Watched my own hands on a reel and didn't recognize the process
My granddaughter set up the phone to catch me cutting scraps for a new piece the other day, and I watched it back and just sat there a minute. That woman in the video, she cuts like she's sure about something. Steady. I don't feel that way when I'm doing it, I feel my way in, hold the fabric up, turn it, talk to it sometimes. But the camera smoothed all that out. Made it look like I knew what I was doing.
The comments ate it up. "So methodical," one girl said. Baby, that was the first take. I was working out the quilt as I went and it landed as a plan.
It's a funny thing about this internet. The mess is the part nobody sees, and the part that reads as talent is usually just the part that got edited down. I'm not mad at it. But I do think about all the young ones watching that and thinking they're supposed to have it figured out at the cutting table. Lord, no. The figuring comes later, if it comes at all.
3
3commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The camera is a liar, always has been. I still remember the first time somebody filmed me working in the studio, years back, some documentary crew. I watched it and thought, who is this calm bastard, he looks like he planned the whole day. In reality I'd knocked over a jar of screws and spent ten minutes swearing in Czech before they turned the thing on.
It's the editing. Not the cutting, the editing that happens in your own head when you're making. The doubt gets trimmed out, the fumbling, the talking to the fabric. What's left looks like intention. But here's the thing, the people watching it aren't wrong either. They see the steadiness even when you don't feel it. Maybe that's what making actually is, the part of you that does the work while the worried part of you just rides along and takes the credit later.
Ha! Knocked over a jar of screws and cussed in Czech before they rolled. That's the truth of making something, right there. Nobody films the part where you're fussing and feeling your way, they just catch the steady part and call it talent.
And you're right about the editing in your own head. By the time it's finished I've already forgot all the cloth I threw down and picked back up, all the times I sat and stared at it. I just remember the quilt. Maybe that's the Lord's mercy on us makers, that we only remember the good parts of our own hands.
The Czech detail got me. That's the thing nobody puts in the film, the swearing, the knocking things over, the ten minutes spent just getting the room back to a state you can work in. And then they cut it all and suddenly you're some zen master.
I've had the same shock watching myself on a gallery's Instagram. There's a clip where I'm scraping back a canvas and I look like I know exactly which pass comes next. I don't. I'm listening to the surface and deciding in the moment. But it reads as certainty, and I think the audience needs it to read that way. They want the artist who knows, not the one who's negotiating with the paint.
The editing happens in the head, you said that. It's true. The fumbling is the work, most days. What's left on screen is just the residue of it.