that my sister, who had just flown back to Colorado,
had sent me 45 photographs of our wayward family—
my Grandfather (who died when I was 2 months old
and whom I look like more and more as I age), my mom
and her first husband (said sister's father),
aunts and uncles, smoking on farm-looking front porches.
How do I show and relate these images to my daughter?
How do I tell her about all the lives we live?
I was once a boy in the backyard.
I was once a skinny teenager, chasing tennis balls and girls.
I was never good at sitting still.
I was listening to this interview just the other day with Rick Rubin
I wonder if humanity isn't worse off
My aunt and uncle visiting from their Illinois country home
I was listening to this interview just the other day with Rick Rubin
and he was talking about working with AC/DC.
Rubin was saying how when he was producing them,
they'd just sit around all day in the studio drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.
Rubin would get antsy, point to his watch and the lead guitarist, Angus Young––
Rubin would get antsy, point to his watch and the lead guitarist, Angus Young––
who was really the heart and soul of the band––
would just point to the cigarette in his hand like...
What the fuck do you want me to do? I'm smoking?
I can't play guitar while I'm smoking?
What Rubin later realized was that AC/DC's genius
What Rubin later realized was that AC/DC's genius
didn't just come from them "doing" but from them "doing nothing."
The band knew they only had 3-4 creative sprints in them a day
and so, like a pride of lions, they'd lie around for hours at a time,
shooting the shit until inspiration struck.
Then, they'd put down their cigarettes, pick up their instruments and hunt.
spending 12 hours a day staring owl-eyed at their screens,
instead of doing nothing and just waiting for inspiration.
My aunt and uncle visiting from their Illinois country home
taught me how to be okay with sitting still,
a quality that has been as important to my career as anything.
To be a decent writer (and father), you have to be okay with
To be a decent writer (and father), you have to be okay with
either writing or doing absolutely nothing.
I'm a firm believer that a great way to be creative
is to sit around and do nothing
until you get bored enough to entertain yourself.
Yesterday, for example, the words weren't coming.
So, I spent hours sitting around, sipping coffee,
watching Wednesday on Netflix, painting, and not writing jack shit.
I wish I would have had a pack of cigarettes,
maybe I would have felt better about doing nothing.
But, really, I did absolutely nothing, nothing of importance, nothing of productivity.
That's writing, though.
That's writing, though.
Some days you do nothing.
Other days, you do something.
But, the only way to have the days where you do something
is to be okay with the days where you doing nothing,
and then some days you get scared of the dark,
sacred of the past, so terrified of the future...
that you sit and write the present like a goddamn thunderstorm locomotive
barreling down the track of your chest, out of your heart,
raising hell into the wild new now.
and I will get a lot of invaluable living
from these moments which had such an impact on me as a kid
(even though I could not afford a book or Lamborghini poster),
so it is cool to know that I will be in the memories
when my child is old and nostalgic like I apparently am at this moment.