Taking control

My friend's band Golden Ears just released a video and I love both the concept and its execution. The house he was living in was set to be demolished, so they decided to turn the entire house into a piece of art — and then destroy it. 

Initially, this creation and destruction of the art piece appears counterintuitive: why spend all that time investing in something, only to destroy it once it's completed? It seems it a bit drastic doesn't it; the nullifying of this creative act? 

Yet, the reality is that all of our creative work is subject to destruction and such destruction can't be escaped. That is, it's not a question of if our art will disappear, but when it will disappear. 

Of course, we like to imagine that the art we make and share will continue on for years after we're dead, but with the amount of "art" and "information" being produced and shared each day, our art will eventually be suffocated and will cave beneath the weight of all that comes after. 

Does that mean we stop creating? Not at all. We continue creating in hopes that what we create explodes through the pile of "art" and "information," and when we can, take control of both the start and the end of our art's life. 

We produce and destroy, then, to assert our artistic autonomy in the face of a world that often seeks to stifle, appropriate, control, or even destroy it. Then, the destructive act becomes as much a creative act as the creative act itself. 

Gift making and giving

The other day my wife opened the front door and walked outside, only to see a dead bunny rabbit at the doorstep with its entrails flopped out on the stoop like a bunch of cooked spaghetti noodles sprawling crazily out of a burst bag. The kill was credited to our wonderful cat Squints, who like other cats, considered this carcass a gift to his owners.

Not a few days later I was trying to sleep in and I heard the sounds of the same cat playing with what sounds to be one of his many toys. Usually it's "Mr. Bee" because that seems to be his favourite. But then, I heard a crunching noise that is uncharacteristic of the toys he normally plays with, so I reluctantly get out of bed to investigate. Indeed, it's not Mr. Bee, but rather a lone bird wing with protruding vertebrae and splashes of blood. Squints is munching on it and looks up with what I imagine must be a cat's grin. Again, it's a gift from cat to owner because he stops munching on it and nudges it toward my bare feet.

Then a few nights afternthat second gift, I'm reading by myself when I hear screams emanating from the kitchen. Squints has a mouse in his mouth and he's carrying it around the house with glee, looking like he's proud to share the spoils of his late night hunt. The first people he saw was my mother in law and wife, so he tried to show them what he'd caught. They freaked out, and it was yet another gracious gift from our feline.

What I learned from these experiences—other than the fact that our cat is growing into a skilled hunter—is that humans often give gifts to other humans without considering whether or not what is given will actually be considered a gift. And this is especially the case with creatives, artists, and leaders of any type. We love to dream up "gifts" for others in our studios and our offices, only to realize that they are received as the exact opposite when we finally give them away.

I don't blame cats for this type of behaviour, because cats are cats. But humans are humans, and we should know better when we're attempting to give gifts. This is because we have the conscious faculties required to think about the people we're giving gifts to.

It could be a birthday present.

It could be a song.

It could be a lecture.

It could be a piece of advice.

It could be a loan.

It could be anything shared with another person with the intention of introducing some sort of affirmation or positivity in their life. But before we dream about our gifts to others and think they're definitely going to love this, we need to pause and reflect before we move forward. Because at the end of the gift making and giving process we might've just ended up giving someone else a dead mouse.

No, we don't need to capitulate to every person's concept of a gift. But, we should also be conscious that there's a marked difference between capitulation and consideration when giving any kind of gift.

We can be heroes

Whenever I come across a compelling quote or idea, I'll write it down on a sticky note and post it on my wall. That means I have a lot of sticky notes on my wall. Today I happened to look at one of those notes, and it reads:

HERO = SELF-SACRIFICE

This thought really stood out to me today as I did my normal cursory survey of social media feeds, blogs, and the like; the notion that a hero is not the person who is at the top of the heap, but rather, the person at the bottom, looking up and around and making sacrificial efforts to influence and impact others for their betterment, as compared to, always focused on their own self-advancement and realization.

So much of what we make and share these days is for the purposes of elevating ourselves; for showing the world how much of a "hero" we really are. But in the process, we turn into villains. We cat call and we betray and we criticize and we skew and we produce lies  and we cover up and we cheat and and we flatter and we confess trivialities so that others will bend down and let us climb on their backs, all the way up to the top of the social heap. But eventually, we'll fall because someone else will do what we did to get to the up.

If we want to be real heroes, we need to drop the self realization tendencies, lose the self advancement impulses, and begin self-sacrificing for the betterment of others. What does that look like for you? I don't know. That's up to you. But it starts with a decision to sacrifice more than you do trying to advance.

Fear and loathing at the movie theatre

I'm not sure how I feel about the latest Avengers movie after seeing it this weekend, so I'm going to write about it here to process my thoughts. I mean, sure, there were parts of the film that I enjoyed. But there were also parts where I felt uncomfortable; like I didn't want to enjoy it on principle because there were so many instances when I felt my experience becoming strangely analogous to that of Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; that scene, just before they are close to tapping the "main vein" of the American Dream, as they're thrown into a proper Vegas casino whilst overcome by the devilish effects of an American flag bandana soaked in ether. Notes Hunter S. Thompson, the author of the aforementioned work of lucid depravity:

"Ah, devil ether. It makes you behave like the village drunkard in some early Irish novel. Total loss of all basic motor skills. Blurred vision, no balance, numb tongue. The mind recoils in horror, unable to communicate with the spinal column. Which is interesting because you can actually watch yourself behaving in this terrible way, but you can't control it. You approach the turnstiles and know that when you get there, you have to give the man two dollars or he won't let you inside. But when you get there, everything goes wrong. Some angry rotarian shoves you and you think 'What's happening here? What's going on?' And you hear yourself mumbling..."

Did I mention that I saw the film in 3D? Which is to say, the effects of experiencing this sense assaulting, all you can eat visual and sonic buffet, that is Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, is not unlike the ether consumption as described above: your motor and sensory skills basically shut down, but your consciousness is maintained in this strange parallel universe where you're laughing uncontrollably with glee in a base level puddle of eyes and ears and brains mush with an insatiable hunger for more, more, more action and laughs and hurrahs! and excitement and anticipation and you're captivated but... you're seeing the gigantic, pulsing vein of the American Dream right before your eyes, and you become a part of it, and it terrifies you, and it excites you, and it sickens you to the core because yes! now THIS is entertainment! — seeing a bunch of suited up beautiful demi-gods lead by the unbreakable shield of America (i.e. Captain America) and battling it out for the entire world in this digital gladiatorial colosseum where our deepest fears and anxieties are alleviated by overwhelming amounts of physical violence that are only rivalled by a sensory violence. And we eat our snacks and we drink our sodas and we see ourselves enjoying ourselves in this drunken, ether-like state. Even though it's terrible in every sense of the term: terribly awesome, terribly bad, terrible overwhelming, terrible stunning, etc., and all of it pushes us to the peak of a real heavy drug induced high. And it's all our fault, because this is what we asked for.

In short, I'm worried that we've become this:

That we've become addicted to the drug of spectacle. 

Now, not later

My my wife sent me this article the other day, and it drew insightful attention to a curious phenomenon — or should I say sickness?— spreading itself through the legions of Generation Y-ers on the internets these days like a viral tweet that offends the entire world. How do you spot this phenomenon, you ask? Well, you'll often see it in the eyes of people who are avoiding getting, or are quitting, their real jobs to become internet influencers and Instagram celebrities; regard it in the eyes of people who want their dream job now and don't want to do any real work now to get it.

If you don't have time to read it, the piece I hyperlinked above is a solid exploration of why Generation Y-ers are so unhappy all the time, and it makes the compelling point that they're often unhappy because they tend to have wild ambitions that simply don't line up with reality. That is to say, people in our demographic tend to ask for all the benefits and splendour of our far reaching dreams right away, without really being willing do any work or self reflection to get there today. 

Now this little detail is important to note, especially on a blog like my own that spends a good amount of time encouraging people to pursue their creative and artistic dreams; to strive for more in life, rather than settle for less. Because there is always a risk with such calls to action to be construed as being in favour of forming unrealistic expectations regarding how the present and future should look for people like me and you. But I'm not in favour of that at all. In fact, I'm a firm believer that people should dream big and pursue those dreams, of course, but I'm also not an idiot: all of us have to find the interaction between dreams and reality and be willing to accept that we're not going to get everything that we want right now — or maybe even ever.

The world doesn't always work how we'd like it to. We can't always make the leap from part time copywriter to creative director in one week; can't always make the jump from intern to CEO in one month; can't always take two steps from Bible college graduate to widely known preacher in half a year; and can't always make the bound from amateur songwriter to multi-platinum recording artist in just one year. Art and creativity and excellence just doesn't work like that. It takes time, effort, and well, a lot of grind to see come to fruition. Sure, there are some cases in which this does happen, but as the saying goes: unique cases often make bad laws. Most of the time success happens and dreams are attained when there is a heaps of work and experience behind it.

I for one am guilty from time the time of falling into that I want it now perspective that so many of us Generation Y-ers fall into. However, I find that I need to constantly push back against it because it does nothing for my productivity and excellence an artists. Let alone my general emotional stability. What about you?