Sometimes the way to improve something is to subtract from it
Happy Sunday. This is another essay in a series about the role of constraints in art and everyday life. You can find the previous ones here about deadlines, friction, and community respectively.
When I wrote about friction a few weeks ago, I drew on the story of Keith Jarratt’s ostensibly defective piano which led to one of the greatest performances of all time. I used this as an example of a constraint one might have no control over, but can nonetheless be leveraged to achieve a stated goal. However, there are other types of constraints – self-imposed rather than external – which can be just as useful if not beneficial. This week I’d like to explore how we can improve our lives and creative exploits through a type of self-imposed constraint which requires going against our intuition. I’m talking, of course, about subtracting or simplifying, rather than adding or compounding.
Consider a scenario where you’re presented with a wobbly-looking bridge made of Legos. You're also given a surplus of individual Lego bricks, and tasked with improving the bridge’s structural integrity. What would you do? If you're like most people, you'd be inclined to add more bricks to the bridge to shore up the base, lower the centre of gravity and/or even out the symmetry. And you'd keep doing this, adding brick after brick, looking for the perfect configuration, until you're satisfied with the structural integrity, or until you run out of bricks. Few people would consider improving the bridge's integrity by investigating what bricks can be removed from the existing configuration, and as detailed in Subtract by Leidy Klotz, this subtraction method is the more viable, more sustainable approach.
Armed with the knowledge that we are more likely to add than to take away, and that subtraction is often the right approach, how can we cultivate a practice of simplifying in life and art? One approach I'd like to suggest is to remember the age-old expression that less is more, and when faced with the choice or temptation to add, to consider the opportunity cost of that addition. In other words, we should ask:
What new overhead could this additional unit bring, and how might life be different without said overhead?
To illustrate, there's a scene from the TV show 1923 which, as the name implies, is set in the early twentieth century. A family of cattle ranchers are walking through a fledgling town in Montana, and they come upon a salesman who waxes lyrical about the wonders of this new thing called electricity. Electricity, he tells them, can make their lives so much easier, thanks to, for example, a nifty device called a washing machine which can speedily and effortlessly do their laundry so they don't have to.
The women in the family see the allure in the washing machine as a time saver. They fantasise about what they’d do with all their free time if they no longer have to do laundry by hand. The salesman, spotting his window of opportunity, fantasises with them, saying they can do whatever they want with their free time. They’re all on the same page, it seems, until one of the younger men in the family joins the conversation. He asks about the cost implications, and the salesman responds that they could spend some of the free time they’d save from not doing laundry, on more work to earn extra money which would pay for the electricity needed to power the washing machine.
The young man’s response to the salesman is uncharacteristically sage. He says that while the salesman’s proposition sounds good in theory, in practice, it isn’t in their best interest, because although their current life is characterised by a lot of manual labour, on account of being cattle herders in a remote part of the country, at least they work for themselves. If they go ahead to install a washing machine, they’d have to work more to make extra money to pay for electricity, which means they’re essentially working for the electricity company, and no longer for themselves. In other words, what’s meant to be a time saver would end up compelling them to work longer and harder, and they wouldn’t be the ones to reap the benefits of their extra work. Sound familiar?
This is one of many examples of how the temptation of addition ends up making things needlessly complicated. While it may be easy to see how washing machines and electricity may complicate the lives of fictional characters in 1923 Montana, it would be a stretch to suggest that electricity and washing machines complicate our lives in 2025. That said, we can easily identify today’s equivalents. For some it may be the allure of food delivery (as discussed a few weeks ago), or the idea that you can now use Buy Now Pay Later to pay for said food delivery. Maybe, just maybe this is a genuine life-saver for someone out there. However, we could all benefit from rethinking the trappings of everyday life, and asking how life would be different without them. If we did, we might just find that some of the things that are sold to us as the inevitable result of civilisation and progress aren’t necessarily so, and it is these things that warp our views about what's worth doing, worth having, and worth believing. For the record, I'm all for progress. However, I worry that our idea of progress has become warped to the point where we look to others in society to show us what to aspire to rather than figuring out what it truly means to us and how it benefits our lives.
And now, for the crux of this essay and the raison d'etre of this blog, I have to ask: How does this apply to art and the creative process?
Well, how doesn't it? Just as subtraction (rather than addition) can help to create sturdier Lego bridges, it can also help to streamline the creative process and fine-tune creative outputs. Examples are numerous, from ruthless edits while writing (kill your darlings, anyone?), to chiselling marble while sculpting, you could say some art mediums and creative practices are entire exercises in subtraction.
I've been writing more short stories of late. If you've ever tried your hands at creative writing, you'd know short stories might be the ultimate writing exercise in subtraction, after writing the first draft of course. It's like moulding lumps of wet clay on a pottery wheel only to peel and pinch off the bulk of it, until what's left is ready for the kiln.
Speaking of short stories, it feels apt to announce that my short story, called Full Circle, was recently published in an online compilation on the theme of resistance. You can read more about the compilation here and find my short story here.
Now more than ever, it behoves us to seek out opportunities to simplify our lives and our art. In a world that constantly tries to make us feel less than and convince us that what we have is never enough, practicing the art of subtraction might be the ultimate protest move, and might just be the antidote to the tyranny or excess, because sometimes, the way to improve something is to subtract from it.
My new album, Hope on the Horizon, is out everywhere now. Not a fan of streaming and want to support my music? You can download a digital version or buy a CD now here. Thank you for listening, spreading the word, and reaching out to share your thoughts. I appreciate it. Have a great week.