Dear friends,
I’ve returned after my father’s 80th in Scotland. To put on a shindig worthy of eighty years comes with some pressure, but I’m glad to report it was a celebration that will live long in the heart. And yes, I felt less nervous before the biggest gig I ever played than giving Dad’s speech!
Back in Berlin, I feel stretched across time.
Between past, present and future.
Perhaps it is the anchor of an 80th, stretching so far back—even before your own life and into the prehistory that shapes you—that has sharpened my perspective.
I organise my life, as far as is possible, to be alive in the noticing of things.
That means no matter how busy things are, I try to make space.
In that space - in the Self - one’s organisation of the world takes place.
The challenge in returning is that while the past has reared up so vividly, the river of one’s own life has not paused.
It is a quintessentially modern experience.
To be so crushed by the overlap that you are never quite digesting your own life.
And if you don’t digest things, a fog develops, and that fog holds you back from the clarity needed for our potential to express itself.
In the 19th Century, Baudelaire decried the amnesia of the modern, describing the contemporary experience as a “recurring form of suicide”.
One moment, butchered for the next.
Of course, this is compounded nowadays by social media and the ubiquity of 24-hour news.
Never has distraction been easier.
Since dealing with yourself is hard and takes work, it is easier to look outward rather than inward.
AI exacerbates this.
Selling the idea that to create things is easy.
A song? Click a button!
A painting? Press generate!
How you might ask, does all this relate to my father’s 80th and my return to Berlin?
My father’s 80th birthday got me thinking about legacy, especially what it means in terms of our creative lives.
Specifically because my father built things.
Part of the weekend was a family visit to the Maltings he built in 1967, which, despite now being in different hands, is producing more malt than it ever did.
The modern world is obsessed with content.
Things which are built for impact but not to last.
The very manifestation of Baudelaire’s “recurring form of suicide.”
Yet here’s the thing:
Great projects take time.
And they are usually built in silence and away from the eyes of the world.
It is so easy to abandon great undertakings, especially because it means removing ourselves from the immediacy of the feedback loops we are all addicted to.
It got me thinking about the tension between the time a project takes and the act of completing it.
Funnily enough, I’m juggling two books at the moment, and I want to share an anecdote from each that has really helped me.
The first is from John Steinbeck’s “Journal of a Novel”, where he keeps a diary as he writes East of Eden.
The early entries are about righting his mind before he sets out on his epic undertaking - “I am going to be here at this desk a very long time”.
He is conditioning himself for the long term.
To do this, he goes on, he must “forget even that I want it to be good”.
See what he’s doing?
He is committing to a long process and freeing himself from good and bad.
So often, our projects fail because:
a) we feel we fail if it takes too long
b) we burden ourselves with self-judgement
The second idea comes from Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity. In it, he discusses pseudo-productivity.
This is the idea that knowledge workers today are so busy showing their bosses they are busy that they cannot commit to the deep, undistracted time that impactful work requires.
Simply put, “demonstrating busyness” distracts.
And distraction interrupts the forging of the deeper creative instinct needed to create a project over time.
All of this has impacted me this week.
My own pain point is that I have become so busy creating my new project while juggling my work that I have lost sight of what I am trying to complete: The Isolation Diaries.
The paradox with “The Isolation Diaries” is that I have completed the major creative work - and it is by far the biggest project I have ever undertaken.
I have completed the documentary, recorded the double album, and written the book.
So why have I stalled at the last hurdle?
Two reasons.
First, I have 1000 pages of diary entries to type up. I have been ticking away at it, but I am 40,000 words and am nowhere near the halfway mark.
Second, well, it is easy to feel that a long-term project feels unsexy in a world that is so obsessed with the new. And so we undervalue all the effort we’ve made because it feels like the world has moved on even before we’ve released it.
Recurring suicide indeed!
However, my perception shifted this week.
First, I thought of my father’s life and realised that a legacy project matters over the course of a life, not a day.
Second, Steinbeck’s guts in readying himself for the long term.
Third, Newport's reminder that to undertake a great project, you need the courage to break free from the addiction to immediate feedback loops.
The result?
I have started typing up “The Isolation Diaries” book again.
Gulp.
My goal with the project is now beyond any expectation of outcome.
I’ve realised that it is an outlier project in modern times.
In a world obsessed with what it can release today, who sets out on a 5-year project?
But if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.
And so, I will persevere with my little Opus.
The documentary that’s too personal to ever release.
The book that will be too long to be ever read.
The double album released in a world of singles.
My father disrupted an industry when he built his Maltings.
One day, I will release a documentary, double album, and book on the same day.
I believe that on that day, all the weaknesses of the project will transform.
Despite the addiction of the modern world, people still want something other than the mass production of noise.
I disappeared into the dark to create “The Isolation Diaries.”
The paradox is that after emerging from it, I have to re-enter to complete it.
Despite my foolhardiness, I believe that it is a journey worth taking.
My takeaway for you is this.
Whatever you are working on, try to complete it.
No matter how long it takes.
No matter if the demands of the world constantly dilute it.
No matter if it makes you a laughing stock.
Your character is forged through that act of commitment.
And who you become during that process is far more important than any outcome.
Because in the act of completion, you are made into the newest version of yourself.
Though the outcome often doesn’t give you what you want, you already got what you needed by completing it.
As Joseph Campbell puts it, the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
Completing stuff is how you become it.
Have a great weekend, dear friends,
Jim
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