Coming Clean

Hey fam,

I have a confession to make. This week we are going informal. More freestyle, less constraint. As my boy Macklemore said…

The greats weren’t great because at birth they could paint

The greats were great because they’d paint a lot

I have a dilemma inside of me. I want to balance two things– respecting you all and your precious attention, and respecting myself. The best way I know to respect myself and practice my craft is to commit to a cadence. This week I went through more than five drafts, a complete rewrite, and still, my editor and I might as well have been planets apart. But the commitment remains. I gotta ship. I’m a shipbuilder anyways, a relation-ship builder.  Who says I can’t get intimate with my audience? For me, intimacy means IN-TO-ME-SEE anyways, so this week we are peeling back the curtain, revealing the madness behind the method, off the cuff, off the chain, what comes forth is insane in the membrane. It’s no coincidence that the quote above comes from the song Ten Thousand Hours.

Or, as B.o.B. said…​

And back then I was rappin’ for the hell of it

But nowadays we rappin’ to stay relevant

What if writin’ (rappin’) for the hell of it is the way to stay relevant? What does it even mean to realize relevance? Even the greatest Vervaekian scholars, the best cognitive scientists in the entire world, can’t seem to say this crisply and coherently.

We will argue that one cannot have a theory of relevance itself because there is no stable, homogeneous class

of entities which correspond to the term ‘relevance’. However, we believe a theory of the mechanisms

of how relevance can be realized is tractable. We will call this a theory of relevance realization.

What does it even mean to cohere? To put on my armchair etymologist hat for a minute, to me it means to be here, together, and if you’re reading this sentence it means that we are cohere-ing, which means we are coherent in this particular moment.

I don’t know the best way to respect you all and your precious attention…In fact, I think it requires great hubris for me to assume that I know how you can spend your attention best! It’s up to you, remember that. As I’ve said many times before, think for yourself.

For a while I got frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t like some of my favorite writers. “Oh no, I’ll never be as good as so and so”–me worrying to myself.

Now, I think that’s a bunch of hogwash. Or as my good ol’ chap says

People often strive for greatness by imitating greatness, when usually great artists are just utterly themselves.–Sasha Chapin

Since I was little, people shouted 2Chainz in my ear, till I internalized the message…

I’m different, yeah, I’m different

I’m different, yeah, I’m different

I’m different, yeah, I’m different

Is this good or bad? Perhaps both? Perhaps neither? Perhaps its a logical fallacy, a false dichotomy, as illustrated by this deck of Critical Thinking Cards— for the record, I vote this as “don’t buy” as the cards themselves are biased! Perhaps a different way to say it is the way Mike Tyson did…

There’s no one like me. I’m from their cloth. There’s no one that can match me. My style is impetuous.

Mike Tyson has been many things, loved, hated, adored, shamed, but through it all he has remained unique.

And so is each and every one of us. Remember that!

Embrace your weird. Your particular flavor of weird is your secret sauce.

You may be wondering what you just read. I’m wondering what I just wrote. Is this curation? Creation? Everything is a Remix anyways.

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed it. Keep embracing your weird. Or as my boy Howard Thurman said…

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Mush love
Drew

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