Is It Good? Developing and Using Your Aesthetic
Self-directed creative work is different from other forms of creative work. Typically, there’s not a list of specifications you can check off on your way to “done.” At some point, you have to stop iterating. Even in a world in which you lived forever, eventually you’d find yourself at a point where your latest changes aren’t making the work any better, they’re just making it different. Perfection is always one round of changes beyond our reach.
In her book The Poet’s Freedom: A Notebook on Making, the poet and philosopher Susan Stewart explores a model of creation and completion that predates our modern thought on these subjects: the book of Genesis. The Biblical story of creation begins with God creating the heavens and the earth:
Then God said “Let there be light;” and there was light.
And God saw that the light was good…
—Genesis 1, King James Version
God then created day and night, the sky, the land, the waters, and all the other forms of life that inhabit the earth. As God created, he periodically paused, surveyed his creations, and pronounced them “good.” The word “good” has many meanings in English: it’s an expression of approval and acceptance, a confirmation of inherent quality, of moral virtue, and of pleasure. All these meanings are present in God’s recognition of the goodness of his creations, But Stewart takes us back to the meaning of the word in biblical times. An alternate translation of the Hebrew word for “good” is “brought to a satisfying close.” God’s declaration that his various creations are “good” is an expression of self-satisfaction, spoken by the entity that is both creator and judge. Stewart writes: “The proclamation of something’s goodness implies that it is time to stop making.”
There is no closure for the work of the imagination. There are always new ideas, new connections, new possibilities to explore. Success in creative endeavors can only be measured by the recognition that the work is “good,” that it satisfies the creator’s intention—your intention. “Good” is not the same as “perfect” or “finished,” in the sense that all possible improvements have been explored and closed, but “good” is sufficient.
How do you know when your work is good? You use your aesthetic: the collection of formal, material, intellectual, functional, emotional, and spiritual qualities that please you.
Discovering Your Aesthetic
Your aesthetic is an expression of your unique sense of what’s pleasing, what’s beautiful to you. You may not be conscious of your aesthetic, but you apply it every day: when you express your likes and dislikes on Pinterest, add a song to your playlist, add a decorative object to a room in your home, or arrange flowers in vase.
We use the word “taste” to refer to our liking for particular sensations, design attributes, and experiences, but an aesthetic is more than a catalog of our likes and dislikes. Your aesthetic is the by-product of thoughtful reflection on what you like and why. Asking yourself why you like what you like builds a bridge between the specific example in front of you and the more deeply rooted and felt value behind what you’re experiencing in the moment.
For example, one of the elements in my aesthetic is “evocative juxtapositions.” I love things that are arranged in interesting ways: furniture in a room, passages of music, images in a poem, ideas in an essay. Things that are arranged in evocative ways usually require a little leap on my part. I have to work a little to connect the various elements in the composition. Those little spaces are an invitation to participate in connection between the elements. It’s an invitation to leap in, which is energizing and often thrilling.
My ability to articulate my attraction to evocative juxtapositions developed out of my reflections on the work of some of my favorite artists: The compositions and performances of the pianistThelonious Monk and the collaborations between Miles Davis and his producer Teo Macero; the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Pablo Neruda, and Wisława Szymborska; the essays ofAlbert Goldbarth; and the architectural designs of Zaha Hadid to name just a few of the artists whose work has contributed to my understanding and appreciation of evocative juxtapositions.
Developing Your Aesthetic
Look around your house. Which things bring you the most joy? Is there a photograph or painting you love? Why? Is there an object on a table or desk you love? Why? What elements of its design resonate with you? Are there other things in your house that resonate in a similar way?
Try to work your way backward from the object in front of you or the experience you’re immersed in, to the general attributes that similar objects and experiences evoke in you. For example, if you’re looking at an image you like, ask yourself which aspects of the image draw you in:
Is it the subject?
The composition?
The play of the light and shadows?
The colors and tones?
The feeling the image evokes?
An attitude or statement that the image conveys?
When we think about beauty, we primarily think about what’s pleasing to the senses. But beauty also has intellectual, functional, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. Observe and record all your reactions to the work that inspires you. Write down what pleases you, what displeases you, and why. You can also pin images and responses to a digital mood board. Canva, GoMoodBoard, Milanote, Mural, and Pinterest are online design and presentation tools that can be for this purpose.
Developing your aesthetic involves ongoing engagement, observation, and reflection. Documenting your thoughts and feelings gives you a way to track your inspirations and connect similar experiences and responses. Your goal is to tease out the attributes that resonate and ultimately own them. They are the roots that sustain your artistic voice: “it sounds/looks like me when…”
Here are the attributes that I strive for in my creative work:
A warm, inviting, generous voice
A feeling of light, energetic movement
Crisp, rhythmic language
An unorthodox approach or perspective
Evocative juxtapositions
A sense of inevitable progression
Moments of beauty
Meaningful engagement with one or more ideas
One or more useful takeaways
It sounds like “me” (or more accurately, the voice I want to project in my writing) when my work has one or more of these attributes. I try to bring a mix of these aesthetic and functional values to everything I write—no matter the genre or subject.
Each of these attributes is like a different musical instrument. When I write, I’m composing and orchestrating. I'm composing a melody and choosing the attributes that create the sound I’m looking for. I'm deciding which attributes I want to bring up front for a solo and which ones are laying back. The final composition is an expression of how I've applied my unique aesthetic—it's my voice.
Using Your Aesthetic to Evaluate Your Work
At the beginning of this article, I asked the question “How do you know when your creative work is good?” I suggested that applying your aesthetic (your creative values) to your work is one way to find an answer. Successful work is successful in two ways: it satisfies your intentions for the work in front of you and moves you a little closer to satisfying your intentions for your work as a whole.
No single creative work will fully realize all your creative intentions and fully express every strand of your aesthetic. By judging your work on its own and judging it in relation to your intentions for your work as a whole, you’re creating your own context for evaluating your work. You’re not asking “Is this good?” in the abstract, but “Is this good in relation to my intentions and creative values?” That’s a question you, and only you, can answer.
Coda
This article completes my thinking on the ideas I introduced in Your Creative Fingerprint. Together, your creative impulses, your creative strengths, your creative autobiography, and your aesthetic form one layer of the soil that nourishes your creative ideas. I’ll be introducing other layers of your creative support system in the coming weeks.