A Quick Story

OKAY.

This story isn’t mine, but rather one by one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut. I’ll recount it for you here below:

[Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope]

“‘Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?’ And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”

I spoke with someone this week who mentioned that they hadn’t spoken aloud to another human being in 7 days. Every “social” interaction they’d had was only online, through text.

Food For Thought

As artists, we get so caught up in making, creating, doing that we often forget to take things in, to absorb, recharge, explore. We get caught up in monetizing, economizing, scaling, that we forget to listen, connect, share. These things I mention (the latter), are restorative, expand our worlds, and open us up. As a film & video game composer I once met said, “Be interesting.”

I asked this person what his plan was to talk to a real person this week. He mentioned that he was going to buy a book on how to make friends.

Think of all the people he could meet on the way: 2 or 3 in the bookstore, 1 at a coffee shop, 1 more to give a compliment. A little trip can turn into an adventure. Something mundane can be wonderful.

If we make it.