Lichtenbergian Precepts: Abandonment

Finally we arrive at the 9th and final Precept: ABANDONMENT.

Whenever I’m outlining the Lichtenbergian Precepts to people, ABANDONMENT almost always prompts a sympathetic sigh. “Yes, I know,” my auditors seem to say, “it’s terrible when you have to admit you’ve failed.”

Well.

First of all, it’s not terrible to admit you’ve failed. Failure is always an option, and it’s the opportunity to fail that makes Lichtenbergianism such a powerful tool for the creative person.

Secondly, throwing something in the trash is only one form of ABANDONMENT, and it is by far the rarest. The only time you can really consider trashing your work as your final solution is when you’re doing something like 100 quick sketches to limber up, or 2-minute morning pages, and even then it’s practice. Otherwise, whatever you did to create the thing that you threw away never leaves you. It may burrow into your subconscious or lurk in a forgotten notebook, but it’s there, and it will re-emerge when you need it.

A much more common form of ABANDONMENT is deliberately setting something aside when you can’t see the next step in order to come back to it later. It’s a TASK AVOIDANCE/GESTALT kind of thing. You don’t work on it in the hopes that what’s missing from it will become clear when you’re not looking directly at it.

The scariest form of ABANDONMENT is when it’s time to share your work with an AUDIENCE. It’s no longer your work, is it? You have to hand it over to those people out there and you have no control over what happens to it. As my theatre professor used to say, “The AUDIENCE is always right, even when it’s wrong.” This is Ballew’s Law of Theatre, and it is wisdom.

And thus I ABANDON this series on our Lichtenbergian Precepts.