Book: On Connection by Kae Tempest
A short book on the importance of connection through creativity, from London-based poet, novelist, and musician Kae Tempest. A recurring theme is how hard creative work is, but but doing it and sharing it is important in being open and connected to humanity.
The following excerpt mentions writing, but I think it applies equally to any creative endeavour:
To write is to fail. An idea is a perfect thing that comes to the writer in a breathless dream. The writer holds this idea in their mind. In their body. Everything feeds it. They’ve spent their entire lifetime up until that point, honing their skills to get this idea out of the aether, and down through their useless hands, onto the page. But it will never be right. There is no way that a writer cannot injure that idea as they wrestle with it.
The recurring theme of failure in this book is strangely encouraging and empowering.
By the time it has revealed itself to be finished, when the deadline can’t be put off any longer, the exhausted writer has learned another lesson about their own restrictions, that they promise themselves they will overcome next time. But next time comes, and they’re faced with new restrictions, new limitations, new impossibilities. Finishing work is what gives the artist the humility necessary to begin again.
Brutal and honest.