and this loop continues until I have a sentence or a phrase that feels like it fits. Then the loop starts over, and keeps printing sentences until it’s run out of any that resonate with the underlying thing.

Then a new loop starts, and this one holds the sentences up to one another and tests their symmetry against each other. This keeps the ones that align with one another and sets aside the ones that look like the odd man out so to speak, and so on until there is a collection of them that feels complete. And then another loop starts, which holds the resulting collection of sentences up against the original emotion or experience or observation and tests whether it seems symmetrical. If it passes this test, then we have a rough draft. If it doesn’t, the process starts over from scratch, or mostly from scratch.

This is how you ought to make anything, if you ask me. Allowing unexplainable inspiration to guide a meticulous process of generation and assessment, and not moving to the next step until the last one feels right, or complete. All the while giving yourself the benefit of the doubt that you’re capable and deserving enough to live up to an incredibly high standard. Which is a softer way of saying that you’re good enough not to buy into our own bullshit.

Sloane sent me a TikTok this morning of a bird building a nest, and I ended up spending some of my morning on Youtube watching longer versions. I stumbled across one of what I think is an African Golden-Weaver (I’m not a bird guy really), and watched the entire thing twice. It’s stunning to me, and in some sense contains everything you need to know to do anything you want to do. If you have 10 minutes or so I highly recommend it, and I hope you have a wonderful Sunday.