François Matarasso

I’ve always liked new beginnings, Mondays, the start of term, the new year. There’s a sense of hope, that I can reset and maybe do better this time around. In practice, if I do, it is only through small steps and hard-won lessons, and they might be offset by new mistakes out of sight. And it is with small steps that, as the new year begins, I am sketching out the narrative and content of A Selfless Art. I hope I’m finding the new book’s voice, and its tone too. It’s the foundation on which I can build and until I have it, nothing will stand.

Curiously, given the book’s title and thesis, it seems to ask me to write in the first person—to speak straightforwardly about my own experience. It wants me to avoid the abstractions and generalities of academic writing, to come out from behind the professorial desk, as it were. This is not because I intend to be especially personal—this will be no memoir—but because I need to own my beliefs and account for how my individual reality has shaped them. This is true of us all but is not, I think, sufficiently acknowledged. And yet, for example, being a man in a male-dominated society has had profound effects on how I think about co-creation and my own practice, and in ways that I am still uncovering. The paradox is that the path towards a more selfless art passes through acceptance of my individuality, its particularities and its limitations.

• The latest post about the book can be found here.