Imperfect Apples

On knowing when a project is done, and how to let it go

I’m out walking among apple trees. The skin of the fruit is beginning to glisten, the air laced with the mulchy sweetness of hay and cider. Over the ticker tape of crickets, a singular question keeps rising in my mind: How do you know when something is done?

It’s a question I get asked a lot in my songwriting workshop. I usually give some sort of answer about the power of intuition and gut instincts, about the importance of not being too precious, about the utility of moving forward into new work and constantly creating so as not to get stuck. But here I am, two years into LP6, and I can’t seem to finish the damn thing. 

So I turn the question towards myself, humbled by the mystery of it all: how do you know when something you’ve been working on for so long is really, actually done? And perhaps more importantly: how do you let it go?

I admire artists who go into the studio and emerge two weeks later having tracked an entire record. I’ve never worked that way. I’m a crafter, a tinkerer. I nitpick. I pluck at threads. And mostly I enjoy it—the luxury of time that leads to new perspectives. I like being curious and jumping down rabbit holes. I like the chase, the way it can take time for an idea to become fully itself, and then the reward when it finally gets there—like that first fist of an apple reddening on the branch, it was something sweet and juicy all along. I like working on albums throughout an entire year, boiling down the seasons, flavoring the songs with their essences. The witchery of it. Over all that time, we grow together, the music and I.

But there is a tipping point, a subtle souring that can happen when you grow so intertwined. A neediness creeps in. A ferment of dependence. You get too close, and all that perspective gets fuzzy and clouded over. When the fog lifts, you might suddenly find that instead of forging ahead, you’ve been circling back over the same ground. Maybe, you worry, you’re stamping the life out of the land. Making a parched desert out of that orchard.

So is this the moment when you know it’s done? When you’ve worked it so long, it threatens to shrivel? When the thing you’ve made becomes a cage, and you pace like a lion inside it? I don’t want an ending like that, one that feels like defeat. I’ve come this far—I owe it to myself, to the art, and to everyone involved to see it through. So I double down, sink deeper in, push past dead ends. Try to coax out the life again—little whisper of ember in the dry grass.

It’s an act of balance. But where is the line between honoring the art and giving it its due time and attention, and letting go to make space for new things? 

As always, I look to the season for answers. September speaks to me of relief. After the manic joy and frequent FOMO of summer—which is never as full as I’d like it to be and is always over too fast—it is the time to release unmet expectations. The window of opportunity is closing—all those things you wanted to do can no longer be done!—so you have no choice but to make like the leaves and let go. The sense of urgency loosens and cools alongside the air.

With everything I make, there is also this sense that something has been unmet, and maybe that’s why it’s so hard to finish. I go into a new project with so many ideas and visions, but it’s impossible to execute them all. As I get close to the end then, I start to see that this thing I made isn’t what I thought it would be. Decisions have been made that can’t be unmade. The finality of it scares the hell out of me. And maybe that’s why I’m struggling to finish this behemoth 18-track album that I’ve been dreaming into existence for two years. As long as I keep working on it, everything is still possible.

But this season reminds me how good it can feel to let the door close. I’m sad that summer is ending, but I won’t miss the anxiety of needing to experience it. Likewise, there will be relief in turning in this album and giving up the chase. September drops a leaf on my shoulder, gentle as the hand of a friend, and says, it’s time to move on. Of course you didn’t do everything you set out to do. That’s what next time is for. And the time after that. There will be more summers; there will be more songs. Unmet expectations and unfulfilled desires are the engine that drives us forward. It’s not a defeat to finish this way, it’s a gift for your future. It’s an invitation, a way of saying, yes, you made this one thing. Now what else will you do?

The end comes, it turns out, not when you stand back and see something whole, but when you turn away and trust that no matter the holes, the thing will stay standing.

September’s full moon is called the Harvest Moon. Indeed, this is the harvest season, a time to celebrate, to cull and to feast. No more time to waste. Take this imperfect apple: taste its sweetness.