This Being So, So What?
“This being so, so what? ”
Zen Something-r-other via Jerry Colonna
“This being so, so what? ”
Zen Something-r-other via Jerry Colonna
“If you talk about what you find interesting, eventually you will acquire a listenership that likes that too… and if you try to make a show based on what other people like, eventually you will have a show that YOU don’t like.”
Dan Carlin (of Hardcore History)
Really great interview here. Hardcore History is a killer podcast. I need to chew on this a bit for my own show.
“I think a lot of filmmakers think of story as the purpose of the film. And that the characters really have just got to service the story and take it to where it’s going. And that seems to me to be the complete opposite of what should be happening because there should be no story. I mean, we spend our lives inventing stories, but ‘story’ actually doesn’t exist. We exist and our apprehension of a story is how we explain the kind of meanderings that we take. So there’s no such thing as the empirical story. It’s just what happens to people.”
Bill Forsyth, Scottish Director
Wild. Been studying storytelling and screenwriting for so long and I’ve never heard someone say this.
But it’s true! There are only characters. Characters with wants and fears and desires making little and big decisions and bumping into each other.
Just like us.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
“Always shoot for the moon—it’s one of the few real thrills left today!”
Not that great of a quote. Mostly just a celebration of finishing this book.
Read it as research for a course I’m writing in Fizzle. It’s this out of print classic in copywriting. Much of it old and outdated, but tons of great morsels.
The examples and the tactics feel hard-sell-ish today. But there’s a few bits in here (some passages on creativity, his reverence for VW ads and the quote above) that point to a richer creative life for good ol’ Eugene.
Read it if you’re a student of ads and copywriting. Else, just do what everyone else who’s smart does and just pay attention to how Basecamp does it.
I’m working hard on Fizzle.co. Less people signed up over the summer, and now we need to get those numbers up. It’s a weird mode for your dad to be in… numbers and results are tough for me. I’d rather do what sounds fun and interesting and compelling. But I’ve learned enough about the importance of the balance: do good work that works good. Too much good work that doesn’t work good and I (you also probably) get moody, dumb, traction-less. But bad work that works good has the same effect. So balance it out if you can.
I created an Gmail address for my son (he’s 5 years old). Every month I send him a lil’ note. A picture, a story, an update on him and me, etc.
This morning the bit above popped out. “Good work that works good.” That balance sure is hard to find.
“There’s a wonderful moment that comes when you realize, ‘I’m not striving for anything. What I’m doing now is not a means to achieving something later.’ Youth has always to think that way. Every decision a young person makes is a commitment to a life course, and if you make a bad decision, that angle, by the time you get [older] you’re far off course. But after a certain age there’s no future, and suddenly the present becomes rich, it becomes that thing in itself which you are now experiencing.”
“So here you have it: a book that invites you to pay. Not because you have to. Not because you want to. Not even because you should. Rather, because the alternative—starving the content you enjoy—is against your interests.”
“I think the only reason I’ve had the career life that I’ve had is that someone told me some secrets early on about living. You can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed, no matter what it is or what your job is, the more relaxed you are the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that’s a job I could be proud of. It’s changed my life learning that, and it’s made me better at what I do.”
“Men have become the tools of our tools.”
Henry David Thoreau in Walden
We teach what we’ve been taught.
We cut how the tool can cut.
We make how the tool allows the making.
We start at some unmovable starting point.
But it is moveable.