Buttons - 021
Good morning, friend,
Animation Party by Daz Yang
Play
Some days, when the world is feeling particularly dark, I’ve found that playing a record helps. Any album, really. I love the mechanics of it all–the automatic motions of the arm and the crackle before the first song. The predictability of one song after the next. The 25 minutes of linear auditory experience.
My favorite part of the stereo is the buttons. The way each one gives in and clicks when it's pressed hard enough.
For me, it contrasts a current feeling of isolation (stick with me for a second). Even when I see people right now, we’re distant. No hugs. No handshakes. I spend evenings watching TV or scrolling phones as an escape. And I'm longing any sort of human contact. We’re all literally out of touch with the world and other people in it. So the pleasure of having something simple that I can touch and feel feedback, puts me a little bit back in touch with the world.
Let’s get back in touch and push some buttons together.
“If You Build It They Will Come” by Andrew B. Myers
Change Input
Wake up. It’s another morning. What day is it? Today feels pretty much the same as last Tuesday. Some weeks, Wednesday will feel like Friday and Saturday and Sunday are indistinguishable.
Most of us are going through each day in the same rut of a routine, stuck at home, stuck in the same TV, looping the same walking routes. The same input will always lead to the same output, over and over.
Every day’s experience is roughly the same. Boring, exhausting, monotonous. Dragging. This experience and feelings are the output of every day.
One of the best ways to fix a “machine” like this is to change our input.
I’m starting to notice that people are looking to change input. All of us may be doing this subconsciously, even. Taking a road trip. Finding a contactless AirBNB. Apartment swapping or staying with in-laws and parents. Waking up later. Starting a new habit. Learning a new skill.
New sources of input create new experiences in output.
Change the scenery, change the experience.
“Mini Break” by Tanaka Tatsuya
Tuning
It’s election season in the middle of a pandemic, while protests continue around the world including professional sports, wildfires destroy millions of acres. the police are still shooting Black people–most recently Jacob Blake in Kenosha (seven times in front of his family).
And yet people are posting on social media right now about awards they’re winning.
Beaches they’ve found.
Tik-Tok dances.
There’s a lot of noise out there.
Just like we tune a radio to find the right channel amid the static, we can tune our signals:
Block and unfollow people that aren’t giving messages that are worth hearing.
Delete apps that drain personal energy and time.
Read new kinds of books.
Subscribe to different newsletters.
Get exposed to new podcasts.
Reach out to new contacts, forgotten friends, and lost connections.
We should seek out voices and channels that enrich our lives and gives us energy. That make us smarter and make us think. That inspire us and leave us feeling self-confident and accepted.
There’s a lot of noise out there.
But there are signals to be discovered if we can tune out the noise.
California, 1918 by Raymond Coyne (Courtesy of Mill Valley Public Library)
Pause
Have the last 5 months felt like a life pause?
That, at some point, we’ll just pick up our lives and “go back to normal” and resume our lives where we left off? Many of us may want our old lives back, but is that possible– to “go back”?
Reset
Maybe instead of a pause we can think about this time as a great reset. Creating a new beginning. When we come out of this, we should emerge better and wiser. Rethinking systems of how our country works. Redefining our values as individuals, families, and as a country. And resetting our personal systems, too: How will we be more careful with our decisions? Where are we spending our money? What is most important and who gets our time?
There is no “going back” and there is no "normal.”
We’re in a long process of resetting. Let’s be intentional about where we (re)start from.
“Emerging" by Fabrizio Ferri
Record
A few years ago, I made a painting every day for 3 1/2 months. The 100 Day Project started in 2006 by graphic designer and professor Michael Beirut and later adopted as an Instagram challenge by Elle Luna. The concept is to see an idea evolve as we improve. Change in a tangible way.
That’s what documenting our lives can do– it can show us how we’ve changed. Whether a journal, a few photographs, a list, or an art project.
We’re in the middle of the biggest change to our world in our lifetime. Maybe it’s worth documenting something about our life right now. A journal or an art project, a few photos, or a list.
If for nothing else than to see how we changed and are changing right now. Because we all are.
Rewind
It’s been 6 months.
What is different in our lives?
What have we learned since March?
Fast Forward
I used to laugh at how my grandfather would eat at family dinners. He’d carefully pile his plate high in a mound of potatoes, meat, vegetables, salad. And then he’d eat slowly, seeming to save food in his cheeks like a squirrel, until he was the last one at the table. But he’d finish the whole thing.
He grew up in the Great Depression and served in WWII. And the rest of his life was marked by those experiences. Maybe all grandparents are funny as a teenager. But as a thirty-something, I’m starting to feel like him.
It’s hard to imagine a future in which I won’t be nervous about going to a concert or airport. Or skeptical of a company that requires me in an office every day. Maybe I’ll keep ordering food in bulk, just in case and be incredibly grateful just to be sitting at a restaurant, hugging friends, or taking an international vacation.
So in 20 years, how will this time have changed us?
Constellation Mana (wood panel, brads, single sewing thread) by Kumi Yamashita
Open
Sometimes, when I go for a walk or drive through downtown, I feel really confused. On any given evening, there’s a crowd waiting for a table at the Mexican restaurant on the corner. As if the pandemic hasn't killed 835,000+ people.
So am I the crazy one for feeling scared to sit at a restaurant or walk outside without a mask? Or are they?
Close
Thank you, as every month, for opening up this refrigerator and spending some time with me and my thoughts. Hope there was something in here for you to snack on and feel a little bit better or see something a little bit different.
I’d love to hear your reactions and reflections to what I’ve put here. And if you think anyone might like it, please feel free to share it.
Keep pushing buttons and stay in touch out there,
Jake
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