The Polyhaiku Construct | © Robert Conlon

There was a point when I stepped back from my work and tried to look at it as if someone else had made it. What happened kind of shocked me. I realized that I wouldn’t particularly pay attention to it except for the fact that it was mine. I wouldn’t enjoy it, stop to look at it, or listen to a whole song. Was I so engaged in the process of making, or working through my own intentions, that I became disassociated from my own work? Maybe I had such a hard time finishing things because I really didn’t like what I made. I was wrapped up in the doing, the making.

What I have come to understand is that I had become selfish. I’m not referring here to making something for myself, or creating because I wanted to. Rather, I was hiding/losing myself, my emotions, my problems within the doing. It was a distraction, not art. It ceased to be about making and instead became diversion, like a pastime someone might do in order to forget about their problems.  I was using one part of myself to forget about another part of myself, and not only did this produce work I didn’t like, it was a dishonoring of my gifts and the effort I had put into them.

As soon as I started facing the emotions I was trying to hide from, and the past experiences that sat down there and caused the emotions, my art becomes less about escaping, less about “self-therapy”, and more about, well, art. And the more my making stuff became about art, contentment began to slip back into it and I realized how wasteful it had been to utilize a creative gift as a means to dull the pain of emotional wounds. (Or simply ignore them by “being busy.”) Yes, it can help to heal, it can help me to express myself, to get down inside me. But really, how stupidly wasteful was this, and how selfish and ungrateful! You don’t hide your gifts, and your don’t use them to hide from who you are. And you certainly don’t hide from them. Now I like what I make, instead of being distracted and wasting away.

I look at something which I have made, and I ask myself if it really represents what went into it. Work, thought, experiences, skill, feelings, late nights, emotions. Does this truly reflect all of that? Is what I am looking at, or listening to, worthy of the effort? Is all of that visible and apparent alongside the meaning?

No, it never is.

Someone buys it. I hear a compliment. Someone downloads a song. They want to talk about it, or ask me what it means. Does that make it worthy? Have they paid for the emotions, the thoughts, the work? My contentment?

But then I wonder, “what is the alternative? To not make anything?” And that seems almost absurd. That which is there at the end, the final result: a song, a print, some words on a page. What is visible or audible. The tangible. But that is not really the art. The art is start to finish. It is the idea. The doing. Feeling. More doing. And then the end.

I used to think the “end” was for everyone else, so they could experience what I had done. Buy it. Compliment it. Download it. Talk about it. And I really didn’t care that much. After all, what was it to me if someone else experienced what I had done? But I have come to understand the endings are for me, not anyone else. They act as symbols or memories. Not just the result of work and thought and doing and emotion; but real signs to lead me back to those processes if I ever want or need to go there again. Placeholders, marking a point. I can move on from it, or revisit it anytime I want. And I don’t just see the art or hear the notes or read the words. Everything is right there within it. What is “finished” is the smallest part of the art. But if it stays unfinished, there is no placeholder. No symbol. No memory.

When something is unfinished, all of that fades away.

The Polyhaiku Construct: simple. complex. pending. ended. Finishing what I have started.

For as long as I can remember I have been filled with ideas, occasionally gifted enough to bring them to life, and very rarely completing them. Usually I get overtaken by a new idea and move on, or get so obsessed with making things perfect that I become stuck in this loop of re-doing over and over. I love “concept.” I love process. I have come to realize that I never loved the completing because I was never satisfied with my own work. If I was busy thinking or researching or making that was fine, but it was never good enough at the end.

I have been working on the idea of contentment. Maybe I should call that the doctrine of contentment instead. Willfully trying to change some of my beliefs in order to assess myself honestly. Faithfully recognizing the responsibility to treat whatever giftedness I have with honesty. When I finish making something, I don’t have to stand back and evaluate it against perfection. I don’t have to weigh it against what someone else may think. I don’t have to make a judgment about whether it is worthy. What I am learning is that I can step away at the moment of completion, appreciate the process of making which I just passed through, and enjoy that I can see or hear this tangible result. Actually stop and enjoy it, keep that moment for a while.

The Polyhaiku Construct is my label for finishing all those loose ends I have sitting around because I could never let them go. The word “polyhaiku” represents for me the idea of multiple layers of simple things that jump back and forth between complexity and simplicity. It was a word I used to describe a series of work I did in grad school exploring how those two interact. The word “construct” holds that same meaning but with a sense of action, of doing. This project is about doing—taking a number of unfinished pieces of art, and songs, and writing and completing them. Rediscovering where I was, moving through the process, and then getting to that point of stepping away and saying, “I’m done, and I like where I went with this.”

I revisited my massive “box” of things in the making and sorted out  21 uncompleted artworks, 21 unfinished songs, and 21 chapters of half-done writing. I am going to try to complete one from each of these every two to three weeks. If I do it, at the end of one year I will have gathered up the past, have all of this finished stuff, and be able to move on into something new for the last part of my life. I suspect that as I do this I will get sidetracked in numerous ways and discover more things I want to conclude, and make lists of new things I want to try. But all of this “pending” will become “ended”—and I am wondering where the “ended” will take me.