The thing about working in public is that, with the best will in the world, it can only ever be partially public. The people and entities you work with need to operate in private in order to do their business. It can therefore be months before a completed project is heard of outside of the commissioning office’s walls. Also, huge elements of my work life can live and die without ever cresting the surface of public awareness. I have, this week, three black gravestones on my schedule calendar — three big projects that hit icebergs and are lost at sea. They never got “made” by any tangible measure. Empty graves, with the marker of a DISCONTINUED in my notebook in place of a corpse to sling in the dirt. Every creator has them — the things that died before one could even talk about them. They weren’t real to anyone but me, and now I have to just keep swimming. Happens all the time. Haven’t drowned yet.

 

READING: FUTURE DAYS: KRAUTROCK AND THE BUILDING OF MODERN GERMANY, David Stubbs (UK) (US)