Time & Love & Stirring

We count as blessed those who have persevered.

—James 5:11

Creativity isn’t easy, and it isn’t something you turn on like a light switch. My inbox will tell you that the world is full of writers who don’t write, painters who don’t paint, dancers who don’t dance. They want me to tell them something, ostensibly a secret something that will get them up and moving again, creating again. My reply is always disappointing: I don’t know what to tell you. But then I tell them: do it for the feeling you’ll have when you’re done. Making art doesn’t have the instant payoff that most things in our modern lives do, but like all things that really matter, the big payoff is invisible and comes much later.

Yesterday my friend Meredith came over and we made meat sauce together. We talked and diced and stirred and tasted and made adjustments, and then let the sauce simmer for a long time. You could taste the time it took, the layers of flavor—red wine, rosemary, garlic, a couple different kinds of tomatoes. That’s how it is when you give yourself to something: it takes time and love and stirring, but at the end, no one would mistake it for quick sauce.