Expertise is wonderful at removing the wrong note. It is also wonderful at removing the note that was strange for a living reason. I have been watching early work — a first film cut on a kitchen table, a dancer’s phrase that has not yet learned to be elegant, an essay that shows its joins — and I do not want to call it potential. Potential is a way of looking past the thing toward a later, tidier thing. The beginner’s courage is often accuracy: they have not yet learned which truths are considered awkward in the room. They leave the awkwardness in. Some of it should be revised. Some of it is the piece. I am not arguing against craft. I am arguing against the reflex that treats roughness only as a debt to be paid to polish, rather than as evidence of a hand still telling the truth.#
This is an excerpt. The complete piece is in the print and digital edition of Issue 01.