No Applause Needed

August 3, 2025

Not everything has to be good.

That’s the trap, this compulsive twitch to declare something worthy or worthless. As if those are the only two shelves in the room. But most things don’t fit on shelves. Most things barely stand up. They lean. They wobble. They sprawl out on the floor and ask for nothing.

A painting doesn’t need to impress you. A drawing doesn’t need to be clean. An artwork doesn’t need to mean something. Sometimes the thing just is, and that’s enough. Maybe the artist missed what they were reaching for. Maybe their hands couldn’t keep up with the heart. Happens all the time. But failure isn't sterile. It leaves marks. Honest ones. Sometimes those marks are the only part that matters.

There’s beauty in the off-key. There’s something human in the smudge, the crack, the part that didn’t quite work. Not in some romanticized way, either, it’s not about noble failure or tortured genius or any of that tired mythology. It’s about reality. About the fact that a work doesn’t stop being alive just because it didn’t live up to someone's idea of what it should have been.

You think it’s bad. Someone else thinks it’s a lifeline. That’s the point. That’s the truth of it. There is no universal scale. No final verdict. Just eyes. Ears. People. And people are strange. Messy. Wildly specific. One person’s throwaway is another’s anchor.

Art doesn’t ask for consensus. It doesn’t need applause. It doesn’t even need to be understood. It just needs a place to land. A wall to hang on. A breath of space. Maybe even just a drawer.

So no, don’t waste your time judging it. Let it be what it is. Let it rot, or bloom, or wait.

Someone will find it. Maybe not today. Maybe not ever.

But it’s there. And sometimes, that’s the whole point.