Joan Didion's Sunglasses

And Finding the Flow

Oct 28, 2022

One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever received was to read a few pages from a favorite author or book before writing, especially if you’re having a hard time finding your flow. Doing this serves as a palette cleanser of sorts and helps get you on the right creative wavelength (Hunter S. Thompson took this a step further and typed out A Farewell to Arms to feel Hemingway’s rhythm). I’ve found reading just a few pages legitimately affects the tone, cadence, and voice of your work. Try it.

I have a copy of Joan Didion’s “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction” on my desk for this reason. It’s a giant 1000+ page collection of her greatest hits and before I write, I dip into it for a few pages to establish flow. This is all to say that even though I’m not a collector of memorabilia, I find myself very much lusting after Joan Didion’s sunglasses, which are going up for auction along with other personal items. Even though the greatest connection to her is undoubtedly through her work, I can’t help but think that looking through her glasses might just help me see the world the way she did.

More AI Thoughts

A follow-up to last week’s email in which I made pretend images for a watch campaign with Dall-E. News came out this week that Shutterstock will start offering AI-generated stock imagery. This is notable because it shows the hype and interest around AI-generated imagery and the speed at which it’s being adopted by legacy creative providers. But, it’s also a bit funny to think of paying Shutterstock for these images. I thought Dall-E and similar tools would become more like Unsplash — free alternatives to costly image services — rather than companion parts of those legacy businesses. (Unsplash has also been folded into Shutterstock but is still a free resource).

I think we’ll definitely see AI images used in high-profile campaigns this year, but they’ll be used in stunty ways to get PR hits, not because the tech is actually solving creative problems, yet. I expect for now people will be adopting Dall-E type services to create images for decks and art projects, not high-end commercial work. Not yet at least.

Of course, with the Shutterstock announcement, there are already a whole bunch of concerns about IP and who will get credit and payment for the creation of images. A lot of you emailed after the post last week and I suggest digging into the article for more context.

Excellent Video of the Week

Breaking the format can be as easy as trimming and cutting things out. But why is it still so hard to do? The team behind Nuisance Bear shows that a new format with a completely different feel can be created by simply removing the narration from a nature video. I think it’s very effective.

Cool Instagram Alert

Rick Rubin is doing something great with Instagram. He’s posting a single thought or quote about the creative process, then deleting it and posting another. You have to follow him if you want to catch these Rubinisms, and I highly suggest you do. I’ve taken to screenshotting the posts to save them because they really are pearls of wisdom. Rick, keep doing it.

Go deeper on Rubin here:

Interesting Photo Choices

Is this tongue-in-cheek? I think so. There’s definitely more self-awareness with the Seinfeld in streetwear shoot, but I think there’s some here too. Either way, sweet cars, nice duffels, good actor.

I Swear This Isn’t a Watch Newsletter

…But please bear with me. I spent so much time and energy in the watch industry that I still think through this lens. Last weekend, I went to the Wind Up watch fair in NYC. It was PACKED with people and a bunch of new brands that hadn’t been on my radar. The watch industry feels a little like the beer industry of three years ago. There are micro brands (like microbreweries) everywhere. There’s no way that all of them will still be operating in two-three years’ time, but it’s exciting to see so much activity. A lot of them are creating pretty derivative designs, with fairly cheap engineering and production. It reinforced an idea I had about watches years ago: 99.99 percent of all watch designs are terrible. This is subjective, but if you think of all the watches ever made, you’d probably only consider wearing/buying .0001 percent of them. I think this is true of a lot of creative work and product design. Put another way: We make a lot of bad work and it’s hard to make good original work.

That’s it for this week.