stop making sense
and start having fun
A few weeks ago, I went to an art cafe that was hosting a mural night. Every few weeks, they paint one of their walls white and lay out some brushes and paint and let anyone go up to the wall and paint whatever they want.
The mural was a mishmash of colors and shapes, varying skill levels, the hands of each artist visible in the differences from each piece. It looked like something you'd see in a school, a variety of animals and plants, mostly drawn in the crude style that most of us never grow out of. It was impossible to look at the brightly colored wall and not feel a bit of joy, seeing joyous children with paintbrushes in their hands and brows furrowed with concentration, eventually remembering that they were fully-grown adults, engaged and peaceful in their work.
I joined them and started to paint a little tree. It started out as strokes of purple, looking more like a crushed blueberry than any sort of image. It slowly started to look like a triangle, and then the shadow of a tree. I added other colors to it until it started to look a little bit greenish, a little bit more like a living tree. The shadow was slowly turned into something new by each additional glob of paint. The entire time, I was completely enraptured. I noticed each small movement of my hand, how it made the image change ever so slightly, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. When I was done, I found this little tree so evocative, and not just because it was something that I made. I felt moved by the image of the dark tree at the bottom of the wall. I tried to explain why — maybe something about the contrast between it and the rest of the colors, or how the colors interacted with each other. But, maybe I just thought it was pretty. That was enough when we were kids, wasn't it?
The entire experience at the art cafe was marvelous. I left the space filled with warmth and energy, wondering why we stopped doing crafts like this as adults, why it felt like something that only children could benefit from. Later, I saw an Instagram Reel where someone theorized about why. According to his theory, kids stop making art as much when they start to read more, because in the world of the written word, everything has to mean something. Before they can read, visual art doesn't need to be explained or mean something, it can exist within itself without any sort of explanation, without having to make sense. As someone so deeply steeped in writing, being able to luxuriate in the experience of creating something without needing to ascribe it meaning was divine. I could simply live in the act of creation and let my brain rest for a moment.
Over the last few weeks, I've been feeling like my writing has been devolving. Even as I've continued to push out essays every week, I haven't felt emotionally connected to them in any way. In these essays, I tried to focus on trying to construct stronger arguments, get my ideas really figured out, and generally just operate in the space of ideas I wanted to sound convincing. I wanted to put forward a good argument, but ultimately, I wanted to make sense. Not just to me, but to everyone, offer a level of clarity and comprehensibility that would enshrine me as a Good Writer in some way. But writing this way, I wasn't having fun anymore.
The great filmmaker Jordan Peele has an interview where he drops the quote, "If you're not having fun writing, you're doing it wrong." When he was working on Get Out's script, he wanted the experience of writing to be so fun that he'd want to do it over his other hobbies. This was important, since he knew that having fun was what led to his best work. I understand him; there have been moments where I've found writing to be the most fun thing on the planet and written work that I'm really proud of. But, in other times, when I've tried so hard to be a serious person who writes serious things or makes real statements or writes real essays, I've lost the fun. Lately, I haven't been drawing like a kid does.
When I first started writing, I had a small little blog that I barely showed anyone at the time other than some close friends. I would write nearly every day, making observations about the world or summarizing some new thing that I learned or pretending to be a biographer or a reporter. I would write responses to the blogs of my friends and writers that would never read me and take myself too seriously. More than anything else, it was playful!
Inspired by my blogging experiment, I eventually started this newsletter. It felt like a fun little experiment, a way to tinker and play online, reminiscent of the way that people used to talk about the Internet's potential for creativity. I had a very personalized space where I was talking about me and my life, uninterested in trying to hit any sort of metric goal or advance any specific sort of idea. I was happy to communicate to my family and friends about things that I cared about and was free to be as goofy or dramatic as I was feeling each week. I cringe looking back at the awful jokes that I would leave in some of my posts, the level of sincerity that seems both distant and admirable.
So I look to my past for inspiration and seek to embody my past self. In the best newsletters I've written over the years, I always start with an experience or a feeling rather than an idea. I try to grasp them, and due to the limits of language, they spill through my fingers. I chase them through my writing app like a child chasing fireflies, leaving streaks of light behind in the shape of words. I laugh and giggle and sometimes cry during the chase, but at the end of it all, I smile. Because I get to share the whole journey with you. Then, and now as well.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
PLAYLIST - may 25 - goodbye, May
POEM - “On a Pietá by Tintoretto” by Yves Bonnefoy - A great hope was painter.
The very first post I read is about your Lasik. That was such an amazing read that I just kept waiting for Thursdays to come by. But not all Thursday writings of yours gave that free hand fun experience. Today's one though, I smiled reading.
aww you brought it back