Fail big. Fail soon. Fail right away and then often. This one is about risk, taking it, seizing it, insisting upon it–risking it. Failure is a creative necessity. We are all born strangers to this world we cannot understand. Crab our way into some sense of it, eyes round with wonder, then slick with scorn, then heavy with fatigue and then open again, popped wide with acceptance, humor, the grand old ground of folks with some decades passed.
Failure is a staircase, a path to where you need to get, a shortcut, just to say. Find the doors marked Failure. Behind them are true artists, heroes, children, sprites.
There are two doors marked Success. One is gold and shiny, heavy with the weight of expectation, freighted with demands that have nothing to do with what you were put on this earth to say.
The other door marked Success can only be seen far in the distance, beyond fields and hillsides of failure, beyond a long hike and you think is a circuitous getting lost only to find it’s been your adventure, it’s produced your art, it’s given you langue and the means to use it. That distant door marked success can only be seen far off and tiny–and only looking back. When you came through it, the letters spelled certain failure, and you came through alone.