Ephemerality - 017
"Illustrated People” (photo negatives “sunburned” onto skin) by Thomas Mailaender
I. This Is Our Life Now
Exactly one year ago, my wife, daughter, and I packed up our car and drove 18 hours from New Jersey to Chicago. As we crossed into Pennsylvania, Lauren turns to me and says “I guess this is our life now.” It’s become a running joke between us, that we feel a permanence and complete immersion in a temporary lifestyle. Those first few weeks of parenthood. An international flight. By the third day of a long vacation. And definitely these last few weeks in socially distant quarantine.
We get used to things so quickly that strange circumstances can feel normal. It feels as though the life we once had and normalcy of our old routines may never come back.
However that 15 hour plane ride, any vacation, those sleepless nights with a newborn, and yes, quarantining; they end. Everything is temporary. Not just these limited experiences. But all experiences. Pain, fear, physical, emotional discomfort. Surprise, joy, thrill, orgasm. They're all momentary.
The current pandemic makes our current situation feel like forever. (“I guess this is our life now.”) It’s possible that our lives will go back to normal. Or we will all have to find some new normal. Either way, this time that we’re living in–given the timeline of our life–is very brief.
This month I’m meditating on ephemera, the things and experiences that don't last. It’s helped me understand and think about this moment in a new way, and I hope it does for you too.
Let’s dive in.
"Life in 3 Acts" by Mari Andrew
II. Trying to Capture Ephemeral Things
Last night, as the sun was setting, the sky caught fire. Splashes of pink and orange with purple clouds painting the sky as the glowing red ball dipped behind the trees. Last night added to my list of the best sunsets in my life– including several in Greece, a handful from a decade of living in LA, and overnight flights. And yet, I can’t remember looking over old photos of sunsets, not even once.
We all try to capture beauty before it disappears and fleeting moments that make us feel something. But the photo rarely ever captures the moment. Nothing is as good as being there.
So why do we even try and capture these ephemeral things?
It’s one of two reasons: proof or art.
We want proof that we were there, some way to document it. But in order to document something we must first remove ourselves from the event. We become observers, not participants. It’s literally the reason we hire someone to document our wedding; because to document something means we can’t fully participate.
When we want to create art out of an experience, we can't create anything good in the moment. We have to participate, gather our thoughts, and then later create art. We're making art from memory. Memories are most vivid when we're fully immersed in the experience. Enveloped in the temporary wash of emotion, sunk into the feelings and the colors soaking up layers and textures. When we want to create art, we should be fully living, sinking our toes into the taste of our experiences, and saving the memories in their most vivid forms. And trust that when we’re ready to compose the love song, paint the masterpiece about our childhood, write the story about our fears, the memory will serve the art.
The thing about sunsets is that when we photograph them, we’re trying to do both. We’re both documenting proof that we witnessed something beautiful and we’re also trying to create something beautiful ourselves. That doesn’t make for a great piece of documentary. And it certainly doesn’t make for real art.
In the last moments of the sun flickering through the trees before finally disappearing last night, I instinctively reach for my phone.
Nope.
Charging in the other room.
Thankfully.
Leaf Installation in Hampshire County, England (2013) by Andy Goldsworthy
III. The Scaffolding vs The Building
After working in advertising for so many years, I got used to impermanence. I’d spend months and months on an idea or campaign that would make a little splash in culture before disappearing into irrelevance. I spent years in that process. But I’m realizing that it's not just advertising. Most of our work is like that.
Looking back on high school or college academic experiences, there were likely a lot of late nights, group projects, stacks of flashcards, full notebooks, and long essays. But we’ve mostly forgotten them. There is no real record of the hours of thinking and stress and struggle to get through it all. Most of our work disappears.
Our work and our learning is our life’s scaffolding– the temporary structures needed to build something more permanent. Our day-to-day work is building the habits and systems to give us room and structure to create something more important and long-lasting.
We commit to big projects, join ambitious companies, set scary goals in the hope that we are building something of importance and permanence. It might look like winning an award, publishing a book, changing culture, or impacting lives. Ultimately, we hope to create something that outlives us.
Our challenge is not confusing the scaffolding with the building.
Let the scaffolding come down. Trash the piles of papers, notes, cards, and emails. Stop treating old books like trophies. Replace apps. They’re temporary.
When the artifacts of work disappear; when the plaques are thrown away; when the technology that connects us fails and replaces itself; when the process of learning is forgotten...
We are left with experiences, lessons, relationships, masterpieces. These things are more rewarding and long-lasting anyway than an award or a line on our resume.
IV. Disasters
We’re living through an earthquake right now.
Fear and uncertainty are heightened, our lives are threatened. We’re doing what we can to protect ourselves by staying safe and limiting exposure. Those are the immediate and temporary parts of the disaster.
Exploring ephemera has been a way for me to remind myself that COVID-19 and quarantining are temporary. However, it’s important to recognize that even temporary things have long-lasting effects. After an earthquake, there’s a lot of cleanup and rebuilding. There’s loss and grieving and blame.
And we’re all feeling versions of that right now. Our lives up until this point were carefully put into place, built slowly and intentionally in ways that served us. Each of us had plans that have to be on hold. Travel. Starting a company. Planning a wedding. Buying or selling a house. Starting a new job.
And here comes this disaster to shake it all to the ground.
We aren’t spending time to grieve the loss of what we were supposed to be doing today.
What we’re experiencing right now is temporary, sure. But the effects and aftermath are yet to be seen. And really, we can’t predict or plan for what’s to come. Being in the middle of a disaster is not about making plans to rebuild your life. It’s just about being in the middle of it and making sure we get through this part.
Stay safe. Stay healthy. We'll get through this somehow.
-Jake
With You Right Now
At the time I’m writing this, there are just over 550,000 cases of Coronavirus. It’s affecting 196 countries (even though Google just told me there’s only 195 countries… ah I see now. They’re counting the Diamond Princess cruise ship).
At some point in our future this will all be a memory of a bizarre time that changed everything. My hope is that after this, we’ve learned something new. That each of us can see our interconnectedness a little more clearly. That we may all emerge from this a little less polarized in our beliefs. That we think a little more open-mindedly about “radical” ideas like socialized medicine or universal basic income. That we become a little more empathetic to others, and more welcoming to refugees escaping war or oppression.
I’m not going to share statistics about deaths or new cases or the growth patterns. The Email Refrigerator is a place for optimism and questioning, looking for patterns or outliers and to create meaning. It’s a place to see something in a new way.
Here’s my invitation to see this in a new way:
Whatever you’re feeling. Whatever you’re experiencing. Whatever you’re thinking.
The entire world is experiencing it, too.
With you.
Right now.
Thank you for spending your time with me. I’m grateful for your attention and your reactions to anything I’ve written. Please respond with your thoughts if you feel driven to, or share if you think someone in your life would benefit from these ideas.
Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay connected.
-Jake
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