HOPE ISn'T EMPTY

Can you explore without it? Can you create? Are there any futures ever made absent hope? Is that too many questions? I hope not. 

I disagree with the notion that hope is something idle, inert, amounting to little more than wishful thinking. Maybe it's a matter of definition or semantics — hope could mean something flighty to you and concrete to someone else. But if expectation is the birthplace of suffering (and it is. Prove me wrong.), then I think actionable hope is its antidote... and maybe its benign cousin. 

As the old proverb says: the last thing to die is hope. That it's a Russian proverb feels significant just now.

A fundamental moment for any artist is when they let go of expectation finally, completely. Many of us say we have, though filaments still cling where we can't see them. But when we recoil from the snap of what's left, there's a peace that flows over and through the process. You still edit and modify, second-guess choices and mediums, but all of it becomes tension-free. 

At that point, it's not about you anymore. It's about the hope that led you to the page, the microphone, the canvas, the camera in the first place. The hope that, maybe from over there, you can see something only you are equipped to see, you just need to look hard enough. That's hope, absent expectation.

A while back I wrote about good shoes. Great shoes. 

They're falling now, and not just mine. I hope they do.