I’ve been teaching myself to use pen and ink, like dip pens and ink. I’m getting to a point where I’m comfortable. I grew up looking at a lot of etchings, and it’s a little dream to be able to draw some of those etchings, so that’s what I’m doing, trying to teach myself. But there’ll come a point where I’m like, “I’ve got to leave this alone or I’m just going to screw it up.” And it looks done or quite often I’ll ask my wife what she thinks. I’ll be like, “What do you think?” And she’s like, “Don’t do anything else to it.” I’m like, “But I really want to do this.” And sometimes I’ll listen and sometimes I won’t.

The quote of “unfinished, but complete” was first introduced to my lexicon when I was studying the drawings of Michelangelo. I read about his work, and one of the art historians of the time said his drawings were purposefully left unfinished, but there was a sense of completeness to them. That was the philosophy I used as my religion, which was to create something that appeared unfinished but had a spiritual completeness to it.

It’s always hard to decide when something’s done. To go back to the painting metaphor, maybe deciding something’s done is just letting the canvas dry and stepping away. There is this simple resignation that takes place. The benefit of working with collaborators is you get the take and that’s what you have. So that’s also something that helps push projects to completion. And also, scary deadlines. Scary deadlines are always a great way to finish projects, which is why composing can sometimes be a great antidote to whatever baked-in perfectionism I might have. With artist records, you can take years and you can say this isn’t good enough, but then you have a deadline for a project and they’re like, “We need the stems by Tuesday at midnight,” and you have to do it. Accepting something is good enough is a skill in and of itself.

I think it’s similar to writing a poem, in a way. It’s almost like, when there’s nothing left to remove from the formula, it’s done. Or honestly just when I get tired of working on it, that’s real.