The Man-Made Object was part of the six-book series Vision + Value published between 1965 and 1966. I’m pretty sure I just found my new favorite book cover.

(More on the Olduvai Hand Axe.)

The Man-Made Object was part of the six-book series Vision + Value published between 1965 and 1966. I’m pretty sure I just found my new favorite book cover.

(More on the Olduvai Hand Axe.)

A Day at the Museum

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is closing in two weeks for a few years for renovations and expansions so I had to visit while I had the chance. It’s small compared to New York’s MoMA but the experience is strangely similar.

I think realized it somewhere in the middle of the Gary Winogold exhibition, looking at photographs of 1960s Los Angeles. Or maybe it was when I came around the corner and the sight of one of Damien Hirst’s Dots paintings took my breath away. Or it could have been when I was standing in a small room surrounded by Robert Rauschenbergs, an old favorite.

I can’t go through a museum slowly. I always start that way; I’m one of those people that begins with a slow pace, pausing in front of each piece, studying it for a deeper meaning, observing form and technique, hoping some of the artist’s feeling rubs off on me. But as I go, I start to move faster and faster. The museum gives me a feeling I can only describe as a sense of wonder. Being surrounded by art that spans human history overwhelms me. So I have to move faster. The wonder is a motivation to pick up my dusty sketchbook, or pull out my old paint set, or grab my camera. There’s an urgency to create.

Museums are transient spaces—like airports and cathedrals—you enter one way, but you exit another. You exit with wonder and awe and inspiration.

Isn’t that kind of the point?

My friend Andy introduced me to The Office. I came home from my first semester of college and we spent our winter break watching the first three seasons, one after another, over bowls of won-ton soup and plates of homemade sushi.

And though my interest in the show waned in recent years, whenever I hear the theme music—even now, watching the series finale almost six years later in San Francisco, on the other side of the county—I’m taken back to that winter, to those memories, to the fun we had.

I think it’s a sign of a good work of art when it becomes forever tied to a moment in your life—a memory of good fun, good food, and good friends.

And sometimes all it takes is a sitcom.

“Once a job transcends into craft and from there into art, a door opens. Our craft becomes a canvas for something new and exciting. It never leaves, never fades into the background, but becomes the strong scaffold upon which new things are built.”
“I don’t believe in process. In fact, when I interview a potential employee and he or she says that “it’s all about the process,” I see that as a bad sign. The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.”
Elon Musk, my current entrepreneurial hero, from this interview with Wired’s Chris Anderson from October.

I think I’ve played Max Richter’s re-imagining of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons everyday for the past month. Spring 1 is the perfect soundtrack for the new season—bursting with energy and life and renewal.

I really enjoyed this interview with Vampire Weekend from NPR’s All Songs Considered. There are a lot of interesting bits on their creative process, their approach to their new album, Modern Vampires of the City that releases this month and some stories behind the songs.

My favorite story is the genesis to a song called “Step” that turns out to be a response to one of their favorite songs, Souls of Mischief’s “Step to my Girl”:

Souls Of Mischief I’ve always loved. I kind of associate them with the first time that I really started become a music fan as a young teenager. This song apparently was recorded around the time of their first album, which was called 93 ‘til Infinity, but it never made the record and it floated around as a bootleg for awhile. I only discovered it five or six years ago but it always really stuck with me, especially the chorus. I didn’t know where it came from but they’re kind of like scratching somebody saying, “Every time I see you in the world, you always step to my girl.” Slowly as I listened to this song, I found myself kind of writing this alternate song based on that phrase. Later we found out that that in of itself is a sample from a rapper called YZ. We didn’t know that at the time. This was kind of the inspiration to write this other song that became “Step.”

Not only did it serve as inspiration, the band decided to research where Souls of Mischief gathered the samples for their song and layered those same samples into their own song, making for a kind of musical history hidden in the music:

You can also hear how the vocal melody of our chorus kind of riffs on that saxophone sample that you hear on the Souls of Mischief song. We had to go clear the samples, and we had to find out where Souls of Mischief gathered all their pieces from. Like I said, that line, “every time I see you in the world, you always step to my girl,” comes from this rapper YZ. But that saxophone melody is actually a cover by Grover Washington Jr. of a song by Bread called “Aubrey,” which I had never heard before. So in the end, if you compare “Step” to “Aubrey,” you can see the connection. They’re pretty different, but you can see how the melody kind of changed and morphed through these different versions.

“So what I finally decided was, art is simply inevitable. It was on the wall of a cave in France 30,000 years ago, and it’s because we are a species that’s driven by narrative. Art is storytelling, and we need to tell stories to pass along ideas and information, and to try and make sense out of all this chaos. And sometimes when you get a really good artist and a compelling story, you can almost achieve that thing that’s impossible which is entering the consciousness of another human being—literally seeing the world the way they see it. Then, if you have a really good piece of art and a really good artist, you are altered in some way, and so the experience is transformative and in the minute you’re experiencing that piece of art, you’re not alone. You’re connected to the arts. So I feel like that can’t be too bad.”
Steven Soderbergh, on the importance of the arts

Spring Mix: Like Change in the Daylight

I wore shorts for the first time this year yesterday. This California air has inspired me since my plane landed almost a month ago welcoming me as it welcomes a new season. I made a little mix celebrating Spring, but also celebrating California, being outside, wearing shorts, and new life. It’s called Like Change in the Daylight. I hope you like it.

Click here to download Like Change is the Daylight.

Or you can listen on Rdio.

Here’s the tracklisting:

  1. (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes - Elvis Costello
  2. Daylight - Matt & Kim
  3. Isabella - Dia Frampton
  4. This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) - Talking Heads
  5. I’m All Right - The Go-Betweens
  6. The Ledge - Fleetwood Mac
  7. No Man’s Land - Sufjan Stevens
  8. Backyard Skulls - Frightened Rabbit
  9. Same Mistakes - The Echo-Friendly
  10. California English - Vampire Weekend
  11. I Feel It All - Feist
  12. Everyday - Buddy Holly
  13. Eyes Wide Open - Gotye
  14. How Do I Know - Here We Go Magic
  15. I Lived - OneRepublic
  16. 99 Red Balloons - Nena
  17. Moth’s Wings - Passion Pit
“Perhaps because California has no past—no past, at least, that it is willing to remember—it has always been particularly adept at trailblazing the future. We live in the future launched there.”
Rebecca Solnit’s River of Shadows
“Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything - it might come in handy later.”
From Sister Corita Kent’s 10 Rules for Students, populized by John Cage.