Obsession

"A healthy obsession, we could say, interrogates its own driving convictions." So says Richard Sennett in his chapter on "Quality-Driven Work", in The Craftsman. The professor of pop -- who has been known to lob the phrase "Obsessive-Compulsive Opportunity" into the conversation every now & then, just to see who is paying attention -- might at this very moment ask himself, why am I doing this when I could be drinking my tea & reading about the football? Do we have an obsessive desire to complete our tour of this book by the end of the month? Yes. Do we always try to make the writing as good as we possibly can? ("Rewriting a sentence again and again to get its imagery or rhythm just right requires a certain obsessional energy.") Yes. Why is this? Answer: writing is a healthy obsession, one that many of us are drawn to perhaps because we felt the need to create imaginary worlds with special force earlier in life, & in any case it makes a person feel a deep & very real happiness, sharing a craft for which others apparently feel we have some aptitude. Another answer: writing often takes something personal & allows us to share & share alike. It speaks to a deep desire for connection, despite its apparently private nature. Do we feel we always have to get it perfectly right? No. We are learning from Richard Sennett. In this chapter, he takes a scalpel & picks away brilliantly at the gaps between craft, obsession, quality, monomania, expertise & professionalism. A crucial distinction is made between the sociable & the non-sociable expert, the first keen to share knowledge ("the sociable expert... is comfortable with mentoring, the modern echo of medieval in loco parentis") where the non-sociable type wants to hoard knowledge. We thought of the blogosphere when we read this: "Sociable expertise doesn't create community in any self-conscious or ideological sense; it consists simply of good practices." (Actually, we thought specifically of David Silver's work.) There are other obsessions than writing of course. Football. Reading. Walking. Music is a classic OCO -- didn't Jimmy Page, for instance, demonstrate how "the pursuit of quality entails learning how to use obsessional energy well" when he constructed a sound that had never existed before, in the music of Led Zeppelin? And did we not see, sadly, what ugly things can happen, when that energy is used not so well? Love, of course, is the ultimate OCO. "In love," writes Sennett in this wonderful chapter, "obsession risks deforming the character." It is perhaps the ultimate chance to make a mess of a great opportunity, if we do not examine what is driving us. "Craftsmanship is based on slow learning and on habit." My dear friend Derk Richardson once said to me: we are creatures of habit... and we can change our habits. Sennett is arguing that we must turn our attention from obsession to craft, thus shifting our habits from the thrill of the "all-or-nothing gamble" to the quieter business of slowly learning new tricks. A good craftsman is also someone who, having tinkered with something for long enough, knows when to stop.