From Chaos, Order

My compadre Helena pointed out this amazing little video:

I wrote a bunch of notes immediately into my journal, and wanted to share a few with you. They won't make as much sense until you watch the little five minute video above:

• Artists create audiences. They talk to themselves out loud.
• "Clear speaking is generally obsolete thinking." <- I'll come back to this one specifically.
• "Clear statement is like an art object: it is the afterlife of the process which called it into being."
• Only connect. The rest is silence.

The rest of my notes don't really matter. Those are interesting enough. I'll say what I'm thinking about.

Co-Producing is the Goal

I've said for years that when I write my Sunday newsletter for people, the goal is to start something, to invite people to participate, to give them a say. And the enemy of this is to "write fully," as I think of it. To "complete the statement," as this recommends.

The idea above: "clear speaking is generally obsolete thinking" is to say that once you've got something completely figured out, it's old. It's static. It's on paper. There's SO MUCH here. The company where I work, for instance, makes products that bring LIVE data to reports. We create ways to plan and deliver that allow for messy interactions so that someone doesn't feel they've contributed.

I've done this for years in my work: my blog posts, my podcasts, my videos. I want co-creators, not just my lone thoughts. This idea, especially how the narrator of this video puts it, is a big one. Worth your time.

Artists Create Audiences

The concept here is that if you create FOR an audience, you're already generating obsolete thinking, because your ideas will be framed and fitted to match the other ideas that existing audience already considers. If you "give them what they want," you're not growing. You're just "playing the hits."

In some ways, this one concept explains why I haven't quite built the following some people think I deserve. I don't stand still. I don't work for a set crowd. I don't play the album you want. And in that way, I think maybe this idea depends on what you want. If you want to feed a specific audience, then fine. But if you want your ideas to be the future, you've got to accept that you'll "talk out loud" for long enough that people will gather to your ideas instead of expect you to cater to their audience.

The Afterlife of the Process

So often, the idea is better in its formation than in its execution. This can't be helped in so many cases. What you envision, once solidified/calcified, isn't what you might have seen in flickers before that moment. The impermanence is (in those moments) an important part of what makes an idea or an experience fresh.

Clear statement is the afterlife of the process that created the idea. The art isn't the art. The process that led to the art is the art. Does that make sense?

Only Connect. The Rest is Silence.

Let's say this piece got your idea juices flowing. THAT's the goal, not the piece. What I write to you is my opening into starting a new dialogue with you, thinking a new thought together, co-producing what you might think about and run with, or take away and build from, etc.

This idea, that the "permanence" of things is less interesting than the moments before, and the moment of experience, and all that, is flimsy like butterfly wings, but just as beautiful to me.

Do you see it?

Chris...