Don’t Leave Your Legacy on the Moon
Proof of life comes in the now, not in the later.
Make the thing.
It’s not going to make you money. If you believe that it will never make you a red cent right from the very start, then the making of the thing will have no agenda beyond the making of the thing. No strings attached. No carrots dangling. Money is a carrot, and carrots are only good for salads and hummus. I hope that one day you get the biggest tub of rich, delicious hummus but until then…
Make the thing.
There is no mountain top. Flags are dumb. “But I want people to see how brave and great I was. How my life mattered and what I achieved! Look at my flag! My life had a point!” That can’t be the reason for making the thing. If no one ever reads your thoughts, hears your music, or sees your art, it doesn’t make your life any less valid. You don’t need to prove you existed through it. You don’t need a flag. What you make means something, even if it’s only to you. I would argue that the meaning of life is not that you be seen to be living it, it’s to do the living regardless of if people are watching or not1, so…
Make the thing.
People will hate it. People will love it. Some people will never see it. Regardless, once you’ve made it, let it go. You cannot control the minds of others. You cannot send out explainers or apologies or ‘but that’s not what I meant’ missives. Let it go and move on to the next make. Don’t inflate your intent with their interpretation. Trust that some people will never get it—it’s not for them. You might get called a talentless hack, a worthless lump of space-wasting excrement. Someone may write a sincere blog post to your perceived genius and call you the second coming of creative comings. But most people will never, ever, ever know you even exist, so with that in mind…
Make the thing.
Make it because you cannot NOT make it. Make it to make you whole, not to make you a whole lot. Remember that what you leave behind will be either read, misread or unread. You are the now. You are the livings. You are in the being of the human being and the doing of the things. Recognize that ego is a shitty bus driver. Your heart is the motor, your brain is the fuel, and your aging, always-counting-the-minutes body is the accelerator. Drive. Drive fast and slow. Just drive.
If you don’t believe in it, don’t do it. Throw ego off your bus. Don’t assume that because no one saw it, that because it was neither loved nor hated, that it was worth nothing. Proof of life is not the meaning of it. Send your thoughts to the page. Commit your dream to a canvas. Make music from the tripwires of your heart.
Don’t send your DNA to the moon. That’s not legacy.
Better out than in. Make the thing.
Listen to me read this post to you, here 👇
This week’s amends…
It's a thing that worries me sometimes whenever you talk about creativity, because it can have this kind of feel that it's just nice, you know, or it's warm or it's something pleasant. It's not. It's vital. It's the way we heal each other. In singing our song, in telling our story, in inviting you to say, "Hey, listen to me, and I'll listen to you," we're starting a dialogue. And when you do that, this healing happens, and we come out of our corners, and we start to witness each other's common humanity. We start to assert it. And when we do that, really good things happen.
Taken from Ethan Hawke’s Ted Talk (below) on giving yourself permission to be creative.
Via Open Culture
Stumbled on this purely by accident. Any day you discover a new (to you) artist is a good day.
I was helpless to resist so went to order the vinyl and, of course, too late out the gate, Janeen. Frowny face emoticon.
The Pakistan-born, Brooklyn-based composer draws from jazz, Hindustani classical, and folk to create a heartbreaking, exquisite document of the journey from grief to acceptance.
Mariah Reading is an eco-artist from Bangor, ME. Throughout her travels to native lands, reading creates impressionist paintings on trash in order to depict the harms of pollution and climate change.
I’m a little obsessed. You can read about her paintings here, and follow her on the Instagrams.
Via Kottke
President Obama’s Summer Reading and Listening lists for 2021 are out. Funny to see that the very song and musician (Mahabbat by Arooj Aftab) I mentioned earlier is on there—I guess I’m just way off the back in music! The image below is only part of the list: see the full selects here.
Via The Obama Foundation newsletter
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple
Also, of course, 42. And yes, I just told you the meaning of life. Solved! Although the meaning of life is that you die. If there was no die, there would be no meaning to anything we do at all. ↩
