A comb with teeth missing
Hello, friends!
Hayao Miyazaki is eighty-one years old, and legendary in the world of animation. There's a good chance you've seen some of his movies, particularly if you have children. My Neighbor Totoro. Princess Mononoke. Spirited Away. There are lots and lots of them. (Ponyo is my personal favorite.)
Miyazaki's movies are visually stunning, emotionally rich adventures. He's recognized the world over as one of the greatest animated filmmakers in history.
But he can't draw an airplane.
The documentary film series Every Frame a Painting is lovely. In their video essays, Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos use examples from the history of cinema to illustrate their themes; sometimes they spend awhile talking about movie orchestras, other times about a particular kind of shot.
In an essay about their unrealized final episode, the documentarians briefly talk about failure. Ramos says:
Whenever Tony got really down like this, I would remind him of a clip that we both love, from the Studio Ghibli documentary “The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness.” It’s a moment when Hayao Miyazaki is trying to draw a specific airplane. And for some reason, he cannot do it.
For days and days, he keeps trying to draw this plane, but nothing meets his satisfaction. Eventually, he realizes that he’s spent too much time on it. So he hands the plane off to another animator, and he moves on to something else.
For me and for Tony, this clip is extremely reassuring. If Miyazaki—the world’s greatest living animator—can admit defeat after trying his best, then it’s okay for everyone else. If he can let go, then so can we.
I love the simplicity of this observation. This idea that things are hard and, yes, with time you might be able to conquer them, but there's a calculation here. Is the hard thing actually worth all that effort? Or might you move on to something else instead?
Last year, Mason Currey, who writes the very good newsletter Subtle Maneuvers, watched another documentary about Miyazaki.
Currey was inspired to create a long Twitter thread demonstrating Miyazaki's creative process. (I suggest pausing this newsletter a moment and clicking that link. Come back when you're done reading it. It's quick, I promise.)
All right, in case you didn't read it: Currey shares forty-three screen captures from the documentary, illustrating Miyazaki's tangled route from idea to execution. Most of the images—which depict Miyazaki grimacing over his work, rubbing his eyes, throwing art into the trash, smoking countless cigarettes—include subtitles of Miyazaki's own narration:
So far, the pictures don't look like much.
I'm sleepy. Time for a nap.
I don't know. I'm in a rut.
No, it's not right.
It's not that easy.
This doesn't work.
I just can't pin it down. I feel like I'm drifting.
I mean, I'm at a dead end.
I know it's not right.
I can feel it every day, the limit of my ability.
If this film is no good, everything will be a waste.
Won't do.
I can't focus. Haven't got my rhythm yet.
(At this point Miyazaki takes a break from his studio, and waters his garden. A nice reminder, I think, that sometimes you really do just need to break your cycle and spend a few moments in the fresh air.)
I'll work harder than ever from now on.
It's tough.
I feel like a comb with teeth missing.
A pain! A pain! Such a pain!
Rats.
Better eat something.
That's not it.
You must push yourself until your nose starts bleeding.
I've written only one page.
It's difficult.
What should I do?
Such a hassle, this movie.
Damn! This is never-ending. I feel like Sisyphus.
What a hassle.
It's the ultimate hassle, I'm telling you.
But if you said, "Why don't you quit?" I'd just say, "Shut up."
Most important things in life are a hassle.
If life's hassles disappeared, you'd want them back.
Back to work now.
How many of these have you said to yourself when working on something difficult?
(Currey has more to say about Miyazaki and this documentary, and wrote further about it in his own newsletter. It's a good read.)
By the time Miyazaki says he's going back to work, he's got a smile on his face. He knows, as every artist learns, that the work is what we're here to do. Maybe someone else will see that work later—a published book, a movie in 3,000 theaters—but finding joy in what we do is what keeps us going. (Well, it should be.)
The author Monica Byrne once wrote about this very thing:
The overall lesson is this—and it’s not necessarily how I think the world should be, or wish the world would be. It’s purely practical: that if you’re a writer, even a very talented and hardworking writer, writing must be its own reward, or you’re going to have a rough time. Recently a friend ask me if my novel publication date now felt like the proverbial apple in the Tantalus myth and immediately I was like, “No, I get the apple every day, because I write every day.”
In the same blog post, Byrne documents her "anti-resume," a record of how fleeting success can be for a creative person.
Of all the things I’ve ever submitted to or applied for, I’ve gotten 3% of them.
A work’s rejection rate has no clear relationship to its eventual success. In various guises, The Girl in the Road and What Every Girl Should Know have each been rejected 67 times.
Of all submissions I made to theaters that accepted unsolicited submissions, 68% never replied at all.
The same week my huge publishing deal went down, I was rejected from the third of three MFA programs I’d applied to. C’est la vie!
The lesson imparted by Miyazaki and Byrne and Zhou and Ramos seems not to be Don't give up, you can do it but Know what you should keep working at, and what you can give up on.
The hard part, of course, is knowing how to tell the difference.
✏️Until next time,
Jg
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