021: Learnting


LOL the last blog was 2020, so let’s recap what’s the most important lessons we’ve all learned since then. 

First, zoom podcasts guests suck. There are few things worse in the world, racism obviously, world hunger too, but zoom podcast guests being presented as worthy content is certainly in the top ten. I’m not sure how every single person did a zoom podcast and collectively thought “yes, this is a good idea.” It’s not. It’s worthless. Almost nothing of value has ever been said over zoom’s poor microphone quality. I’m not an audiophile, I’m just a normal person who has standards and thinks all podcast hosts who subjected us to zoom guests should be charged with crimes against humanity. But also they should be pardoned because I’m a modern empathic male living in a post Barbie world. 

Second, 2021 didn’t count. Whatever happened that year just needs to be struck from the record. Murdered someone? That’s a mulligan. 

Third, the 5-9 hustle after your 9-5 culture was a scam. Every 30+ year old I know had a “GaryV is a fucking moron” awakening moment as we all realized we should have gone out drinking more in our 20s instead of mainlining drop ship brainstorm sessions in shitty apartments until 3am. It might have been him and the dumbest people you know raw dogging the NFT thing, but a whole ass bro hustle culture got smashed in record time. Hustle culture went the way of the pet rock and we all feel ridiculous. Entrepreneurial post nut clarity is a hell of an experience. 

Fourth, America at its core is not a complicated place, but is complicated by raising up the worst voices. I try not to be a “NYC has this shit figured out” person but when a crazy person gets on a train here and starts yelling whatever leadbrained thought popped in their head, we turn up our headphones or simply move to another car. America basically decided that the crazy train person deserves an equal platform of exposure. America needs to switch train cars fast, or the crazies will take over the cab, and we all know where fascists like to drive trains. 

Fifth, Everything is broken and everything can be made new again. Literally all the shit doesn’t work, so it’s a great time to make new shit that does work and is awesome. Let’s just all do that and vibe out.

Sixth, Rodney Mullen is the voice of our generation. 

“This is the luxury of having spent my life doing what I love. The cost of that? It sucks. I’m not blind. I’m not numb to the pain. I would argue I’m more conscious of it than anybody else. But I’m also more conscious of what that gives me. And when I’m done with this, that will be what it is, and I’ll find a way. But there’s something inside of me, propelling, that I’m not going to give up until the wheels fall off. That’s what I’m made of. And I wish — I see all the arguments against it — but I wish I could relate the intangibles to you. My guess is that we’re all built the same. None of us are completely stupid. A little deranged, I think there’s a strong argument there. I do. But ultimately, we also know what we have. And to go and lay down in that sense of it, that’s like, embracing what we’ve done with our lives.”

Whatever your thing is, art, photography, or just fucking surviving, Rodney’s words help contextualize the millennial and partly Gen Z experiences. We are all the Rodney Mullen of our own lives. Beaten, battered, broken down in a society that is crumbling and we keep going because the drug of living is the most addictive chemical there is. 

Seventh, it’s go time. Hit the publish button, we ain’t getting younger.




019: The Weekend Before

The squeaking we are all hearing right now is the last sucklings of air into the collective buttholes of Americans, clenching as we head into the most monumental election of our lifetimes This Year. Because what this year needed, was a nail biter to the end. (Yes, I know by Historical Metrics this should be a landslide For The Good Guys, but turns out “history” isn’t actually law, and even laws aren’t real useful when they aren’t enforced by the gatekeepers.) 

No less than millions of words have been written about the possible scenarios, so I’m going to avoid adding to the Helvetica junk pile of hot takes. But it’s certainly difficult to act like there is another conversation worth having as a collective creative culture while the world is equally literally and figuratively on fire. It seem forever trite to avoid the Big Things and attempt to talk about anything other than *EVERYTHING BAD*. So as chaos and tears have engulfed the beginning of the decade, maybe a conversation worth having is how to document the history happening right now. 

OK, so how do we do that? Where do we start? Fuck if I know. I just wanna survive the year and watch the entire series of Disney’s Bonkers on Disney+ like a normal mid thirties dude when things get bad. Adulting is on NO ONE’S dance card this year, but the harshness is we all need to pull up our pants and clock in to maturity. 

 One of the few coherent thoughts I’ve jackhammered out of my concrete brain this year, is that we have been attempting to write this experience as if it is over. We all want to be like “I did this during this.” Almost like we are editing our personal Wikipedia entry. But the fact is none of us are important enough to have our Wiki’s edited in real time. We are still living through the trauma of Life Now, and we may not even be halfway through this period of turmoil. Some of us, and my heart hurts realizing we as a society are actively doing this, are just getting started with the traumatic experiences that will shape their next decade, and maybe the rest of their lives. 

Perhaps it’s just my circle, the elder millennial tribe. But it seems we haven’t really gone through a long term trauma as a country in our lifetimes. Desert Storm was a blip on the radar as far as wars were concerned. 9/11 was a bad Tuesday, but we all watched the next New York Yankees game and moved on relatively. The economic crisis made our parents sad but was solved quickly by the cool black president. Something something Afghanistan, I think Sacha Baron Cohen made a movie about that. 

My point is, perhaps we are in The Shit for the long haul for the first time as a generation. The Great Depression ran for more years than The Office. Hitler was in power longer than Eleven was alive when Stranger Things premiered. We are used to things happening a such an elevated clip, that we are unable to process the fact that we realistically are barely in Act One of this current storyline. Thus we have this unimaginable amount of creative guilt that “it’s been shitty so long now and we have nothing to show for it”, when we are dealing with a situation larger than we can even imagine. The fact that we are beating ourselves up for this, is a boulder size amount of bullshit. 

How we as creatives will get through this, is entirely unique to the individual’s circumstances. I know people who have given up and gotten “real” jobs, I know a photographer who closed his studio after 16 years and is selling everything, and I know a handful of people who are having some of their most productive years ever. The range of the human experience of our current issues are vast, and so unique to the person, we can not, and should not be comparing output to each other.

I guess I am writing to a Proverbial Me outside in the world. No matter where you are, you’re exactly where you can be given the circumstances. We are not done fighting this battle yet, your work can wait if it needs to be. Or you can dig into it if you believe, Chances are there is someone you know needs your presence more than your art does, and that’s ok. In fact, that’s a grand gift, worth more than your output could ever hope to be. 

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