Coltrane, Smith, Descartes, Burns and More.

Anytime you can find an essay in The New York Times that starts with Patti Smith quoting John Coltrane, you quickly realize why, for all its faults and all the anti-press invective hurled its way by the malefactors of the reactionary repugnican revolution, that hoary newspaper remains one of the world's greatest.

Last week, tump, who never legitimately graduated from the college his father paid for him to graduate from, and who spends over $3,000,000 annually on personal grooming (at tax-payer expense) called the Times "a rag." He objected to this article:

However, for all its faults, and regardless of what you personally think of the paper's stance on various issues, you rarely see articles like this anywhere else. 

I can't even imagine anything like this from the sites so much of our benighted nation is being poisoned by. These items are from fux news:

Back to the Times' essay and the bit that drew me in. 

The author, Jonathan Biss, a concert pianist writes, 
"That’s from Patti Smith, a great and uncategorizable artist, describing the saxophonist John Coltrane’s influence on her.... Classical musicians are not trained to talk to God. We are trained not to make mistakes."

We are trained not to make mistakes. In advertising as well. 

We are trained to 'play it safe.'

We are trained to follow, follow, follow 'best practices.'

Last year's award-winners.

Last evening's trends.

The last shiny object we saw.

We are trained to strive for perfection. Perfection defined by that which imitates that which we already saw, so it doesn't challenge us, doesn't make us think, doesn't show us anything new and therefore uncomfortable.

We give perfection a name. Craft. And venerate it. 

Real craft is being human.

As so many educators lament--students today know how to get "A's." But they don't know how to write or think or zag.

At Harvard, a small Massachusetts University on the outskirts of Boston, A's account for sixty-percent of all grades awarded--up from twenty-five-percent at the turn of the century. What's worse, of course, is that as grades get almost universally higher, literacy, reading ability, the ability to think and reason, have withered. 

Further, the recency heuristic--driven by malevolent ill-formed algorithms are such that no one knows, learns or cares about anything, any history, any literature, any tv, any art, any sneeze that's more than 12 seconds old. If Rene Descartes were alive today, he might utter, "Feedito, ergo sum." I am my feed. And our feeds have no reference point other than the latest cosmic flatulence.

You can read Biss' essay here, if you still know how to read. 

Here's a long passage worth, I think, thinking about.

Social media might well be ground zero for this phenomenon [of perfection.] The obsessively curated and controlled Instagram profile has become so ubiquitous that it has birthed a new profession: the influencer... 

...They peddle a lifestyle without the messiness of life. We see idealized homes, idealized bodies, idealized dinners on idealized tableware. What we do not see is the struggle that forms the core of the human experience, that forces us to think in new ways and encourages us to forge connections with people who might see the world in ways we so far have not.

 
And here's a bit that might be printed on the walls within agencies, if agencies cared about anything anymore but their PR and their next quarterly earnings (or losses) reports.

True perfection is an illusion, just as true safety is an illusion. Seeking perfection keeps us from exploring, even when we sense that we would be happier and more fulfilled if we did so. It makes us live smaller lives and stymies our creativity, both as individuals and as a society. It is the enemy of art.

There's more. Deep and meaningful, that Biss somehow boils down into a useful, mnemonic epigram. 

Recently, midway through a chamber music tour, I played a concert in which I felt absolutely connected to the music.... 

That evening, though, something magical happened. I felt that I had found the essence of the pieces I was playing, that they and I were in total alignment...

I awoke the next day with a knot in my stomach. A lifetime in classical music had conditioned me to clamp down, to aim to reproduce everything that had gone so well the night before. I suspected this was impossible. The concert was no longer a source of joy; it was a noose around my neck. 

Then the colleague I had played with texted me: “Last night was special. We have to find the truth of tomorrow.”

 

A lot of people in advertising think only about advertising. They use, repeatedly, dumb empty words that are essentially meaningless and void. Brand. Storytelling. Authentic. And as Samuel Beckett once wrote, 'there is no lack of void.'

What we should be thinking about is life. And how to apply giant issues to our work. It's not an AI protocol or overpromise that brings us to truth. It's our eyes and our brains and our heart and our hands and our ardor and our application of those human qualities.

There's an old Yiddish saying, Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht. 

Man plans and god laughs.

Or as Robert Burns wrote to a mousie, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley." (go haywire.)

In short, start not planning. Start fucking up. Not trying not to.

That's how you can find your god.