Failure to improve
I am fascinated by the concept of curation. That is probably too strong a term. I am curious about the things I have created and then left behind. I have tens of thousands of photographs. Any one of those could be improved by spending some time with the photo editing suite. I have tens of thousands of pages of content that I have written. Any one of those could deal with some careful editing. I have tens of thousands of hours of musical production. Solo and with others. You can probably see where I’m going with this. Too many efforts are done in the context of one and done. If I was more focused on my own creations I would want to make them better. The reality is that I do not. I have to weigh on one hand the value of things I have already created and on the other the time available to create new content. And like most people I am lazy. I’m quite happy with the original effort fully aware that any given instance could be improved. In school we were told to do a draft of a text and then to add the the touches needed I am not as good student as I should be. In photography back in the day any given subject was unlikely to merit a reshoot put that down to the cost of materials and a lack of focus. No pun intended. There are things that I could do with photos and texts and musical efforts to improve the finished content. I probably never will. I have been listening to interviews with others when they try to describe their own creative techniques and this seems to be a generalized state of affairs. We enjoy the original moment of creation but when it comes time to edit and fix we tend to set it aside for a better moment. I believe that our whole educational system has this bias. And I am not the one who will change that system. I remain content that I am still creating new content that others may never see. A good analogy would be the hours spent by any musician in a practice studio. We all know what better means. However we lack the willingness to continue seeking that better.
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