Mired in this shit, it can feel hopeless. Falling back on tired ways of feeling cynical, scared, and at a loss. Beaten down, pushed aside, silenced. These American days are full of division, hate, suspicion, weakness, fear, lies, and what leads to a base level impulse to want to build a wall. A wall to keep out others. A wall to hold tight to our small view of the world. But this, at some point, has to stop. Doesn’t it? How far into the future do we have to look? How far can we see? When do we get there? When is it realized?
Sonic Youth
“People see rock and roll as, as youth culture, and when youth culture becomes monopolised by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you, do you have any idea? I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that is destroying youth culture.”
– Thurston Moore, 1991: The Year Punk Broke
Do we have to replicate?
Do we need to insist on doing something worthy of our time and then doing it again over and over? Maybe we can just push all our being into one explosive release of heart, emotion, and spirit and that is all. That’s it. All we need. Maybe there is no more. It came, it was realized, and then we move one.
Hope & Happiness
From Tyler Riewer and his friends, the reasons 2017 was actually pretty great on a lot of levels. The Women’s Day March, Master of None Season 2, Dogs on Instagram, Making Your Own Hot Sauce, and so on. Pretty great stuff. Here’s one of mine:
Reading Real Books
Even though I love the Internet deep down and my work depends on it, I’m also losing my patience with it. Fake news, trolls, the alt-right, relentless ads, how Facebook can be terrible, etc. Give me powerful ideas wrapped up in a tactile object made of paper.
Say Anything
Over the break, I did not do any planning, managing, or organizing. I opted to not plan anything that needed to be managed or organized. I didn’t manage anything organized or planned. And I organized nothing that was planned or managed. It was quite liberating. And exactly what was needed.
There is no shortage, it seems, of items to be planned, managed, and organized. But in the last couple weeks, I chose to not do any of it. I feel very fortunate I had the choice to do so. And as a result, I feel centered and recharged, with a certain amount of clarity I was hoping to find over a break that seemed to come at just the right time.
When the only thing left to do is turn up the music really loud
When the deadlines are coming at what seems like lightning speed, when the back and forth has way surpassed a measurable amount, and when the end of the year brings about a certain amount of mental fatigue because you’re overworked and approaching burnout, there’s not much that can be done aside from cranking the volume to 11 and hoping your clients and collaborators will understand your current predicament. Onward into the dark night my dear friends!
If you want to keep catching lightning ...
... you have to keep walking around in the rain. Yes, it happened. I finally saw Ira Glass in person. And it was everything I hoped it would be.
The voice, the delivery, the subtlety, and the humanity of it all. He shared what he’s learned. How to tell a story. How to interview kids. How musicals molded him. How to speak Spanish on a road trip. And while I absolutely appreciated his final act where he boldly defended the fact-based media and laid out the current situation where America finds itself fighting for truth against a media ecosystem out to destroy reality whenever possible, my favorite part was about creativity.
Specifically, how it’s normal to be bad before you’re good. I can relate. When I started out in design I was fucking terrible. Sure, I could draw a page layout with a pencil, pica pole, and some grid paper in about 10 seconds, but design? Creating something new that’s moving and beautiful? Nope. No idea how to do that. Drop shadows, bevel & emboss, outer glow. Just fucking terrible.
Now I’m better. I’ve done some pretty solid stuff and I would consider my design work good. But still, it’s a process. And on my journey to getting good and looking out to what’s next, I took comfort in a thing Ira said about creative work as you get older. That if you’re lucky, it stays hard. I like that a lot. If the work just gets easier and easier that means it gets less and less interesting. And boredom, well that’s killed about every single endeavor I ultimately stopped doing.
Ah Ira, you’re a gem. America is a much, much better place for your presence in it. Carry on ...
