Letter 15, 2023
New York Sidewalk Story, The Art of the New/Now, Conversational Design
Dear Story, Art, & Design reader…
You’re getting this message because at some point you signed-up on my Twitter Medium LinkedIn or Insta. There are three sections: Story, Art, and Design.
STORY
New York Sidewalk Story
Have you been to New York in September? The heat of August gets carried off by the wind down through the avenues and the cool of fall returns and that unmistakable sense of what the French call “La Rentrée” starts to rise in the back of your mind and you feel the possibility of genius… The hope for great work. The sense, likewhen falling in love, that something remarkable is possible. Autumn in New York is a wonderful feeling. I spent a week in September New York, doing my best to step into the stride of someone who belongs there, walking to work each day (we have a new, unreasonably beautiful studio there that just opened) eating at my favorite places and seeing friends who live in NY and enjoying the temporary pleasure of sliding into the ease of someone who also is of that place. And on one morning—a particularly symphonic morning—where the traffic noise and slanting light of an ambitious dawn started to synchronize the click-clacks and rattatatats of the movement of the city so that it sounded like your favorite avant garde chamber orchestra playing at it’s most virtuosic… but not just the sounds, the movement itself of the city created a type of music… and as I walked up Broadway, turning on 14th, a young girl started shouting “are there lots of people?” She was trying to catch a bus and was hoping that there were enough people boarding to delay the bus long enough that she could reach it. She was dragging a roller-bag that seemed like a type of commuter-kid’s backpack on wheels. She was working hard but encumbered by the bag it was far from a sure thing she’d make it. People started shouting, “yay, there’s people” and “you can make it!” it was last cry was the one that broke me, “you can make it little girl!” the sidewalk started shouting, cheering, rooting for this little girl to catch the bus. She ran faster, her bag rocking chaotically, her shoes slapping… “you can make it!” And she did. And when she did, the whole sidewalk erupted with joy. It was as if our favorite team had won the world championships. We were elated! She had done it. We had done it! That’s what it felt like, it somehow felt like we had all teamed up and caught the bus, when all we had actually done was cheer her on, but sometimes, sometimes, that’s all it takes.
ART
The Art of the New/Now
Two weeks after my NY moment, I was in LA. In between meetings, a gang of us went for a brief gallery trip. One show stood out: Emma Webster at Deitch. She’s a painter, but instead of installing her show in any normal sort of way, she created a whole fantasy. She created a fake stage, with multi-planed set-designs… and then… when you walked around the corner… you realized that she had also built the entire backstage. It was wonderful. Having spent more than a few happy nights backstage at ballet companies from Philadelphia to Paris, it was a total delight to walk into her installation. What a joy! What a show!
In the middle of the week, early LA time, but reasonable for NY, I got an email alerting me to read A damning assessment of current culture by the art critic Jason Farago. Several of us were on the email and it felt urgent to work through the arguments.
Here was my response to our group email chain (slightly edited):
In the orange Los Angeles dawn, always orange, even if the smog is less than it was, this morning, about to speak to founders about "seemingly irreconcilable tensions" present in any great brand, and about to meet with my story mentor about the first draft of my screenplay—which holds in its core both Rimbaud's '"I" is another' and Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, as well as I am a Camera from Isherwood...
I read this interesting essay before allowing myself to finish my coffee, standing here in my shorts. And felt the pleasure of his brilliantly informed and nuanced pricking as just the right kind of double-argument. It attempted to offer medicine for many: for the painter, it asked what are you making that matters? Even as the old technique of pushing us forward to the new only might now be impossible? Museums and curators—it challenges (boldly) that the perfect answer to the problem of the new seemed to be to bring new voices, but was that enough? Are you showing art that stuns and transforms or merely a communications agenda? (ouch!) Musicians—are you only working for the algo with your remix and phrasing? Or are you reaching into the truth that existed before language? His article was filled with prickly challenges. I loved reading this article that itself worked along the Aristotelian path towards catharsis. He wanted to tie it up with an ending that felt like an ending. So the rhythms of story were there and were felt even if the logic was only part-way around the mobius strip. My Take? I enjoyed reading it, even if I didn't agree with it.
It (stubbornly) makes me want to create work that matters, astounds, and transforms....
It (stubbornly) makes me want to point towards what we declare out-of-bounds for art as a clue to what might actually be new...
It (stubbornly) makes me think about the economics of the gallery system (left out of the article) and what it would mean to have an artworld with a different motor...
It (stubbornly) makes me wonder what each of you thought of the article? And how your thinking might bend, pervert, augment, refine my own...
It (stubbornly) makes me want to fight for art—both within and without the twin focii of the ellipse of New/Now...
Run that backwards... if modernism was about saying this is new now... then today might mean being about to say this is now new. What are your thoughts? Read the article and reply to this email/post. Also, just for fun, a poll.
Sidenote… through the strangeness that is tech copyright law, I hold patents on polls on the internet, single-tap emoji responses, as well as a few other things from my time at Twitter. I still haven’t received any royalty checks, but just in case, keep replying with emojis and taking polls. 🤪
DESIGN
Conversational Design
What does it mean to have a fantastic conversation? It’s certainly more than just taking turns talking… but instead some sort of co-creating… where your conversational companion and you work together to build something interesting… some sort of conceptual thought-sculpture of your co-created mutual experience… where each brings enough questions and imagination and generosity that you both end up somewhere very interesting—and once it’s done—both parties leave energized, hopeful, and curious. I bring this up… because bad conversations come in many forms. The shouty-machine gun, the ignorant ass, the negative refuser, the tiresome critic, the solipsistic narcissus, the insufferable wrong-thoughted mansplainer, the swamp-tooth, the jargon-hunter, the tupperware bore, the news repeater, the common sense dispensary, the um and uhhh space filler, the I’m-too-sexy-for-my-shirt, the chew-talker, the fight-spoiler, etc. And yet there are just as many categories of marvelous conversationalists, but each comes down to some combination of curiosity, questions, generosity, imagination, and contemplation. And finally, if a conversation is going poorly, one key idea—a perverse idea—strange idea—uncomfortable idea—is that it just might be all your fault… you are the one most filled with the power to turn a bad conversation towards one worth having. While it’s no fun to blame yourself when someone else is being boring, please try. It’s a way to challenge yourself to discover the single most interesting thing about someone else. It’s a way to gain agency in an otherwise terrible situation.
Challenge: imagine you are a conversation designer. How might you make the conversation interesting to you AND the other person? What would you need to do? I wrote up a few thoughts on the topic here: Conversational Charisma.
Here’s an excerpt:
Uncover what’s interesting. As you speak with someone, try to uncover the most interesting thing about the other person, instead of angling for ways to talk about yourself. You already know about you. Learn about the other person. Learn their best idea. Learn their most interesting observation. Learn their more unique experience. Go into a conversion with a genuine curiosity about what they might share with you that will be actually interesting. Don’t pry, of course, please be respectful while being curious. Don’t “dig and dig” for information. Seeking what is interesting about someone is not an interrogation or a shake down, but a gentle art of listening carefully, acknowledging what was said, and wondering aloud what that might mean. Please think of your role in conversation as the maintainer of interestingness. Don’t blame the other person if the conversation becomes dull. That just means you’ve done a bad job at uncovering what’s interesting about the other person. See it as your responsibility to make the conversation worth everyone’s time. This works for small talk. This works for business meetings. This works for conversations with your children and your parents. This works for nearly all social settings. Seek what’s interesting, and conversations are never dull.
Thanks for reading. If any of this turned over a card of curiosity in your mind, please let me know. You can reply to this email, or reach out to me on Twitter Medium LinkedIn or Insta.
Buckhouse