Campaigns for George

Ever heard of George McGovern? There’s a story about this guy’s run for presidency that’s instructive for any of us looking to do good work in the world.

See that picture above? It’s a bunch of artists contributing pieces to a large mural in support if George’s run for presidency. (He ran against Nixon.)

I randomly stumbled upon this picture while staying in a friend’s house. It was in a book about artists and writers and the parties they threw in the Hamptons from 1950-1980.

As I flipped through the pages, taking in all the famous faces pictured in house parties and on sandy beaches with cigarettes and coffee mugs and cocktail glasses in their hands, a fable about these people evolved in my head.

It made me think about my own work and my own friends who are doing good work. It made me think about some parties I’ve attended and the faces of other people who were there.

And a kind of fable about the people in this particular picture (the one above, here’s a bigger version) sort of came clear in my head.

Here’s some ideas that stuck with me.

(Please spare any political tirades or history lessons. I don’t know much about this time or these people. Don’t care to.)

Must have been a lot of work getting everyone together to work on this.

I bet these artists think they’re doing something big. I bet they think they are big deals.

I have a little reach myself. I’ve been in (extremely minor) situations where I felt similarly, when someone thought my contribution would help in an important way.

“People pay attention to me. I’m sort of a big-ish deal,” they think to themselves. “Sure, I’ll help support the cause.”

I have never heard of George McGovern. I can paint a bit of a picture: he was the democrat running against Nixon. Artists love dems, traditionally… or so I’ve heard.

“Hey guys, let’s do something big, something important to make a stand. To make a statement and support this guy. We can’t let the republicans ruin this country. Let’s do something together… let’s make it count.”

But then George didn’t win.

What did they feel then? What do they think looking back? Did they already know they’re help wasn’t going to matter? “We tried. Whatever. Meh.”

Were they discouraged? “Last time I ply my oars for this backwards fucking party… backwards fucking country, too.”

Again this is all some fable in my head. I don’t know if any of this shit is true. But I could imagine myself as one of the artists here. It’s a fable, but it’s instructive for any of us trying to do something big, something that makes a change, something that brings light to darkness and joy in the suffering.

Many of our projects will end up being campaigns for George. If, instead of trying, we hold ourselves back, don’t contribute, we’ll save a little face. We won’t have put our necks out for a loser.

But I see another story in these photos. I don’t see anything about a president. I don’t see any real purpose.

I see an excuse for a bunch of weirdos and ragamuffins to get together and make something.

I don’t see art critics talking about “what this means.” I see a weird dude in a hat painting on his friend’s back.

I see cocktails on a massive canvas.

I see an old dude in a chair smiling lackadaisically and another old dude on his knees measuring meticulously.

In episode 47 of the podcast I intro us as the muppets. And at the end I mention this great quote about the moral of the muppet movie:

“The message of the movie is that a bunch of wonderfully eccentric, creative and outlandish individuals can somehow be brought together and stay together, because they take great joy in what they do.”

That’s what I see most in these pictures.

The guy they were rooting for didn’t win. George lost.

These folks painted anyways, almost as if they were dancing to their own music, following the joy and groove of the making, doing what they can with what they have focusing on what they can control (the making) disconnected from what results may come.

It’s just a fable in my head, but I want to get into that groove, the joy in the making, more… For a while at least.

When you work for yourself you need results too. I gotta make that coin. But I’m prone to an imbalance, and when I’m too results-focused I make worse stuff… Because I’m smiling less in the making.

Go get some friends together and help a George get elected.

Dave Eggers on Keepin’ it Real

“The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to me. It’s fashion, and I don’t like fashion, because fashion does not matter.”

What matters is that you do good work.

What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand.

What matters is that the Flaming Lips’s new album is ravishing and I’ve listened to it a thousand times already, sometimes for days on end, and it enriches me and makes me want to save people. What matters is that it will stand forever, long after any narrow-hearted curmudgeons have forgotten their appearance on goddamn 90210.

What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who’s up and who’s down, but what someone has done and if they meant it.

What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say.”

Dave Eggers

James Rhodes on Getting Good

“What if, rather than paying £70 a month for a gym membership that delights in making you feel fat, guilty and a world away from the man your wife married you bought a few blank canvases and some paints and spent time each day painting your version of “I love you” until you realised that any woman worth keeping would jump you then and there just for that, despite your lack of a six-pack?”

James Rhodes

This was a very fk’n good article. Marked as editor’s pick so I come back to it again and again.

Jerry Seinfeld’s Icons

Q: Can you tell us how your white sneaker collection first started?

Jerry: It started with wanting to be Joe Namath of the 1969 New York jets, who at that time was one of the only football players to wear white shoes. And I wanted to be like him, so I always wore white sneakers. Also, Bill Cosby on I SPY always wore white sneakers. And they were my fashion icons.”

Jerry Seinfeld

Everyone has idols and icons. Even Jerry Seinfeld parroted a few others early on. He found his own way later, but it’s good to see the 17 year old Seinfeld idolizing Namath and Cosby the way I idolized a Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams. (Still have a collection of gaudy leather jackets).

This is from an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) Jerry recently did on Reddit. It was stellar. Here’s some of my favorite quotes:

On Work

I chose comedy because I thought it seemed much easier than work. And more fun than work. It turned out to be much harder than work, and not easy at all. But you still don’t have to ever really grow up. And that’s the best thing of all.

On the key to the show:

I would go so far as to say that was the key to the entire show, was that we really felt like together we were funny, and then the audience felt it, and that’s how you can somehow catch lightning in a bottle.”

Reminds me of our chemistry on the Fizzle Show. None of us can take credit for how much we like doing this with one another. I think the show’s gotten big for that reason. (not “show-of-the-90s” big, but big… for a podcast).

On being the straight man:

The reason I would play straight was it was funnier for the scene. And very few people have ever remarked on this, because it was a conscious choice of mine, only because I knew it would make the show better, and I didn’t care who was funny as long as somebody was funny and that the show was funny. So you have hit upon one of the great secret weapons of the Seinfeld series, was that I had no issue with that.

On the TV show Jerry is a comedian. Yet to his friends he plays the straight guy. I never connected those dots before.

On Hecklers

Very early on in my career, I hit upon this idea of being the Heckle Therapist. So that when people would say something nasty, I would immediately become very sympathetic to them and try to help them with their problem and try to work out what was upsetting them, and try to be very understanding with their anger. It opened up this whole fun avenue for me as a comedian, and no one had ever seen that before. Some of my comedian friends used to call me – what did they say? – that I would counsel the heckler instead of fighting them. Instead of fighting them, I would say “You seem so upset, and I know that’s not what you wanted to have happen tonight. Let’s talk about your problem” and the audience would find it funny and it would really discombobulate the heckler too, because I wouldn’t go against them, I would take their side.

I had a heckler once on a blog post (i’m kind of a big deal, lots of blog posts n’ stuff… action figures too). I’m heading this way from now on.

Reminds me of Marc Maron in his talk with Stewart Lee… “oh no, you’re not liking this are you… this isn’t what you were expecting? I understand. It’ll all be over soon.”

Less of an “I have an obligation to make you like me”… more of a “my job is to talk to my people, do me.”

On gangs

If you’re one of us, you’ll take a bite.”

His notes on this were great. This is poster-worthy.

Frank Chimero on Marketing

I don’t expect to reach or change anybody I don’t already know. I realize there’s potential for that, but I don’t expect it.”

Frank Chimero

This has been rattling around my brain since I’ve heard it. In Fizzle I keep encouraging folks to think small, small, smaller. If you think about women who ride unicycles to work in north portland you can a). find those people easily (there are 10 of them), b). study and serve them well in small and meaningful ways that c). make a serious impact on that crew.

But in our online growing stuff — marketing stuff — for Fizzle and ThinkTraffic and, shit, even this blog, my mind defaults to “i need more people” mode.

Getting in front of new folks.

Making a good impression on them.

Creating an emotional experience with them on the page.

Making it easier and more enjoyable for them to find us.

But when I heard Frank say this I knew it was True™.

We still need to grow (maybe that’s another question to explore), but we can do it more like a family or a neighborhood than a “startup.”

How To Innovate

“Innovation” is a word we hear a lot… most of the times from baby boomers in quasi-tech environments… like my dad.

My dad always had “innovation” in his company’s tag lines. The word, for better or worse, is carved into my conscious mind.

I always thought: man, what a hard thing to do, innovating. Making something from nothing. Doing something no one’s ever done before.

Now that I’ve been designing and making and “innovating” for a while I see I had it all wrong. Innovation doesn’t come from nothing.

Innovation doesn’t come from thin air. It’s not something from nothing. Ex nihilo. (all that money on a theological education really paying off, right there).

Innovation comes from discovering what a thing actually is. It always starts with something and then goes deeper, closer to the core of what that thing is.

It’s not blue sky solutioneering or spit-balling. It’s, “hmm, I think people will actually behave this way, not that way…”

And that phrase shows up wherever innovation happens.

“People don’t want that. They ACTUALLY want this.”

“It’s not about that. It’s ACTUALLY about this.”

This is what happens in good stories. Darth Vader isn’t just a bad guy. He’s ACTUALLY (spoiler alert) Luke’s dad and deeply troubled about being a bad dad.

Crash Davis in Bull Durham isn’t an all star player. He’s ACTUALLY an all star coach.

It also happens in our own stories as we do the self discovery thing. In the Enneagram (ask me about it sometime) I thought I was the achiever but I’m ACTUALLY the enthusiast… that changed so much about how I saw myself.

We think we want freedom, but we ACTUALLY want connection and intimacy.

I thought the loss of my infant son would siphon the color from the world and grind me to a halt, but it ACTUALLY brought life into stark contrast, making me bold about what I wanted for my family.

And it happens in real businesses. I know we’re not supposed to use Apple as a business example… but whatever.

At the core of Apple is a delusional visionary yelling “people don’t want ____, they ACTUALLY want ____.”

People don’t want a computer. They ACTUALLY want to DO THINGS with a computer.

People don’t want to have to learn how to set this machine up. They ACTUALLY want to simply turn it on and start using it.

I’m remembering something Steve Jobs said in an interview about when he brought one of the first Macs to a party at John Lennon’s house (like you do). He said the old people wanted to know how it worked and the young people wanted to know what it did.

Apple did it again with the iPod. People don’t want CDs. They ACTUALLY want all their music with them wherever they go.

Innovation comes from understanding what the thing actually is in a new way. Ideally, it’s getting closer to what the thing truly is.

That’s why design is so important to all of us, because the discipline of design is the process of making a thing what it is. Design, according to Frank Chimero, asks us, “what does it want to be?”

With Apple the problem was the distance between humans and computers. Design is how you shrink the delta.

As a writer I design my story. First this. Then that. Redact this bit. Why? Because it’s not what the story is. Editing is design. Or vice versa.

Innovation through the design process is also in great advertising. The story you use to tell others what your thing “is” is critical… it’s the first impression, the handshake, the bit that clues someone in to if you you’re like them or not.

Those Chrysler ads with Eminem (I loved them so much) were saying: you think it’s just a car but it’s ACTUALLY the reclamation of american manufacturing.

This is a story. You don’t have to believe it, but that’s the hypothesis they posited.

Apples hypothesis was people don’t want to and shouldn’t have to learn anything. They want a cute and intuitive easiness. It was a hypothesis. There was no proof it would work.

It worked. It manufactured love. It altered the course of an industry.

What’s your hypothesis? What are you saying? Have you dug in deep enough to know what your thing is? What does your thing want to be?

I wish I had a secret for discovering what your thing is. Some people simply know when it’s not there yet. It’s a sense that it won’t come off the right way yet, we’re not at the heart of it yet. I think this is my only real great skill… I know when it’s not there yet. I don’t necessarily know how to get it there, but I usually have some ideas.

I don’t know if this is “taste” as Ira Glass put it, but I suspect it’s in the vicinity.

Innovation isn’t creating out of thin air. It’s always developing upon something, getting closer to the heart of something. Be disciplined in the process of exploring what a thing is. Not this, that. Over and over again.

When you discover — through the work — what the thing ACTUALLY is… that’s when your product begets the story begets the love.

And maybe more importantly: that’s when you’re standing on something solid and true… like the way I imagine the humans who invented the first tools to stand.

The Third Tier

I was in Portland, OR this weekend for XOXO Fest 2013. I stayed with Myke and Matt. I say “stayed” but the proper term is “crashed like a goddam animal.” I mostly just assumed it would be ok and showed up to snuggle between two queen size beds. They were cool. It was damp.

We had a crew there in Portland. Dan, Tom and their gorgeous wives (these guys know how to pick ’em), along with Jon and occasional dancing outbursts from my new favorite person ever Liam.

We really invested in one another. “Invested” sounds cute. It’s the kind of word that would be printed on something and then you’d click to Pinterest it. But it’s the right word. We devoted our time and effort to each other.

The word (and our efforts in that direction) means something to me because I’ve left too many social situations and conferences and such regretful, feeling like I made poor choices, like I missed the point or missed my chance or missed my wife or something.

I have a theory, a tier theory. There’s people at the top. They’re celebrities. People people know. They walk in and the room changes, everyone’s looking at them out of the corners of their eyes, some are full on staring.

These first-tier folks got there due to work they did, or jokes they made, or something like that. These are the people we look up to and admire… like, a lot.

And we all want them to like us. I, for one, have spent a lot of time and effort trying to get my fav’s like Merlin Mann to like me. I’ve wasted a lot of emotional energy, extended my resources in unnatural ways to try to stand out and be someone who’s easily cool… this never works. This leaves me feeling that “missed the point/missed the chance/miss my wife” kind of feeling.

And then I met Brad and Patrick and Matt and Maja and others who had relationships with all the 1st tier people, but seemed to always be hanging with each other. They wouldn’t line the edges of a crowd around John Gruber. They’d be standing somewhere else, with each other, making each other laugh, buying each other drinks.

Also, they were real welcoming. So light and fun and enjoyable. I felt more like myself when I was around them (as opposed to whatever else I was trying to be with 1st tier folks).

By the way, I totally think this is silly and sorta dumb; putting people into tiers and classes… but I’m going to keep going. It’ll come around. Promise.

Brad and Patrick, et. al., defined a new tier for me. I saw these lovely, kind, funny, welcoming people, I saw how wildly talented they all were, how they were doing work they were proud of, how they’ve been around for a while, long enough to know the first tier people and the fact that first tier people are just regular fucking people who now get approached more than they’d like to be…

And the thing I saw the most was how they invested in one another. They seemed to realize they really liked each other. They turned towards each other and said, “let’s start a club there.” They were for one another and acted accordingly.

Then I saw myself and these guys and gals I was getting close with. We were the 3rd tier. Unknown-ish. A little younger. Just kind of coming of age in our careers. High hopes. Sensitive to the whimsy of our 1st tier swooning. We have heroes. We’re idealistic. We’re adorable and hopeful and earnest and would really like Merlin Mann to listen to our podcasts… like, so much.

And the danger is we could miss out on all the goodness in one another — the birth of each others’ first born kids, the big project launches, the arduous bug fixing nights, the giggles at breakfast as we recited lines from the previous night’s events, the awkward bathroom bonding moments, snuggles — we could miss out on all this due to spending too mcuh emotional energy trying to get Marco Arment to like us… by investing too much in the idea of someone liking us just cuz they’re important. We’d miss out on real love and relationships with one another because we were trying to be somebody to someone who was something.

Now, here’s the thing about the tiers: there are no fucking tiers. The reason why those second tier folks looked so awesome to me is not due to their proximity to the 1st tiers. It might be a by product of that. They spent enough time with the Merlins and Grubers to realize there are no fucking tiers. Just people and desire. Some people a lot of people desire. Some people not many people desire. It’s just people and desire. “So,” they said to themselves, “fuck desire. Let’s find the people we enjoy.”

They didn’t care about the tiers. But saying to myself, “don’t care about the tiers” doesn’t help me very well. It always creeps in.

So what I say instead is, “go all in on the 3rd tier.” Find the people you enjoy. Invest in them. Plan every dinner, lunch, walk, conference, breakfast and hotel choice you can with them.

And welcome others. Delight in the stories of fabulous nerds and hackers and help everyone you rub up against realize we’re all in this together, we’re all lonely humans, we all want to be seen and to be told we don’t look that fat with our shirt off and that the thing we’re making is OK or “pretty cool” and we all want to have someone to go to lunch with and to try a new beer with and to show our super embarrassing sword tattoo to and to sit next to and to wave at us and point to a saved seat when we walk in late. We all want the same shit: we just want to feel comfortable in our own skin.

This is the good stuff. We all have stinky bits, we all need undies, we’re all uncomfortable and worried, so lets make a club there.

The Reeves Tier Theory™ reminds me to dig in, think more human and ask if anyone needs another drink before I go get mine.

Steven Pressfield on What 10,000 Hours Gets You

The rule says that in order for an individual to master any complex skill, be it brain surgery or playing the cello, she must put in 10,000 hours of focused practice. […] But what exactly are we learning when we’re beating our brains out all those years? […] What these masters were learning was to speak in their own voice. They were learning to act as themselves. In my opinion, this is the hardest thing in the world.”

Steven Pressfield

Listen to the podcast, get the Matterful Monthly and enter to win free gear.