Crude Interlude
‘Sprezzatura’ means ‘studied carelessness, especially as a characteristic quality of art or literature’.
It is that reckless, unpretentious flair that gives a personality to your work. The rough edges, the squiggly, inaccurate lines, the smudges, jagged strokes and color splotches that say ‘this was made by a human being who’s confident enough in themselves not to take all this too seriously.’
It’s putting in the work to make it look like you didn’t put in any work. As QZ [I believe] put it, Sprezzatura is Beyonce saying ‘I woke up like this.’
I love sprezzatura.
Since 2013 [about the time I became really active on the internet], everything I have created, while not dripping with the smouldering assurance of a seasoned expert, has had the markings of sprezzatura. Writing, art, even day-to-day work.
You can find it in this blog, in my comics, the way I tweet — a marked carelessness to it. It’s studied in that I never do it by accident — and I almost never miss the mark I set out to hit.
Sprezzatura as a safe space
I never really wondered why I couldn’t just standardize the things I did — that is, make it up to par with ‘convention’: color between the lines, obey the rules of writing, follow clear guidelines for storytelling, especially since I knew a lot of these rules by heart.
In 2017, standing in front of a coffee shop, someone I respect said ‘ you know what I l love the most about the way you work? You’re not afraid to grow in our presence — you share incomplete work, run experiments in our presence, share crudely-drawn sketches while trusting everyone to get the main idea — I like that.’
Up until that moment, I hadn’t really thought about why I favored studied carelessness.
Unfortunately, I forgot the lesson in that, and as a result I entered into a creative rut.
It all began when I started taking myself a little too seriously.
I started feeling dissatisfied/unhappy with my creative output. Why didn’t it look like the work of an arbitrary creator’s work? What’s the secret sauce I was missing? The more I dwelled on this, the more I couldn’t employ studied carelessness — to my ideation, pre-production, etc. Everything became a chore, and I started abandoning projects and fleeing naked in the middle of the night.
I lost all love for everything I enjoyed, and began to feel anxiety and paranoia: have I been a fraud the entire time? Perhaps I’ve just been careless because I don’t have what it takes to produce a carefully thought-out piece of work?
Good God, the horror.
Refuge in the past
I accidentally stumbled on something that helped me manage this crisis. Instead of looking at the people I admire today, I started looking at them yesterday. Seth MacFarlane, Olan Rogers, et al.
I discovered, to my relief/joy, that before they became these standardized gods I bow before today, they were just like me: studiedly careless, not taking themselves seriously, and just doing things because they wanted to.
P H E W.
So, I’ve decided to return to a previous version of myself: the one who would use his expertise [or lack thereof], the tools currently at his disposal to form a house for his ideas, not caring about standardization until such a time as he can afford such a luxury.
Welcome, again, to the crude interlude .
