Restraint

This piece began as exploration.

Not discipline.
Not concept.
Just movement.

I made the first version and something clicked. It felt complete. The tension was there. The compression. The heat in the hand against the metal.

But I didn’t stop.

I kept going.

Not because it was wrong —
because I was curious.

What if I pushed it further?
What if I intensified it?
What if there was more inside it waiting?

Exploration is honest.
But it has no brakes.

Each version drifted farther from the original spark. More adjustment. More manipulation. More intention layered on top of intention.

And slowly, the energy flattened.

Not because it became bad.
Because it became over-explained.

At some point I realized I was no longer discovering — I was decorating.

So I had to do something harder than pushing forward.

I had to turn around.

I followed the trail back.
Back through the edits.
Back through the decisions.
Back to the moment where the piece first held tension without asking for help.

That moment was restraint.

Restraint is not about doing less.
It’s about knowing when the exploration has already revealed what it needed to reveal.

The resonator guitar is built on compression.
Metal cone. Focused projection.
Energy forced through a narrow point.

The image had to do the same.

The photograph is warm, human, contextual.
The artwork strips that away.
It holds the breath before sound.

When I returned to the earlier version, I saw it clearly:

The piece wasn’t asking to grow.
It was asking to stop.

Exploration took me away from it.
Restraint brought me back.