Fragments
Fragments
Pieces of hope - weekly - straight to your inbox.
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Complexity
Complexity is difficult to feel.
Which is why complex crimes like insider trading of securities, gambling with derivatives or our UK PM burning more oil with BP for personal gain doesn’t fuck people off the way it should.
But introduce a minister who cheats on his wife, and suddenly an uproar because the pain of adultery is easily understood by most people.
In any field, the most eminent thinkers refine the most complex ideas down to something simple and elegant.
And the most powerful artists ultimately deliver simple messages beautifully.
Emotions respond best to simple.
Helpful
I am a fan of one of the Janitors at work.
She’s a chirpy lady who works in all areas, and has unexpectedly inspired me heavily.
She talks about how she likes working on cancer wards because she’s very useful there.
Cancer patients going through chemotherapy inevitably vomit. A lot.
And she tells them its okay, keep going because it keeps her hired.
Every time she manages to make them laugh, it gives her a sense of purpose.
And this attitude has stayed with me since.
Detail
Charles Eames famously once said “The details are not the details. They make the design”.
Everything we put in a piece says something about us.
As such, there is an argument to omit anything that doesn’t have a strong reason to be there.
For every detail added to an idea that is irrelevant, we risk diluting our message.
Detail is where precision matters.
Minimalism
Minimal is about essence.
What could you take away from this idea, without breaking it?
Which is a tough question to answer if we don’t really understand the idea.
And without this understanding, the opposite happens - stuff gets stuffed in.
Minimal isn’t just what feels good when we’ve taken everything away.
It’s fundamentally understanding what the core of our idea is made of.
Heard
“I don’t care mate, I’m gonna end it”
A giant 25 stone bald headed beef cake came crashing through the front doors of our Emergency Department.
He eyed up every staff member who passed him, all the while swaying about smashing into cabinets intoxicated.
He had taken an overdose.
It took five people to calm him down, before he eventually slumped against a trolley.
He had just lost his job, had no where to go and could no longer face himself.
But ultimately, he was here because he called the ambulance services.
And rather than an overdose, I feel what he really needed was simply to be heard.
Gift
When we open the door, give a compliment or literally gift an item, it’s a gift if it’s sent without expectation.
But the moment it’s loaded with expectation it stops feeling like a gift, and feels more like an unsolicited emotional transaction.
When we frame our creative work as a gift - without expectation - it’s easier to weather a poor response. It was a gift.
But the irony is, we enjoy reciprocating gifts more than completing transactions.
Keep gifting.
Fashion
Any business that lives or dies by trends is in a fashion business.
The key question in any fashion business is - what do we show next?
Show people something too fresh, and they may not get it. Show people something too familiar and it feels stale.
So a go-to strategy is to bring back a formerly fashionable idea and adapt it to a new generation oblivious to it.
This dynamic is what makes fashion recur in cycles, and why learning the history of any art form is immensely valuable.
Fresh artists connect the past to the future.
Validation
When our contribution is meaningful, we will never feel the need to rely on external validation to feel valuable.
We validated ourselves the moment we contributed meaningful ideas.
But if the meaning of our contribution is to be validated..
We will always feel empty without others validating us first.
Meaningful work validates itself.
Becoming
Becoming happens in phases.
In fact, a toddler going straight to reading John Keats while listening to Rachmaninoff on repeat would be disturbing.
Every phase teaches us valuable lessons on what it means to be ignorant, to make mistakes, to figure shit out for the first time.
So when we look back at our cringe worthy past, it’s a great occasion to have a laugh and celebrate how far we’ve come.
Everything is part of becoming.
Birth
My first born son Ren (蓮) arrived a fortnight ago. He’s a tiny little nugget (0.4th centile for size) and he’s absolutely perfect.
When one expects a child, it feels like the arrival is the big moment, but of course it’s only just the beginning of the next chapter.
And with it comes the sharp reality - waking up multiple times to feed, changing diapers every other hour and making sure we don’t fall asleep and accidentally kill him.
I feel every important thing we create feels like this - the gruelling after care and sustain matters as much as the birth itself.
But when I see him smile for even a second it all feels totally worth it.
Creation is an act of love.
Crushed
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve witnessed - then been slapped in the face - then crushed by other artists’ talent.
I go through - wow that’s amazing - holy fucking shit balls - why do I bother?
But if the conclusion here is to give up because someone else is so talented, why do I bother actually needs to be answered.
Because if the point is to make a difference to your audience in your own way, it doesn’t matter how good other artists are.
It’s still worth doing it.
Better
When we use this word to improve something subjective, we run the risk of losing perspective very quickly.
How exactly does this next creative decision make our work better?
If we can’t describe an improvement other than better, the honest answer is it’s different, but not necessarily better.
And the “better is better” mentality is how blind degradation starts.
Better is sometimes leaving things as they are.
Home
Home is the smell of our washing, the way our pillow feels, the family we live with.
Those things we just know, because we’ve soaked up its essence over time.
And home after travelling feels nice.
Composers and story tellers use this device all the time. We repeat ideas enough for it to become familiar and comforting..
Only to switch things up and take us on a journey, before returning to the main theme.
A compelling exposition is creating a home worth returning to.
And I wish a safe home to all my readers.
Autobiography
The story of change is an exciting story.
And if we’re not happy with our life story to date, we have the wonderful opportunity to change that, today.
The most boring story we could tell in the end is the one where we realised our life needed to change but nothing did.
Which story will you tell?
Zeitgeist
Interesting artists accumulate interesting rules over time.
How to use themes. How to tell a story. How to build tension anywhere, anytime.
Then they learn rules on how to break rules.
Rules like: use cliches to deceive audience, deliberately misuse analog equipment, use poor taste as an ironic statement.
And when we break rules in ways that break outdated norms, we contribute fresh ideas that mark the progression of culture.
Go smash shit up.
Social media
Every tool can be used and misused.
A hammer can be used to build a home, and also murder a family.
Social media is a tool to bring attention to the creator and disseminate value. The healthiest creators use it as a tool to amplify the value they already bring to the table.
On the other hand, social media has also been misaapropriated as a status symbol as its primary purpose.
In which case, we observe many focus on polishing the tool without using it to bring value to their audience.
And that is a backwards way to spend ones precious time, energy and money.
Value precedes status.