Blueprint for a blue house

Saturday, May 25, 2019

I posted this drawing by my 4-year-old earlier this week, and a few days later, Robert Gnomes sent me this picture of a design exhibit in Times Square:

The rent you pay

Friday, May 24, 2019

Mike Monteiro, author of Ruined by Design, tells a story about visiting Louisville, Kentucky, home of Muhammad Ali. (A while back, Mike had a podcast called Earn Your Death. See: “You probably don’t deserve it.”)

How to set up a bliss station anywhere

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Dan Pink (author of When, To Sell is Human, A Whole New Mind, and other great books) had me on his Pinkcast to share how to “Build a Bliss Station” (chapter two of Keep Going) anywhere.

In summary:

Make your smartphone dumb. (Put it in airplane mode.)
Put in a pair of earplugs.
Set a timer for 15 minutes.

Watch the whole thing here.

Fear of getting sued

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Darryl Hall, of Hall and Oates, once told a story of Michael Jackson confessing to him during the recording session for “We Are The World”:

He sort of clung to Diana Ross pretty much, but at one point I was off to the side and he came over to me and said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I stole ‘Billie Jean’ from you,” and I said, “It’s all right, man, I just ripped the base line off, so can you!”

Here’s “I Can’t Go For That”:

And here’s “Beat It”:

That was 1985. In 2019, copyright lawyers and estates are in a feeding frenzy, with songwriter Ryan Tedder telling the BBC, “The odds of getting sued in this day and age are so high, we’re going to get to a point where nobody can write anything.”

Meanwhile, Carly Rae Jepsen is over here getting Mickie Mouse to sign contracts:

Here is an incredibly Carly Rae Jepsen story about one of the songs on her new album, Dedicated: During a writing session, Jepsen and some of her collaborators (“all musical-theater nerds”) were talking about their love of “He Needs Me,” the breathless little Harry Nilsson–penned reverie that Shelley Duvall sings in Robert Altman’s 1980 musical Popeye. They started riffing on a modern, more full-bodied rendition of Olive Oyl’s love theme, “funked it out,” in Jepsen’s words. She loved what they came up with, but people on her team told her that Disney owned the rights to the Popeye soundtrack—and just try to get Disney to license something. Undeterred, Jepsen “drove to Disneyland with a fake contract for Mickey Mouse, got the mouse to sign it, then sent a photo to her record label who got onto Disney and pushed it through.” And that is Carly Rae Jepsen in a nutshell: So wholesome and nerdy in a very specific way that she is actually kind of a renegade.

Late capitalism, man. Strange times.

To pay attention is to live

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Here is architect Louis Sullivan in Kindergarten Chats:

Well, the loon pays attention to what concerns him and you are to do the same, for attention is of the essence of our powers; it is that which draws other things toward us, it is that which, if we have lived with it, brings the experiences of our lives ready to our hand. If things but make impression enough on you, you will not forget them; and thus, as you go through life, your store of experiences becomes greater, richer, more and more available. But to this end you must cultivate attention — the art of seeing, the art of listening. You needn’t trouble about memory, that will take care of itself; but you must learn to live in the true sense. To pay attention is to live, and to live is to pay attention; and, bear in mind most of all, that your spiritual nature is but a higher faculty of seeing and listening — a finer, nobler way of paying attention. Thus must you learn to live in the fullest sense.

Filed under: attention