Grace Over Perfection

You Know Exactly

This is one of my favorite All Over Coffee pieces. Because it began with a note to myself. A reminder, which I often return to. But the quick sketch below is also one of my favorite drawings. I made it over twenty years ago, and still love it more than many of my more finished drawings. Why? Because it has soul. It’s a portrait of someone who went by the name Spaceman. I never knew his real name. I was sitting across from him at Magnolia in the lower Haight one morning, and suddenly saw him in a way that I knew I could capture.

My drawings are often credited for being detailed. And I understand why. But I don’t think of drawing in terms of detail. In fact, I’m always thinking about how few marks I can make. Economy of line is my goal. As is consistency, along with a slew of other geeky art terms. But in general, I will always take grace over accuracy. I used the word perfection above, but that was only to get your attention. I don’t believe in perfect. The pursuit of it can destroy creativity, and the demand for it destroys everything else. That said, I do think we must strive to make everything as good as it can be. Then strive a little harder. But the line between that and perfectionism is hazy, and not one I’m interested in parsing out right now. My point is, the reason I like this drawing is because it’s imperfect in, you could say, the perfect way. It’s loose and graceful. It may not be a formal portrait, but if you knew Spaceman, then you know it’s him. And that, to me, is more important than detail or realism.

I need to say that I’ve been struggling with this transition from email-mailing-list to Substack. I love producing series, but I was never a blog-person, and have always disliked—as in absolutely could not stand—twitter, and social media in general is something I tolerate as a burdensome necessity. It’s why you won’t see anything but business from me on any platform—though to be fair, my life and work are pretty entwined. Even still. Birthdays, vacations, any kind of personal life event, those are not for public consumption. Maybe this is me showing my age, but I believe keeping some things for ourselves is a important. Not everything has to be shared.

This Substack thing though, I’m liking it. It’s a good tool. When I ended All Over Coffee, I worried I would be cutting out part of my vocal cords. In all honesty, I should have ended that series a year before I did. I was done, but couldn’t let go. I knew there would never be that kind of opportunity again, that kind of reach, that kind of voice. But another truth is, times change. If I hadn’t left it, it would have left me. There are days when I miss it. Though most I don’t. The rigor of regular publishing is like a sport. I published four days a week for two years, then weekly for the next ten. After twelve years and almost a thousand pieces in print, the joy became not having to publish.

With this platform, I vacillate between promotion and musing—is this a series? Or just a mailing list? I actually don’t care, and prefer not to define it. As analytical a person as I am, in this realm, too much questioning feels like the death of creativity. Like dissecting your pet to see why you love it so much.

And so this post is a way of breaking some new ice; of letting go the fear of verbosity, that I might be rambling and losing your attention. Same time, brevity is absolutely a good thing, and something—believe it or not—I do strive for. Certainly when writing for a newspaper series, it was the gold-standard. Some of those All Over Coffee strips may not seem like much to you, but they took months to get from hundreds of words to a few succinct sentences. When I began writing novels I felt like a puppy off the leash. I ran and jumped and splashed through pages. But these days, with everyone telling us we all have ADD so often that we now all believe we do, I write more than a paragraph and think: Fuck, is anyone going to read this far?

But it’s time to let that go too. Maybe find something in the middle. Which is why I’m going to let myself ramble a bit on this platform. Because I can, but also because it’s the right place for it. So thank you for sticking around. Stick around a little longer, will you? I’m bound to come up with something new. I usually do :)

– Paul

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