Caleb Booker

Deleting Your Work

Sometimes there’s a beauty in roughly-hewn work. It’s raw. The imperfection makes it pure. The more regrettable it is, the more beautiful it is. It’s an encapsulated moment in time.

Of course, that’s when it’s private. Publicly that pimple is forever blighting your face. There aren’t that many people out there that can pull that off. William S Burroughs, of course, or Tom Waits… but not me. I’m just not that cool.

Some time ago I remember having a conversation with Prokofy about my deleting a bunch of my old stuff. I made a bunch of videos during a period of time in my life where I was angry and feeling overwhelmed. Lots of political ranting and pontificating, but you know… like most things a person gets passionate about, it was a little extreme. A few months roll by, you look back, and realize you don’t feel that way anymore. So what do you do?

You could leave it. “That’s who I was” and all that. The problem is that if you leave it you’re stuck with it. It’s just as potent a message today as it was six months ago, and it’s saying something you don’t agree with. It’s saying it with your face and your name. You really want to live with that?

So to hell with it. Gone. All of it. I did a full purge.

Of course Prok wasn’t all that happy about my little anecdote. Aghast, he wanted to know how I could do such a heinous thing. That was my WORK. My CREATION. I poured my time and effort into that. How could I just get rid of it?

Easy. I hit the Delete button. Yes to confirm.

It’s like those people desperate to build a dynasty, or the ancient mumifiers, or that Singularity-obsessed cultish clique that obsess over the preservation of themselves into eternity. These people are so desperate to keep their particular combination of thoughts and feelings preserved for all time that they never stop to think that maybe, just maybe, not everything needs preserving. I don’t at all regret the loss of my sixth grade spelling tests, or my terrible high school attempts at poetry, or even my first few short stories that amounted to pretentious exploitation pieces. Time passes and you either slough off the old skin or stunt your growth.

So you know, enjoy what you read here because tomorrow I might just go ahead and wipe it out. No regrets.