That’s what you’d like above all: an excuse. Above all, first of all, that’s what you’d like: an excuse to say why you failed to achieve what you might have achieved. To say: I did not achieve it, for this reason, for this excuse. To say: I had 2 children under 5. To say: I was nursing an elderly relative. To say: after the accident, what could I do?
And without children? Without an elderly relative, without an accident? Failure, and that first of all. Failure, full stop, no alibi, full stop. No alibis and no excuses. Only incompetence and laziness. Why did you fail, you who had every chance? Why did you never succeed? Think of all those who could have succeeded in your place! Think of all those who could have achieved everything given the chances you had!
Why did you fail? Why, in the end, did you fail? Do you think it was a question of talent? Do you think it mattered whether or not you had talent? In the end, that is already an excuse, only this time, one no one will believe. What does it matter, whether or not you have talent? When did talent matter? What does it matter, whether you are gifted or not? Because it is a matter of will, and only that. It is a matter of will and of desire, and only that.
Because too much facility is the enemy of the work. Too much talent is already dissipation. To have choice to do this or do that already too much. For there can be no choice; it is not a matter of choice. You either have to or you do not have to. And if you do not have to, then nothing can be done. If there is no ‘you must’ then nothing can be done.
For it can only begin in the teeth of the impossible. In the face of it, the impossible. In the face of the others who tell you it’s the last thing you can do. Only then, when you know it is completely the wrong thing for you to do can you do anything. Only then, when there is no choice, no possibility, but there is only one choice and one possibility can there be a beginning. Only when there is no chance of a beginning can there be a beginning.
Unless you’ve reached the very limit of your talent, nothing. Unless you’ve come right up against the edge of your ability, then nothing. Only inability counts. Only impossibility matters. There are no excuses, though you’d like an excuse. To seek out excuses is already to have failed, don’t you understand that? To seek out excuses is to have failed failure, do you know that? Because to give an excuse is still to want to succeed. To give an excuse is hubris itself, because you claim if it were not for x and for y and for z you would have succeeded. When it is only when you know there are no excuses that it might be possible.
Only when you have passed through any possible nostalgia for success that even anything might begin. No failure, only the failure of failure. No failing and no failure – only the failure of failure. Failure itself must fail, just as the measure of success must fail. Both failure and success are not enough. Only when you fail failure itself might something begin.
Who are they, the ones who’ve failed failure? How to tell them apart from the others, content to succeed or content to fail? I’ll tell you: they never talk about failure, or success. Never will you hear from them talk of failure or success. Never will you hear them celebrate or lament. For they are beyond lamentation or celebration, just as they are beyond failure or success.
What need have they for excuses? What notion have they of talent? They work, and that first of all. They work, not doggedly, not with gritted teeth, but with calm endurance, and that first of all. There is work, they work, they give themselves to their labours, and when they’ve finished for the day, they stop working.
No celebration, no lament. To them, the day means: work, and even if they’ve spent all day in a miserable job, they come home, clear a space and work. No matter that they’ve come in late from the dreariest job, there’s still the work, and they work. They need no one, only the work.
I know those who work do so without needing to brag about the work. They will speak of their books, it is true, but not the work. They will never speak of it, the work. They barely know of it, the work; they only trust it, without knowing what they trust. Or they know it only by what they write, by the steadiness of their labour.
And you, who can never stop speaking about the work? You, whose life is an endless gibbering about how you failed the work? In the end you are the buffoon of the work, its idiot. In the end, you are the foaming-mouthed prophet who points towards what he cannot know and cannot understand: the work.
Lars Iyer's Blog 