Speaking of Which: November 2024
Warm shower purgatory, ski decapitation, and the solution to rheumatoid arthritis
I like my job. I’m very happy at my current company. But everyone has something in the back of their mind that they’d do if money was no object, and I am no exception.
I want to someday be a b-roll actor in pharmaceutical commercials. I want to be the person they film doing generally pleasant things as a voice actor talks about how you should ask your doctor if Rinvoq is right for you. I think I would be really good at having a good time for a living.
I don’t want any lines. I don’t want to look at the camera. I just want to cheer on my son at Little League games and play fetch with my dog on the beach and laugh with my friends at an okay cafe and just show how dope life can be without moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Because let’s be real. Life is dope without moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Speaking of: The Election
November 6th, 2024
I’m devastated by this week’s election results. There’s no way around it.
The best part of last night was when I woke up at 3:30 am and for about 30 seconds hadn’t yet remembered that an election happened and the course of our country had irrefutably changed. And then it hit me again, and I laid awake turning from one side to the other for two hours.
I voted for Trump in 2016. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life and would be the most embarrassing moment of my life if I hadn’t already made peace with why I had those beliefs at that age. The person I am now has forgiven the person I was back then.
But that was only possible because I had friends who loved me and gave me time, space, and a nudge to change. They didn’t judge me by the worst thing I had done, and by doing that, they inspired me to do better things. And I hope everyone else who’s devastated right now does the same, not just toward other people who need that time and space to change, but also toward our country. If we only judge America by the worst things we’ve done, America will also never do better things.
Sometimes, when it feels like our country is drowning, I look beyond our borders for guidance since it can be easier to read a label from outside the bottle. This morning it was, of all people, Bono who leapt from across the pond into my memory with a quote that feels more true today than ever:
“America lives in my imagination…Ireland is a great country, but it’s not an idea. Great Britain is a great country, but it’s not an idea. America is an idea. A great idea. America is a song yet to be finished and far from recorded. For many Americans, America doesn’t yet exist. And yet perhaps this is an inspiration. Perhaps America is the greatest song the world has not yet heard.”
It is the greatest song the world has not yet heard. As heavy as my head feels today, I also feel very inspired to try and create more beautiful things to add to that song. And even if I stood in my warm shower this morning for ten minutes thinking, “What if I just never got out?”, by the time I hopped on my bike and rode to work through an ironically sunny San Francisco, I was reminded of how many beautiful verses the song already has and how many better ones there still are to write.
I’m not proud to be an American today. But I’m an American. And I proudly accept all the struggle, disappointment, frustration, and yes, eventual triumph that comes with that.
Speaking of: All Friction Matters
November 21st, 2024
Most people think I’m joking when I say the front door of my apartment building is 5’2” tall.
I could lose my head in a freak skiing accident, and the coroner would still have to duck my headless torso through the door. It’s that small.
And if that sounds absurd, that’s because it is absurd. But I chose my current apartment on one principle: create as little friction as possible between me and the things I most enjoy doing. That meant dealing with a 5’2” front door and a windowless bedroom and an entry hallway lined with wall art that would make a Salvation Army’s art section look cohesive. And in exchange, I got a dedicated music studio and convenient bike storage and a three-minute walk to Golden Gate Park and a three-minute walk to a transit stop and a five-minute walk to my favorite record store. And wouldn’t you know it: I’m spending a lot more time writing music and walking through the park and riding my bike and shopping for records and roaming around the city on the N Judah. And I’m really happy.
That thesis — that all friction matters — is something I think I’m just starting to see the full value of. As much as I want to believe a few extra steps or staircases or city blocks or minutes won’t keep me from doing something I want to do, I’m not that rational. Friction always gets the last word in a conversation. But as every Olympic curler knows, sweeping even the tiniest amounts of friction from a system can cause huge changes in behavior. It’s the reason Amazon spends millions cutting milliseconds from its checkout process and politicians spend so much time building increasingly trivial hoops for opposing voters to jump through.
I think a lot about what new things I can add to my life to encourage better habits, and some of those things have worked well. But maybe I need to focus less in these instances on what to add and more about what to subtract. How to make the pavement on the road there just a little bit smoother. An acceptance that all friction matters, and if there’s something I truly want to start doing, I need to look at every rough edge between me and that thing and sand it down. You don’t need motivation if there isn’t any friction.
And sometimes, when you do this correctly, you’ll realize there’s a garage door you can enter your apartment building through instead.
Speaking of: Knowing Nothing
November 12th, 2024
There’s this weird phenomenon where I enjoy concerts more when I know zero songs by the artist than when I know one song.
Because when I know one song, I’m just waiting for them to play it. I’m measuring every other song they play against the one song I know, and I’m somewhat bored until they play it.
But when I don’t know any of the songs, my ears are wide open. When I don’t know any of the songs, I’m at my most absorbent. I’m noticing every unexpected chord change and anticipating every mood swing and feeling when every member of the band is locked in. And most importantly, I’m judging each song by how good it is, not by whether it’s the one song I know or not.
It’s such a precious and fertile time when you know nothing. In any field. Because the minute you learn anything, that becomes your yard stick. That becomes what you compare every new thing you learn against. You start asking yourself, “Does this new information fit with my existing idea of what this thing is?”, and you interpret every new signal through the lens of the one thing you know. Your perception is forever tainted.
But when you know nothing — when you know nothing, your judgement is driven by the thing itself, not your expectations of the thing. Your antenna gets the clearest signal it ever will. Our potential to understand new information grows as we learn, but the signal that antenna receives is also noisier, muddied by the frequencies of all our existing knowledge. When you know nothing, the signal is clear as ice water.
Realistically it’s impossible to ever truly know nothing about something. Even when I see a new band live, I know what a guitar is supposed to sound like and that choruses come after verses and that singers should sing in key. But that doesn’t mean I can’t do everything within my power to try and experience some things as if I know nothing. To sit back and just let the antenna receive.
Sometimes I want to know less so that I can notice more.
Speaking of: Never Knowing Who Cares
November 25th, 2024
I started writing songs when I was seven years old but never played one for another person until I was 19.
There were two main reasons for that. First, the thought of telling someone I write songs and then playing one for them to judge was freaking terrifying. The only thing more annoying than a guy at a party with a guitar saying, “Here’s ‘Wonderwall’” is a guy at a party with a guitar saying, “Here’s an original.”
But the second reason was that I just didn’t think anyone would care. I don’t mean that in a depressing way; I just lived my entire teenage years assuming whatever I was doing in my spare time wasn’t interesting to anyone else, and that was fine.
I’ve changed a lot in that regard. Between my music and this newsletter and my photography, I share more of myself now than most people probably prefer. And while I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I care about through that process, there’s one broader truth that’s been reinforced more than any other.
You never have any idea who cares. Ever. About anything.
Yes, my close friends have always been very supportive of these pursuits, and I’m really grateful for that. But it’s the number of AP biology classmates who have reached out about my album or vaguely friendly coworkers who have commented on my newsletter or mutual friends twice-removed who have complimented one of my photos that has consistently shocked and delighted me. I am batting .000 in guessing exactly who will resonate with something I create, and I’m not getting any closer to a hit which each new at-bat.
And most importantly, I think in every one of these instances, both me and the other person have walked away feeling like we just had a really meaningful interaction. The connection you feel when you share something intimate and someone you hardly know responds in a thoughtful way is really inspiring and refreshingly human.
It made me realize how silly I was in high school for thinking nobody would care about anything I was doing. Because the truth is maybe nobody did care. Or maybe a lot of people cared. I didn’t know, and there is never a way to know until you share it. Because even if I have a measly 25 monthly listeners on Spotify, there is one user who added one of my songs to their playlist titled “100 favorite songs of all time.” It’s a user I don’t know, and it’s a song of mine I don’t even particularly like, but it clearly connected with this person in a way I could never have predicted. And the delight of genuinely connecting with those few will always far outweigh the fear of being ignored by the others.
Speaking of: Soul Places
November 29th, 2024
A few weeks ago I was walking up and down the sand dunes of Fort Funston in San Francisco, and as I crested one bluff and peered out across the Pacific, I thought, “I can’t believe I’ve only been coming to this spot for two years.”
I didn’t mean it in a FOMO-tinged, “I can’t believe what I was missing!” way or a dad-vibes, “Boy, how time flies!” way. I meant it in a, “This feels way too familiar to have only been coming here for two years,” way, almost like I could already feel my future ghost walking there.
I don’t really believe in “soul mates” in the traditional sense. If there’s a God, I like to think he’d be focused on the Middle East, not making sure me and my other piece have a meet cute. That being said, as I’ve written before, I do think there’s a certain musicality to everyone’s soul that makes it harmonize better with some people than others. With a spouse, I think this harmony manifests as, “It feels like I’ve known you my entire life.” So maybe in a sense, I do believe in a certain brand of soul mates.
But as much as I believe those harmonies can exist between two people, I believe equally that they can exist between a person and a place. That places also have a certain musicality, and if you’re lucky, you come across a few in your life that you resonate perfectly with. A soul place, if you will, not linked to you by fond memory or proximity but by immediate familiarity and harmony. A place that it feels like you’ve known your entire life.
Maybe my soul is harder to sing with than others, but I feel very grateful to have found one of these places.
Instagram has desensitized me enough to really sick-looking photos that whenever a photo does make my jaw drop, I take note. And that’s what happened this month with Josh Dury’s photo “Aringa Ora O Te Tupuna” (The Living Face of the Ancestors).
Seeing a deteriorating piece of our history like the Easter Island Moai under a night sky that has long proceeded us and will long outlive us is just dizzying. It makes all civilization feel so small and irrelevant. There’s no other way to say it.
You can read more about the photo here.
It did occur to me while typing the intro that if I’m serious about starting my pharmaceutical commercial acting career, I need an audition tape. I can’t expect casting directors to ever see how joyful I can look unless I show them.
So to everyone reading this: if you’re with me at any point over the next year and see me looking generally happy doing something generally inoffensive, please film me. It’d help me out on my journey a lot. And if you’re done settling and are ready to take back what’s yours, ask your rheumatologist for once-daily Rinvoq.
