(via bringtheruckuss)
Never buy new what can be bought second-hand
Never buy what can be rented
Never rent what can be borrowed
Never borrow what can be begged
Never beg what can be salvaged
Great VW ads - German engineering in the house ;)
For Andrew, who asked for it
Picasso, a painter wise enough to know what’s up, once said: “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” If it took Picasso a lifetime to paint as well as you did at three, you’ll never make it. Let’s work on making shit instead.
The Beginning
If you want to make great shit, you must first know what great shit is. This takes time, like anything. The key to sticking with it is only learning about shit you’re actually interested in. It doesn’t matter how great shit is: If you’re not appreciating it, you’re wasting your time. Find something else.
That doesn’t mean the shit you don’t get isn’t great, and it doesn’t make you less of a shitmaker not to get it. Just know that if you don’t get shit, you’ve still got something to learn, and that oftentimes it’s worth taking time to find somebody enthusiastic enough about shit to explain what about it he’s into. (This is called teaching. As a kid you were taught that teaching had to do with seating assignments, but that was wrong. Teaching is knowing enough about shit both to like it and to make other people like it.)
Start making shit immediately, even when you don’t know if it will be good or not. I’ll clue you in: It won’t be good. But don’t clue yourself in on that. Make the greatest shit you can make. When you don’t know anything, that won’t be very great, but try anyway. Once you’ve made it, get somebody to tell you just what stinks about it. Everybody but you knows stuff you don’t know, and you can have them teach you. Your shit will have the power of multiple men. That’s how you grow. It also helps if you can teach yourself how to tell what’s bad about your shit, but that’s tough. If you can’t get it right away don’t sweat it.
The Grind
If you start feeling dejected, for whatever reason, remind yourself: You are making shit. You are doing this for fun. If it’s not fun, do something else. Don’t worry about making something that’s not shit. If you have fun doing something for long enough and if you take the time to make yourself better, you’ll be great. The people that don’t end up great are the people who don’t care enough to be. If you find out you’re one of these people, it won’t matter because you’ve found where you like to be.
When looking for shit to inspire you, go especially after what you think might change you. We’re talking shit that makes you realize there’s more to making shit than you thought. There is always more to making shit than you thought; “shit” is a loose enough term to encompass a thousand things. (It doesn’t matter what you replace “shit” with: It’s always loose enough.) The best shit will open doors to realms of shit you’d never heard of before.
Follow what you like, never sit still, and find somebody wiser than you to recommend you shit. Don’t worry about following some neat ordained path. Neat ordained paths don’t take you anywhere special. Take risks.
When you don’t like shit, figure out why you don’t. Do you not like it because you don’t get it, or do you not like it because you get it but it’s not anything special? Assume if you don’t get shit, there might be something there worth learning. Don’t feel it’s your responsibility to learn, though. Learn when you’re curious. If you’re not curious then look for what will make you curious.
There is nothing wrong with disliking shit, but don’t be obnoxious about it. As much as you’d like to pretend otherwise, there’s almost never a good reason to get worked up over shit, and by “almost never” I mean never. It’s fun to hate shit, but it gets you nowhere. If you really find yourself hating something, make shit that outshines it. Then you’ve got shit to show for it.
Make as many kinds of shit as possible. Some lessons are best learned with certain types of shit. You can take any lesson you learn with any shit and apply it to any other shit. Shit’s flexible. Anybody who tells you shit’s not doesn’t know shit.
It’s possible to like shit and never want to make it, but sometimes you’ll find shit so cool you want to make shit like it. That shit’s worth pursuing. Don’t go down the path, though, where you start thinking your shit’s the only shit in the world. It’s the shit you most care about—and that’s how it should be—but if you don’t respect other people’s shit then you probably aren’t that secure about your own.
The Values
If I can take in shit and notice explicitly how good its technique is, I value that.
If shit’s original, I value that, but original’s not the same thing as unique. Original implies there’s something in its novelty worth taking in.
I can appreciate shit and like it based on why it was made, even if it’s not good otherwise, but having a good reason to make shit doesn’t make it good in other ways.
If shit establishes a personal connection with me, I value it more. The trick with personal connections is there’s no easy formula to doing it, because whenever you notice the formula it stops working.
I love shit that’s got no loose ends. When I take in shit and can’t think of what to remove, that’s good shit. It’s not necessarily great shit—some types of shit are easier to polish but less meaningful; other shit is so ambitious and powerful that I can forgive it its slight imperfections.
The bigger shit is, the harder I find to get into it, but the more there is the more I might get out of it. It becomes a scale. I love shit that’s small and compact and manages to strike me, and I love shit that both convinces me to give it a go and rewards me for it in the end, and there’s shit right in between. It’s all good shit.
Shit needs to strike me in some way. If shit does nothing to keep my attention, I stop paying attention to it. I will stop caring about shit long before many other people stop caring about shit, because I’ve got enough shit in my life to demand it grab me right from the start.
The Process
Once you’ve figured out what you look for in shit, you can start making shit that’s got what you like. The reason it’s important that you take in as much shit as possible is that without knowing shit, you’ve got no way of knowing what’s good and what’s bad.
When I make shit, I start with an idea, and I make shit. If the shit I make isn’t awesome or impressive enough, then I add on to the shit until I’ve got something awesome. Then I take away everything I don’t like. Then I polish. Then I make sure every piece of my shit is exciting and good and exactly what it ought to be. In the best shit, it all fits together.
The result is I end up with some shit that’s small but good, some shit that’s powerful and probably still in need of work, lots of shit that grabs attention and makes it worth it, and, occasionally, shit that speaks not just to me but to other people.
The Joy
What’s your shit matter? Everybody’s going to say something different. People still argue over centuries-old shit, if it’s important or not. I find it’s best to avoid arguing over “matter” much, because in one way everything matters and in another nothing does. Better to worry about what’s good and what’s not, and if it’s good who cares if it matters, and if it’s bad don’t think about it at all.
The best approach is to enjoy making the shit you make. If you like what you’re doing, there’s nothing to worry about.
The Cuts
You are as good as the shit you keep. That means the more you’re willing to get rid of, the better you are. If you’ve got a great piece of shit and the rest is only good, if you’re willing to get rid of the good and stick to the great, your shit is stronger for it. If you don’t produce much great shit, that’s hard, which means you should learn how to more consistently make great shit.
This is what’s meant by technique. I’ve seen shit that could achieve in a small space what it took a lesser shitmaker a large space to achieve. Sometimes I come across shit so compact it makes me feel dizzy. It’s possible to learn to appreciate shit so well that when you come across great shit it makes you high. High’s always a sign that something’s gone right.
The End
Remind yourself always that your shit is relative. Find ways to expand your definition of shit as much as possible. That way, the first step you take in making your shit will alone surpass the completed shit of the inexperienced.
When you step back and look at your shit and find it looks like you, you’ve done it right. You’ll never know anything that’s not you. You can only make yourself grow until you are large enough for shit to resemble. When that’s happening, you have become as great as your shit, and your shit is great.
Darth Vader in the canteen - one of the funniest youtube videos of all times! ;)
This is a painting by Max Ernst from 1937. It is titled: L’Ange du foyer ou le triomphe du surrealisme (The Angel of the Home or The Triumph of Surrealism) and supposedly relates to the events in Europe in between the world wars. It is very impressive - one of my favorites.
The picture links to an online gallery of Max Ernst’s paintings.
Before take-off at some early morning flight from Berlin Tegel. Taken with an iPhone.
Here we go with the first item on this blog - a picture of wine shops in Montalcino, Italy from my last week’s trip. Very cool place - certainly worth visiting, especially this time of year.
