i posted this over on robots, too, but i had to put it here. it belongs here. it’s reflecting a lot of what i’m experiencing lately, and planning to experience soon.
via robin sloan at snarkmarket, this amazing piece, called Less Talk More Rock. i have a lot to think about with this one, and parallels i’d like to draw for other kinds of media-making, and it might even get me to start telling you about this new venture i’m trying to get up the gumption (and clients!) to start. but for now, look at it, roll around in its clarity and simplicity, and think a little about how to get from talk to rock.
my favorite passage – well there were many, but this one just really spoke to me – is something i worry we are all in the danger of indulging too much in, those of us in these overlaps between creativity and media and technology. maybe other people are too, but i feel like i’m constantly running up against this phenomenon. i’m seeing it in meetings, at events, written into proposals and methodologies, even in my (as my high school debate coach would’ve put it) ‘interpersonal communications’ – e.g., the few and far between dates i go on. the fastest way to ruin something good – and i’m truly an expert on this – is to intellectualize it and play out the scenarios in your head. i used to think that if you played out all the bad scenarios it would work like a spell, that i’d have warded off the evil and would get one of the less bad outcomes. conversely i believed that if i pictured the best possible outcome, i’d get kicked to the curb faster than something really fast. anyway, i’ll stop rambling and give you this:
Everyone wants to talk. Eventually, maybe it’s all just talk, there’s nothing left.
And maybe that’s where it ends. Maybe you get lost in all that talk — all that intellectualizing, all that ‘what if?’, all those numbers and sales projections or what-have-you, all that self-doubt — and you lose your way. Maybe you never even get to step three. Or maybe whatever survives has none of the inspiration of step 1: it has been diluted, compromised, transformed.
also, lest what i’ve been talking about looks too pointed to anyone who might be looking out for that sort of thing, yes, it is a pointed remark. but it’s probably not about you, exactly. 