When did you meet that thing you love doing?
On our origins, being called an artist (or not), and how we think about what we're nurturing
It’s been a dozen newsletters since I started this little space, working on draft snippets throughout a work day, or nights after kids go to bed to compile some sort of perspective on whatever burning question I had for the week. Frankly, it’s been the best creative work I’ve undertaken in a really long time. But with three kids, a full-time job, and a full calendar of events, friends, and hobbies, I’ve decided to turn this weekly newsletter into a bi-monthly affair. Hopefully, that’s enough time to provide depth to things I’m really passionate about and that stirs both conversation and community here. On the other hand, I hope that’s not too long before ya’ll forget you subscribed to this in the first place and continue reading.
If you do stick around, please forward it to your network that might enjoy some creative writing and photography. This is a free subscription space until my kids decide they want to go to art school.
Happy Sunday.
The myth
The legend goes that blues icon Robert Johnson – maybe the first real rock star of our modern era and someone who died at the infamous age of 27 – was a decent harmonica player before his visit to the crossroads. No when knows when, or exactly where, but Johnson arrived somewhere in a Mississippi crossroads, where a man tuned his guitar and gave it back to him in exchange for Johnson’s soul. Delta Blues and musical history would never be the same.
For most people, Robert Johnson is an origin story of modern American music, a focal point of Americana, and a gateway to understanding the nonstop bourgeoning of American musical innovation and cultural dominance. Delta blues, one of the earliest variants of blues, probably didn’t need this story because there were later greats that carried the tradition on. But this oral history grounds Delta blues into a higher echelon of significance. The myth is powerful, and it doesn’t really matter if we believe that he sold his soul to the devil to master the guitar. The origins in this story are grounded more in reminding us of a creative conception and the artefacts we build around our unwieldy passions, fortresses of imagery and sensation, and possibly the great lengths humans will go to energize their ambitions to make whatever dreams we have come true.
We need this shit to remind us we’re not small and insignifcant; we’re someone.
A Curious Yearning
I’ve been thinking a lot about origin stories and art because I believe commemorating when creativity starts for us, individually, helps contextualize the passion we’re developing and growing. And context is like fingerprints: common but unique.
Surprisingly, there are a lot of ideas about where innate talent, artistry, vision, and inspiration come from, but not a lot of sturdy research (I looked but send me stuff if you find it). We know more about the deepest parts of the ocean than we do about the intricate nature of our passions.
Nature. Nurture. It’s likely a very nuanced mix of all of it, made even more complicated when you think about awareness. Today, in many places, there is talent undiscovered, left to its own development, possibly left to rot.
It reminded me of Patti Smith’s description, from her book Just Kids, of the first time she sort of realized she was an artist and the awareness she stumbled upon.
Swan, my mother said, sensing my excitement. It pattered the bright water, flapping its great wings, and lifted into the sky.
The word alone hardly attested to its magnificence nor conveyed the emotion it produced. The sight of it generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan, to say something of its whiteness, the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings.
The swan became one with the sky. I struggled to find words to describe my own sense of it. Swan, I repeated, not entirely satisfied, and I felt a twinge, a curious yearning, imperceptible to passersby, my mother, the trees, or the clouds.
It’s a swan, but it’s not just a swan.
I think we all experience an immense desire to ruminate, stir, and question the world around us. At that moment, to that younger Patti Smith, it was something more, something inexplicable, something physical and emotional, very real yet completely irrational. I love this excerpt because it highlights what I believe every human has the potential to do: open ourselves to larger concepts and experiences, if willing. Nurtured enough, given time, we can make the most brilliant connections, unlocking pathways we hadn’t seen before.
At this point, you’re probably thinking I’m reading a lot of new-age stuff.
Yet, this is all around us. While it pains me to even acknowledge him, you know who I bet also feels this way about something? Stephen Curry. I imagine when he sees a basketball, a court, and that three-point line, I think he’s also not entirely satisfied and feels a twinge, a curious yearning, imperceptible to passerby, his mother, the trees, or the clouds.
What I think we’re hearing is our desire to completely immerse ourselves in this curiosity because a lot of us know there is a remarkable journey when you do.
Nurtured Passions
I have a variety of nurtured passions.
When I was younger, I had a good friend who nurtured the curation of music. Before him, I spent most of my time listening to mainstream radio stations like Power 106, KISS FM, and KROQ, all segmented by genre. When he came along, he mashed all of those genres up, linked them, and created mood and feeling by intentionally connecting different genres together. I think back and remember subtle moments at our houses, cruising down PCH, or at a party, and he’d become mesmerized by beats, mixes, and calculations swirling in his head. We went to record stores and he’d buy Sublime, Herbie Hancock, and some weird dude named Quasimoto, and then we’d get into his car and listen to The Clash followed by loudly scream-singing every song from No Doubt. Yes, he was a DJ. But when I was 14, he was more like a scientist. A magnificent one. I think about this virtually every time I create a playlist or hear something in a song that reminds me of another melody I’d heard before.
Recently, photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing--which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power. - Susan Sontag. 1977.
What ADLC identity does this newsletter adhere to?
I grew up watching movies like The Breakfast Club, Nerds, The Goonies, and every and any other film that had some identity represented like a grocery store aisle of chips: the spicy one, the original, the reduced fat, the corn, the potato.
At school, most of my friends fell into a variety of categories that included your typical jock, academic, artist, and eccentric. I already introduced you to the DJ friend. I had another friend whose identity was tied very closely to their guitar. There was that one friend who lured us all into mixed-martial arts and then I had that one friend who always seemed to turn any firm ground into a dance floor. We all had the pothead friend.
Photographers eluded me so I made it my thing.
Being the only photographer made it easy to own the label. Photography was primarily my domain, my territory, a little haven I’d secured by chance and a bit of awareness. When I showed up to places with my camera, people defaulted to letting me do my thing. They posed. They acted. At times, they were unaware. While thinking about this week’s newsletter, I really tried hard to remember when the kindling of interest flared. For me, I think it was simply playing around with a point-and-shoot hand-me-down. No real crossroads. No exchange of souls.
But maybe for most of us, it’s more like a slow burn, an ease. I have vivid core memories of buying disposable cameras when it wasn’t cool at all and taking them to Cancun for a senior trip or to the first Coachella. There were lots of trips to drugstores for Polaroids that I could buy for under $10. Like most things in our lives, a little curiosity, tinkering, and someone saying, “I love Polaroids” is all it took. Fast-forward almost 19 years later, and I remember introducing myself to a room of 200 tech employees in 2017 and sharing a fun fact that I had a box of roughly 500 Polaroids from the last 10 years. There were more in other places, tucked away like a hidden treat in the back of a pantry, waiting to be devoured. This other identity, always underneath, wanting in whatever way to say hello.
Or maybe my obsession grew from an overwhelming sense, as a child, that the world was moving too fast; that things I loved were likely going to die; and that the only way to preserve the good things was to freeze time by any means necessary. If I could capture something beautiful to preserve meaning, then everything would be okay. Preserve meaning.
Nah. Too deep. It was probably just the access to cheap 1990s film inventory. Do you know when your love of whatever it is you love, started?
I recently bought a Mamiya RZ67 medium format camera. It’s a scary beast of a camera. 40-year-old technology that is still trucking. The thing I appreciate about film cameras is the simplicity of it all. Good, mechanical boxes. Light. Mirrors. Glass. Chemicals. That’s it. Send me a note if you’re willing to get your portrait taken with this thing.
My friend sent me Kareem Ali’s music and this one track, Sondela, has basically taken over my speakers.
Not an artist, but my answer to your question is running. I started running in 2021 at age 38 and got hooked right away. Coming out of (or still in) Covid times, my interest piqued with the realization that I could have alone time away from my two lovely small children, so I responded to the email and joined the run club. I wish I had started much younger. It's like therapy and allows me to connect with other people, new friends and old, old and young. :)
I first started writing in my journal in 1995 when I was bored in class. It’s still my go-to coping mechanism in boring all staff meetings 😋
Are you bringing the new camera to SF?