Went to the Nain Rouge again this Sunday, and unlike last year(cold and rainy), this year’s gloriously sunny march (still cold) felt like a proper usher to spring. I’m close, also, to closing on the house I’m buying, though there will be four-to-six-months of renovations before I can move in. I’m working a general contractor but I’m still bracing for it to consume a good deal of my spare time. All my non-spare time will be spent finishing the new manuscript.
I thought I’d have a lot more to add to last week’s letter, but it really just came down to this: That which grants convenience and efficiency in art (and life) can be useful when it sets you on a path of increasing difficulty. Meal kits are terrific for encouraging a deeper exploration of, say, Mediterranean cooking techniques. Building cabinet doors using power tools is a decent way to ease into making a chair using only hand tools. Some conveniences bring within grasp things that would otherwise be too daunting even to start; the danger is expecting everything to be easy. The danger is being so reliant on training wheels that you never take them off.
So I’m not against meal kits or power tools at all. I would just hope to deploy them more thoughtfully, in instances when they’re the right amount of challenge for my level of skill.