What is Craft?

"Focus on your craft, one time, before it's all over, You've died, you've squandered it. You fuckin' robots!" - Tenancious D

Another lens to look through this is that of craft.

A key part of craft is the creation of something. Before there was nothing, after there was something, and you were the reason that happened.

After the creation requirement is met, there are two other key dimensions.

In your craft you can produce bigger and better things, possibly things no one has ever seen, and you can improve on how you improve. The meta-improve.

Our woodworker can build better and bigger shelves, but has also refined their process to do that.

A programmer can work on big projects, but has also developed tools, strategies, and a programming style to execute at a high level.

That, to me, is the essence of what makes a craft.

It is a domain where you not only produce something, but there is space to explore the manner in which you do the work or the style of the work meaning you can exercise personal expression in what you do.

The difference between art or craft and science, is that it is impossible to write a playbook for every situation and often there is no clear right answer. This is where self-expression and style can come into play. Many mediums allow for a breadth of options when it comes to how something is made.

You may be in a building, and it has all the normal building things, but it may be a widely different experience if you are in something designed by Gaudi versus Frank Lloyd Wright.

That is what separates a job or a profession from a craft, is the depth of expression that can be achieved in doing it.

To me, that is what is enticing about a craft. It is not just that you can learn how to be proficient in something, but that you can get to a point where you can mold the medium in your own way.

To be able to produce elegant things in an elegant way.

The craft checklist

• Create something
• There is huge range of output and space for self expression
• You can improve on the scale or quality of what you create and the efficiency with which you create it.
• You can improve your meta skills and processes for the work you create

In the next section we will break down how we can start to improve in these areas.

Techqniue vs craft

A quick aside on technique in general and craft. Often I think these can be conflated. Techniques and tools are very important but that is not our goal. Our goal is create something new and unique and techinque is rarely that and not to highlight the technique.

The techniques you learn are there to support the creation often times used in concert with other techniques. In photography it is often thought of as import to get the right exposure, or the right amount of light for the photo. Which makes sense and having good technique to do that is helpful but that only doesn't make a photo interesting.

In the 90s there was this backlash against "electronic" music. It was seen as easy to just pickup some software and make a song. In the minds of the haters if an electronic song or band did well it wasn't earned because they were just some software.

So there were all these bands that came out that had "real" instruments. Even bands I like, like Rage Against the Machine, had this stance.

Putting aside the silliness of the fact they still were using electric guitars and probably digital recording techinques, plus various electronic based effects pedals and what not.

This is a failure for attributing the good to techniques. Oh this band has a fiddle player, ergo good. How many Yo-Yo Ma albums do you listen to?

The goal is to make a great song, to make people feel things. Nirvana changed music in the 90s and killed the careers of countless lesser bands, with a few power chords. (A power chord has only two notes, it is missing what is called the third of the chord). The constant refrain of oh "Kurt Cobain" can't play guitar).

While Jazz players are adding more notes in thier chords, Nirvana changed and solidfied an entire genre of music just using 2 notes. Jazz maybe technical impressive with lots of chord changes and various techniques but if it doesn't emote anything it misses the true goal of music.

Jazz is not about the listener but the artist. If your work is more about showing off technique then you have lost the plot.

Technique can be impressive but it is rarely moving. This is what Sean Tucker in his book "The Meaning in the Making" calls "majoring in the minors". Missing the major themes and goals of our work in favor of technique.

I think this happens because this craft thing is hard. It envolves diving into the unknown to find things, where a technique is concrete and easy to grasp, then can become a wayward goal to lead you astray.