When in Doubt, Put it Out.
Tuesday, June 16, 2026.
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"We are part of a constant interconnected cycle of birth, death and regeneration," Rick Rubin writes in In The Creative Act: A Way of Being. "Our bodies decay into the earth to bring forth new life ... art exists in the same cycle of death and rebirth."
I frequently find myself disillusioned by the ickiness of how transactional it feels to share creative work online.
Stubbornly, I find myself wanting the internet to be something it has proven to me time and again it is not: a place of profound human exchange and connection.
Though these elements can be found online, a true sense of connective, artistic exchange can’t be shared when algorithms inherently favor the Victorious, the Photogenic and the Sensational. Even the most sublime work of art is instantly reduced to the primal currency of Image, Like, and Subscribe.
I have to regularly recenter, reminding myself that this is why I've been drawn to making meaningful encounters in live performance my entire life: I crave a deeper communion screens can't touch. If I’m not in a deep creative process, directing, or performing in real life, I feel cut off from it. Social media frequently reinforces that feeling of estrangement.
This passage in Rubin's book [hang in there through the 50 pages ... it’s worth it] on creativity frames the question of releasing finished work in a different way:
we owe it to the work to set it free.
Just as we commit to pulling an artistic expression into being, we commit to letting it go by releasing it back into the wild. Not because of what it will bring us. But because it's a part of Nature.
He continues:
As in life, each ending invites a fresh beginning. When we're consumed with a single work to the degree that we believe it's our life's mission, there's no room for the next one to develop. While the artist's goal is greatness, it's also to move forward. In service to the next project, we finish the current one. In service to the current one, we finish it so it can be set free into the world.
Sharing art is the price of making it. Exposing your vulnerability is the fee. Out of this expereince comes regeneration—finding freshness within yourself for the next project, and all the ones to follow.... begun, completed, released; begun, completed, released; over and over again, each a time stamp commemorating a moment of passage, a moment filled with energy, now forever embodied in a work of art.
A work of art is not an endpoint in itself. It's a station on a journey, a chapter in our lives. We acknowledge these transitions by documenting each of them.
[breath]
Is it finished? Is it almost finished?
Why not put it out?
Tuesday, June 16, 2026.
"We are part of a constant interconnected cycle of birth, death and regeneration," Rick Rubin writes in In The Creative Act: A Way of Being. "Our bodies decay into the earth to bring forth new life ... art exists in the same cycle of death and rebirth."
I frequently find myself disillusioned by the ickiness of how transactional it feels to share creative work online.
Stubbornly, I find myself wanting the internet to be something it has proven to me time and again it is not: a place of profound human exchange and connection.
Though these elements can be found online, a true sense of connective, artistic exchange can’t be shared when algorithms inherently favor the Victorious, the Photogenic and the Sensational. Even the most sublime work of art is instantly reduced to the primal currency of Image, Like, and Subscribe.
I have to regularly recenter, reminding myself that this is why I've been drawn to making meaningful encounters in live performance my entire life: I crave a deeper communion screens can't touch. If I’m not in a deep creative process, directing, or performing in real life, I feel cut off from it. Social media frequently reinforces that feeling of estrangement.
This passage in Rubin's book [hang in there through the 50 pages ... it’s worth it] on creativity frames the question of releasing finished work in a different way:
we owe it to the work to set it free.
Just as we commit to pulling an artistic expression into being, we commit to letting it go by releasing it back into the wild. Not because of what it will bring us. But because it's a part of Nature.
He continues:
As in life, each ending invites a fresh beginning. When we're consumed with a single work to the degree that we believe it's our life's mission, there's no room for the next one to develop. While the artist's goal is greatness, it's also to move forward. In service to the next project, we finish the current one. In service to the current one, we finish it so it can be set free into the world.
Sharing art is the price of making it. Exposing your vulnerability is the fee. Out of this expereince comes regeneration—finding freshness within yourself for the next project, and all the ones to follow.... begun, completed, released; begun, completed, released; over and over again, each a time stamp commemorating a moment of passage, a moment filled with energy, now forever embodied in a work of art.
A work of art is not an endpoint in itself. It's a station on a journey, a chapter in our lives. We acknowledge these transitions by documenting each of them.
[breath]
Is it finished? Is it almost finished?
Why not put it out?