When we were younger and differently ambitious, we had an idea.
We were surrounded by interesting, talented, and curious people trying to make art and, bar none, all of them (ourselves included) were - in a certain sense - failing continually. For all the differences in what we were doing - poetry, fiction, photography, painting, film, music, theatre, whatever - there was a uniformity to how the broader world and its institutions responded to it. Namely, by saying “No. None of that. Thank you. Please stop.” in different ways over and over and over again.
A bunch of us, on braver days, would get together to compare form rejections. This journal doesn’t even use your name and just calls you “Dear Applicant(s),” this place CC’d every rejected applicant on the same email, etc. None of these rejections were actually funny, but we often laughed. While a form rejection always feels unkind, it’s at least a form of acknowledgment which is more than any of us often got. For the most part, we would just offer our work up to the void and never hear word of it again. You’ve maybe had an experience or two like this.
So, well, we had an idea. We’d start an online magazine. The plan wasn’t grand or really very serious. We weren’t aiming to unseat The Paris Review or The Baffler or anything. It was, at best, going to be a little online zine where friends and friends of friends, etc. could share their work. This humble outlet wouldn’t really help anyone’s career or improve their financial state, but it would, we thought, at least host evidence of careful labor. We may - none of us - have been able to place our work in real institutions, but that didn’t mean it had to languish unread, unheard, or unseen in notebooks, sketchpads, or hard drives. We could create a home - however humble - for whatever it was folks wanted to do.
This minor DIY outlet could also, we hoped, serve as an excuse to keep making work. One would no longer be staring at an indifferent cultural vacuum or seeking out hard-to-find reasons to keep producing stuff that no one seemed to want or care at all about. Even if the only folks who read this little zine were those who submitted to it, that would at least be a larger audience than we were used to. It might be nice! Inconsequential, but nice!
We thought about this for a little while and eventually shared the idea with a friend. We met them for coffee on a terrace somewhere on St-Denis. It was mid- or late summer.
“Sounds great. Really. But it’s not going to go anywhere.”
“But it could!,” we said.
“Yeah, it could - but it won’t. Everyone’s too busy or stuck in their own head. Besides, there’s probably like a million small zines already and no one reads those.”
“So, we could add to the pile. We too could create a zine no one reads.”
“But why? What’s the point?”
“People might read it.”
“They won’t.”
“But they might!”
“What would you want to publish? It can’t just be whatever anyone wants. It’s got to have a reason to exist.”
“Right, so, the idea is that each issue is centered on some well-known piece of art and the submissions create works that are inspired or derived or based on that.”
Our friend was skeptical, but they did not explicitly tell us to shut up or go away so we kept talking and, by the end of the conversation, we had successfully harassed our friend into participating in the creation of this little zine. Our enthusiasm and naivety won the day. We created an email account, put together an (ugly) website, wrote and rewrote a mission statement, talked to anyone who would listen, created assets for social media, and all of the other stuff that comes with attempting to make something new. People seemed genuinely interested when we shared information about this soon-to-exist zine. They seemed to like the idea as a whole. They expressed a desire to submit stuff. They were looking forward to it.
We decided that the first issue would be centered on Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” It was well-known, beautiful, and rich with images. It was formally complex, but seemed simple. It is also so singularly powerful that, well, we hoped that that power might inspire or carry through whatever folks produced off its back.
We put out the call for submissions with eight or so weeks of lead time. Got lots of likes. Got lots of shares. People messaged each of us to say they were thinking about something, considering writing or creating something! Our little zine’s call had given them some ideas! It was exciting. We posted reminders as the deadline drew down. Got lots of likes. Got lots of shares.
And nothing happened.
Not a single submission. Not one. We even, in several circumstances, extended the deadline privately to people who asked for and needed a little more time.
And nothing happened.
We have no memory of how we dealt with the nothing that happened when it happened, but the story makes us laugh now. There’s a poetic justice to having a thing meant to thwart rejection be rejected itself. It was like we had fashioned a raft that, instead of floating, drowned us hastily. It was an attempt to do something that, well, didn’t end up doing anything at all. It was a failure.
We could tell our entire life story by way of failures like these. Thoughts that turned into activity of a certain kind that turned into nothing tangible at all. We could string together a long list of the books we tried to read, but failed to finish or understand. Or hobbies and habits we nurtured, but let slip from our days and mind. Or the essays or stories we wrote, but failed to complete or revise or submit or publish. Or relationships with folks we cared for, but fell away from or learned not quite to love. From birth to now, we could narrate the whole thing by way of big and small un-successes.
Some of these failures still sting in a certain type of way. The ones that linger, really, are those that strike us as preventable. We are sometimes drawn to speculate, to imagine that if we had done this or if we had done that, then the results may have been less or differently unsuccessful. It’s unclear why we entertain all these retroactive possible scenarios - we don’t have a time machine - but we entertain them all the same.
Thankfully, most of our failures aren’t of this kind. The vast majority are just stories that seemed to have happened to a different person, a person who had failed less than we have. We try to forget these stories, but sometimes something or someone in the world will force us to remember.
Our failed zine, for example, comes to mind pretty frequently when idly browsing the internet. We’ll happen across a YouTube channel, podcast, online magazine, or some other source of media that catches our interest, then find out that it’s been, for lack of a better word, abandoned. We’ve watched video essays on niche parts of cinema history (Ozu’s color films!), listened to podcasters talk for an hour on some unfinished novel no one reads (Mann’s Confessions of Felix Krull!), and read assembled collections of articles and essays on some neglected part of culture (MySpace blogs!). We’ll get excited about this new and unknown source of content - then quickly find that the last video or episode or post appeared years ago. We’ll browse the archives, look at the associated social media accounts, and see that an initial flurry of activity eventually faltered and then suddenly stopped without explanation.
The internet is rife with these kinds of attempts. Most of these attempts are, to be clear, far more developed than our zine ever was. People make and release all sorts of things! Full, real things! The barrier to creating content for a public has never been so low, but this means that the public’s attention has never been stretched so thin. Despite the unlikelihood of finding a caring audience, people still do it. They create things that either can’t or won’t be created without them. They explore arcane topics, niche interests. They conduct experiments with form or content. They devote themselves to things that maybe no one but them might care about or like at all.
But the drive or delusion required to keep creating full, real things isn’t perpetual. How could it be? Who would apply for a job whose description included “caring deeply and working hard on free things that others may neither see, acknowledge, nor enjoy.” No one would apply for this job, but people (ourselves included!) effectively volunteer for a version of it all the time. It’s unwise to attempt anything really, but folks attempt anyway! And those attempts?
They’re mostly failures.
Duh. Yeah. People often do not succeed or are not met with success, but their attempts still linger online. After putting so much effort into doing something, it stands to reason that most people don’t put in the effort to undo it entirely. So, abandoned, the videos or podcasts or writing or whatever sits for anyone or no one to find and whoever created it goes on to do who knows what who knows where.
We wonder what finally halted these various projects when we happen across them. Were folks hoping for larger publics? More engagement? Applause? Were they seeking out sponsorships or endorsements? Fame? Meaning? Validation? Attention? Something they couldn’t quite name, but knew that it was held somehow by others? Were they just doing things to do them until, one day, that circular desire vanished?
We are always awed and made a little sad by abandoned projects. We think of our own and hope that the stories these folks tell about their attempts are funny or quaint or at least unseeded with disappointment or regret. Then, though, we think of all the other unsuccessful attempts lying all over everywhere. We think of the restaurants or stores that have opened and promptly closed, the television shows that premiered and were cancelled, the books released and never bought or read, the jobs applied for and never gained, the crushes pursued and rebuffed, and the many and various ways that all sorts of other attempts to contribute to or participate in the world fail to succeed.
On some days, then, we spin out and see culture at large as some desolate wasteland still populated only by those with stunning luck or influence. We look at those who have succeeded with suspicion and cynicism. On other days, we think beyond successes and failures and consider all the things folks never got the nerve or opportunity to do. We think of all the attempts that were not and could not be made.
We imagine people, past and present, who wanted but could not make an idea manifest. Due to circumstances within or beyond their control, their desire or want or hope stayed in their heart or mind. Whether the idea was good or bad, trivial or meaningful, wasn’t something they got to find out. We think of all the attempts that weren’t even attempted for shallow or prudent reasons. Amidst all the failures and successes, then, we imagine impossible, innumerable ideas that became nothing more.
This latter scenario seems sadder than the former, but, then again, is there really, actually any difference between a failed attempt and an idea that never becomes more than an idea? Neither yield tangible good. In fact, the former often bring greater harm.
There’s a dedicated group of people who, at this juncture, might be saying - YES! OF COURSE! FAILURES ARE JUST SUCCESSES TURNED UPSIDE DOWN! THE ROAD TO SUCCESS IS PAVED WITH FAIL BRICKS! After yelling at us, panicked, these folks might reach for that Beckett quote to finish us off and shut us up. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better,” he writes in Worstward Ho!
People love this quote! But they usually fail (!) to mention that Beckett’s ode to failure was written after he had already won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was widely recognized as one the most important dramatist of the entire 20th century. So, well, forgive us if our attitude regarding failure is not moved by someone with so many successes. We’d be happy to quote a failure about the merits of failure, but the thing is no one keeps a directory of failure quotes from failed folks. Because they’ve failed, you see.
Recasting failure as a kind of success, as a thing through which to grow or learn or whatever is terrible. Not because it’s bad to brightside folks (although, well, that too) - but because success itself is wildly overrated. Look around at all the successful people! They are not OK. Moreover, they are not satisfied. We can’t think of a single story of an artist who tried, succeeded, then stopped. Not a single one! This isn’t, we don’t think, because they think they’ve somehow failed (despite outward signs to the contrary) - but rather because success doesn’t really do much for very long. Success of any kind is nice, sure, but finite like everything else and often better imagined than realized.
So, good, success and failure are both transitory and unsatisfying. Great. Hooray for nihilism!
But we can’t not try. This isn’t encouragement. We’re not trying to motivate anyone. We literally can’t not. It’s, like, pathological. We are certain that not trying would just make us even more mentally unwell than we already are. There would be too many possibilities! So many what ifs! How maddening! No. We want failure. We want the world to have to tell us no. We want some kind of visible something to show that, damnit, we did something poorly that no one liked. Failures also make for good stories! Has anyone heard a good success story? No. It doesn’t happen. Success is dull and probably terrible. Imagine winning a Grammy? Yikes.
Besides, there’s no damn way to tell the difference between success and failure while you’re in the middle of actually fucking doing something. It’s irrelevant. It’s not time travel, sure, but something like it. Because doing something - even writing an unasked for diatribe about failure on SubStack - means disregarding the future for a little while and just working in the present no matter the unknowable inevitability that awaits.
Ideas or hopes or aspirations are literally worthless if they remain in the head. They’re nothing. They do nothing. Attempts, though, are - if nothing else - much literally more than nothing! They’re funny and dumb and painful and joyous and fodder for art and sources of sympathy and commiseration and everything else. And who wouldn’t want literally everything?
Moreover, on a long enough timeline, everything ends up a failure! In a couple billion (?) years, our sun will fail to be a sun. So, then, eventually all the failures will fail even to be registered as failures because there will nothing and no one.
In the meantime, we’re going to try all sorts of things and see what happens. We’re going to make some attempts, turn some ideas into actions, because what else is there to do between now and the all-enveloping emptiness of the universe’s eventual end? We’re going to try to do whatever we can while we’re provided the unearned privilege to be be able to try - even if the product of that trying ends up looking like (Write it!) like failure.
All that said, we’d be up for a spin or two in your time travel machine if you’re offering. For real. Let us know whenever.
Besides, there’s no damn way to tell the difference between success and failure while you’re in the middle of actually fucking doing something. ❤️ no expectations besides experiencing
Not to brag (?) but I actually have read "Confessions of Felix Krull."