If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
Kurt Vonnegut
A carpenter was commissioned to build some boxes for a SPCA cat shelter. This is what he did. He did not even bother to pretend to do a half decent job.
This guy have a three-year apprenticeship, cutting pieces of wood, using a drill, sandpaper and a saw. Screws juts out on the inside of the cages, the doors do not close. Distressed animals will injure themselves on these. I could have done a better job! It would have taken me ages, but I would have done a better job.
I was a teaching assistant at the university college, and one of my students came whining one day, that he had to read. That there was books with words in them. That he was expected to read. He actually said, and I quote, “I canna do it! I try! I open the first page and there are all these words!”
I smiled sweetly and said, “well maybe you should do something else. Maybe you should become a bus driver or a carpenter instead”. He was deeply offended, his classmates rekindled their hatred of me.
I regret that comment now. It turns out you can be as incompetent as a carpenter, as you could be unfit for anything vaguely academic, such as reading. The difference between rubbish carpentry and shoddy academic work is depressingly obvious. A bad house will fall down. A bad thesis will have no impact on anything. You can set fire to both, though, and you probably should.
Art can be made out of any old rubbish. Craft cannot. If you are not in fine art, you are in craft, and there is a quality gauge. If you cannot sign your work with excellence, at least do not inflict injury on homeless kittys.
What can I say, except that you are exactly right? And the same rules that apply to carpenters apply to varnishers – or writers. Even Hemingway, or Picasso, or Mozart, had to understand the rules of their craft to bring their artistic vision to fruition.
Just today, I posted a new blog entry, and in one response to a comment said this: Thank you for mentioning the structure of the post. Sometimes I become acutely aware of how much good writing is craft, rather than inspiration.
Clearly, we are on the same page here.
Indeed! Sloppy work is only ok and sometimes a prerequisite in art. Anywhere else it is an offence.