For as long as I have been creative I have also had a nagging doubt weighing me down: When have you experienced enough to purge your work of ignorance and naivety?

The short answer, for me, is that in order to ever act with conviction you have to momentarily suspend this doubt. To transfix your current thoughts into art requires submission to your current truth and table of values. If you go ahead with even a slight questioning of yourself the end result will not be wholly representative. It will be tarnished by an alien element, an element that you are trying to convey but do not fully comprehend.

The trouble with conviction is that it is only a virtue when one acts. Holding it fast at any other time is simply close-mindedness. Open-mindedness, contemplation, humility, doubt – these are virtues on the road to informed action, a road that should never end with conviction but just be punctuated by it like a service station.

So from this ethos I try to remember two things:

Experience stands for nothing without being open to it.
Once the act is over, be the first person to question it.

This month's favourites:
   John Coltrane, Blue Train
   Multatuli, Max Havelaar
   The Wind Rises (2013)