Sometimes you try something and it fails. You put all your hopes into a certain thought, a picture in your imagination, and when you sit down to make it real...it doesn't work. Something isn't right, it doesn't come out as you see it, and the pieces of it sit there and stare at you, in failure. You remember all those times and all those people who say that only those who never try something ever fail, and you comfort yourself with the thought of having tried, of daring to fail at all. But it is still there...the ruin of what you cannot do, or undo, or cannot do today, and you wonder how to think about it, how to accept it, how to be with it, how to move on. Do you start over? Is this piece simply not going to work and there is another one you should begin? What could you have done differently? Should you continue to work at it, to overwork it, to over think it, thinking that all this effort must eventually turn a failure into something less so, something almost good, or even just adequate? There are no answers to questions like these, or the answer is just 'Yes' or 'No' or 'Maybe'. Then, you hear something...something in a movie that makes you think...'Ruin is the road to transformation.' How simple it is, how poetic. Ruin takes you somewhere else, somewhere you haven't been before...the ruin gets inside you, or it comes out of you, and it reminds you that you are constantly changing, constantly adapting to new and unique situations. Each failure can be just that, a failure, but also a triumph in moving ahead, in transforming, in becoming something you weren't before, in knowing something you didn't know before. Yes, you tried, you failed, and yes, it is true, you did try that must have value...but what of the failure, what is it? Is it just lines on a page? Is it something inside of you that you know is there but you just don't know how to let it out? Or is it the beginning of something else? Of transformation, of acceptance, of joy and laughter in knowing you failed and now you are just going to move on? It is time for the next chance, and maybe in this next attempt there is something more beautiful, something divine. A friend once told me that I should 'only make the good art'. What a loving and well-meaning friend this was, and I can so appreciate that notion, but any artist knows there is no such thing as only good art. There is just art. There is just the images that grab onto you, that well up inside of you, that you make because you must make them. There is no choice in art; there is only an artist and what they make, some of which are miserable failures, but others of which are simply gifts from God. But in each of the failures, in each of the ruined pieces, there is transformation, a bridge to something new, another idea, another image, another obsession that the artist must make real. Ruin is the road to transformation. So take each failure as another gift because, like the rests in a music score, like the exhaling breath, it is all part of the grander, larger symphony and mystery of life.
It isn't always right...