With juggling, you drop a lot of balls. You drop so many, so often, that it stops mattering. You are so bad for so long that your ego dies completely, leaving you free to keep going.
An art practice is a way of moving through life (hat tip: Andy J. Pizza). A juggling practice teaches you that this movement is full of failures, drops, frustrations, and that the only way to get past these failures is to pick up the balls and try again.
Again, and again, and again: This is the lesson of juggling, and the lesson of art-making. Even though I can juggle now without dropping the balls–can juggle one-handed, can switch between one-handed and two-handed, can juggle without stopping for a long time–I still need to practice. I still need to keep going, and I still drop balls every once in awhile. I sometimes have a false start. I sometimes throw too high or too erratically. Sometimes lose the rhythm.
But to juggle means to pick up the balls and try again.
Making art is not a one-and-done. It’s an attempt at continual motion that often involves losing the rhythm, dropping the balls, throwing too high. But the only way to make art is to try again. Moving through life means life happens: failures and frustrations. At some point, we drop the ball so many times, we either give up or die to self, realizing that failure is forward motion, that letting go of our ego (“I’m so bad at this!”) is the only way to keep going.
Yeah, you’re bad at this. This is what juggling teaches when we first begin. You’re bad at this, and yet you keep trying anyway. You WILL fail. The humility that comes from facing this truth and persevering anyway is the engine that drives the juggler and the artist. At some point, we laugh at all of our drops. Even now, when I can juggle without much difficulty, I still sometimes drop a ball. And I laugh it off. I shrug because of course. Of course I dropped a ball. That’s the way it goes.
Those of us who make art would be well-served by this attitude. Of course. Of course I wrote a clunker of a story. Of course I lost the thread in that essay. Of course I couldn’t find the right word and used an almost-right one instead. Of course no one liked that Substack post. Of course I got another rejection letter from that magazine.
Of course. That’s the way it goes.
And the juggler knows you simply bend down, pick up the balls, and start again. Drops happen to everyone. They are as much a part of juggling as keeping all the balls in the air.
The same goes for art.
