sweet ’n’ sour tape #31: road of the magi
“The suspension of our belief in the existence of the world may turn out to be a fruitful doubt. One will have to understand that building art is always the spatial execution of spiritual decisions.”
— Mies van der Rohe, 1926
This is a piece of a quote from this architecture blog called 32BNY. They put out little videos and also have an archive of their old print stuff, so feel free to check it out. It’s pretty cool.
The reason why I’m sharing this is because I think when we rejected the accepted notions regarding what’s expected of someone who wants to lead a good life in this world, we did it to resolve the remnants of our youthful existentialism. We saw a simulation and flipped it off 🖕. We realized it’s a Brave New World and that even if our stories are reduced to mere familial anecdotes (or maybe even Wikipedia articles hehe) once we’re gone, life will feel more like a series of overlapping, interconnected anime arcs than a singular linear 90 minute Disney movie where lessons are learned once and imprinted forever. We would even laugh to ourselves about the absurdist nature of our metaphysical “FUCK YOU”.
It was a way to stay sane in a world that’s gone batshit crazy. The past 2 years have displayed some sides of human character I don’t think anyone ever wanted to see, even if we already knew it was there on the low. We, along with most of the people we know, have been fortunate enough to be relatively unscathed by most of this, bar say all the missed opportunities socially, financially, artistically, etc. But even despite all that, you got yourself a great job at a great company once it was all said and done. The same guy who used to fill his tapes with the anxious musings over his destiny 💀. Slowly but surely, you’re figuring it out :)
Anyway, the reason why I shared this quote is because I think it’s a purer and more elegant version of those sentiments we’ve shared and expressed throughout these years. Absurdism wasn’t necessarily a way out. At the end of the day, you had to get yourself a typical corporate 9–5 and moved to a new city that’s fresh for exploration. You’re living the young-and-just-graduated 20 something dream (especially cause you got a job and didn’t have to move back home or something). And for me, it didn’t make the grueling nature of the artistic journey any less draining, or my lofty ambitions more reachable.
It didn’t lower the magnitude of difficulty for everything we want to achieve- it just put us in a mental position where we could integrate ourselves more in the environment around us, and participate in a world that we felt was getting less familiar by the day. Absurdism was, and arguably still is, a backdrop that allowed us to not feel selfish prioritizing ourselves. And just like the quote said, this turned out to be a “fruitful doubt.”
I think it’s time to explore a different guiding philosophy. Everything might be BS at the macro level, but on the micro level, there are millions of contributors to the world taking tangible, quantifiable actions for the improvement (or detriment I guess depending on your views) of humanity. These are the people we will connect with, fight with, do business with, love, cherish, befriend, hate, plot against, etc. Meaning in life comes from 1) what you care about and 2) the people around you, because we are not good at grasping the overall picture (probably how God wanted it). We have always wanted to help. We have always wanted to build. We decided we would do this through art, and we’re doing it right after the advent of the Internet, in a very interesting time where the definition of artist is changing.
I’m finding myself in a similar position to you last year when you were looking for work, and I’m starting to understand the stress you felt. It’s all on me now to secure a great, stable financial opportunity to not only support but further my music career (I’ve learned now how much money is a factor) and improve my quality of life. Especially because I want to move to Atlanta, and NOT back home. I had a stress headache the other day that was so bad and I smoked so much to cope that I felt like I was going to throw up for the next hour. I was literally programming with a trash can next to my chair because I felt like I could nod off or throw up any minute.
I’ve felt really manic lately — haven’t been sleeping well, running behind on things I need to get done like the Google courses, throwing myself into other ideas that aren’t important right now, going on bizarre, exhausting “knowledge benders” (talk to me about cryptography, Unix, and the Win32 API designed to extract information from Windows systems 🤓). I’ve been sloppy, unorganized, and inundated with so many ideas I don’t know what to do with myself. And hanging over all this casually is the ever more pressing issue that I have no degree, so I need to prove to people who I don’t know that I’m not a liability when it comes to my knowledge and skills, which that piece of paper does for most people automatically. This year… hasn’t started off terrific, to say the least.
Thankfully I’m slowly coming back on track- finishing up missed assignments, reordering my to-do lists and giving them more logical timelines, weeding out ideas by seeing which concepts can be turned into actionable steps right now, and restructuring my priorities. For the first time in my music journey, the focus isn’t on making music, but being able to make music. It’s been a weird reckoning to make but not really a sad or discouraging one — in fact I feel better than ever.
True, I have to kind of go overboard to make up for having no degree, but this is a challenge that I embrace. When I read the qualifications for these jobs, I can tell that I can handle them (especially if I receive some on the job training). And because it’s tech related dev work — they really value experience with building things, good programming knowledge, development skills, critical thinking skills, knowledge of different languages and frameworks, and these are all things I can bring to the table.
I think I’m making the right moves, it’s just consistency like always. Another lesson I’ve learned- consistency with anything just seems to be difficult as fuck. Even if you’re good at something! Can you be consistently good at that thing? Life reminds me more and more of a skill tree — choosing what to spend time on and what skills to invest in always implies some tradeoff, with the worst outcome being that a different choice could lead us into another interesting or even better direction.
I want to know:
- How do we develop consistency? Like what are some real steps we can take that can help us with what is arguably our weakest quality by a mile. Self-improvement discussions can’t be what they were before — we’ve developed a lot personally since we started these and I think we can start zeroing in on specific weaknesses we have. This is a big one, if you look at our history.
In the quote, the guy mentions how making art is the “spatial execution of spiritual decisions.” I find this line fascinating, because I think when you get down to it, this is really why good art is great and why humans can be moved by words on a page or a picture on a screen. At the highest level, the artist is just an intermediary for translating inspiration received from the universe into a digestible, consumable format for the audience. You are a vessel that pours a cosmic cocktail, and you want everyone to have a good trip.
The unique sense of perspective that we have cultivated over the years is because we have always felt a little jarred by and skeptical of the world around us, and I think it’s what informs our self-awareness, too. Jan. 6 was just another day in the simulation at this point, and most people know it. It’s the bitter truth, but not necessarily a bad one. Especially now as adults with finite time and resources who are fully responsible for our wellbeing, we have the prerogative to create and explore and invest in things that reflect our values, thoughts, feelings, opinions, and philosophy. Living is so much more about what you give to life than what you gain from it, and the spirituality of making artistic decisions stems from that very idea — what do you want to push into the ether of this nebulous world? How should we contribute, based on our skills and strengths? Maybe I can’t make life better for everyone, but can I make life better for my family? My city? A certain community or subgroup of people?
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that wanting to maximize your effect on humanity starts with… thinking small! Oh lord. But all of it starts with not accepting the status quo, or at least that it needs to be the way it is.
In an uncertain age, there is no panacea but perspective, because perspective provides context to opinions and solutions. It is our foundation for making decisions. That’s why we don’t like virtue signaling on social media or posturing by our politicians. We will never feel comfortable embracing something we do not fully understand or empathize with, it just goes against our biological instincts. Stability is a prized treasure, and we swiftly reject any threat of disruption, even if it’s purportedly for the better, if our own personal experience cannot compute the information. If it does not follow, we will not follow. These are the instincts that allowed us to dominate as Homo erectus walked his way to the top of the food chain, but as we’ve seen in the modern world, these same instincts can be a minus. And as artists, our goal is to either inform or challenge the beliefs that people hold by illuminating their perspectives through the means we see fit- the means that lets us best reflect our own perspective.
Good art tries to tell a story, but the best art just provides context. We’re already in the story.
Sorry to just barf all these words onto your screen. I was really influenced by these words from your boy:
“We are all apprentices in this field in which there is no master.”
— Ernest Hemingway
I mentioned above we should develop a new guiding philosophy. I predict that for the foreseeable future, we will walk the road of the magi.
The road of the magi is the theme for this redesign. It is inspired by three paintings by the famous Spanish artist Joan Miró, one of my favorite surrealist artists:
Let’s look at the paintings:
Le grand sorcier (The Great Wizard) (1968)
THE SORCEROR — CASPER (HEART)
This is Casper. The name comes from one of the three Magi supercomputers in Neon Genesis. This one represents the persona of Dr. Naoko Akagi, Ritsuko’s mom, as a woman.
It’s a magical time to be alive, so let’s make magic. Being able to work hard is one thing, but understanding that hard work siphons time means that now as adults, if we start building toward something, it should yield results in one form or another. This isn’t to say “Don’t explore or do something if you don’t want it to be immensely successful”. I’m really saying the opposite- “Now that you know how much goes into making something successful, gravitate toward what works and keep refining.” Either way, whether it’s the infinite random hobbies I know you will engage in this year, or some deeper development of a craft, my point is the same- engage in what excites you. That’s the only sustainable way to make magic. And we’re mages, baby.
This is how we should approach our crafts, the human experience, and the world.
Le grand ordonnateur (The Great Computer) (1969)
THE COMPUTER — MELCHIOR (MIND)
This is Melchior. The name comes from one of the three Magi supercomputers in Neon Genesis. This one represents the persona of Dr. Naoko Akagi, Ritsuko’s mom, as a scientist.
We shouldn’t give up being early adopters of stuff. For us to succeed over the long run, we need to still be privy to the latest advancements in technology because like it or not they are the tools in our tool belt. For example, NFTs might be a so-called joke but its real value is just being a proof of concept for the blockchain technology, because that’s what’s really worth the attention. It just not its time yet, but soon…
One thing I’ve learned real quick is that the future always wins. You can stall it or kill off a particular platform or product, but just the fact that that technology existed even for a second means:
- It will always be here (I don’t mean in like a cheesy way- I mean literally because of archives, backups, reverse engineering, etc.- no tech offering in the modern era can ever truly be “wiped”).
- It is only a matter of time before the potential of that underlying technology, assuming some widely reproducible and sustainable use case is developed, is realized and pumped into the mainstream.
Yes you hate Tik Tok. Yes you don’t like being on your phone. This isn’t about that. Be informed of technology, not influenced by it. Tik Tok is doing things that no social media has done before, it’s legitimately scaring companies like Facebook. We’ve already seen how much IG has tried to change to match it. I think it’s the most effective and gratifying content consumption platform (or CCP, get it? haha shout out Tencent) out there. It was able to do this by introducing a new dimension to social media (the actual “Tik Toks”, which lowkey they didn’t really make, they got from musical.ly) and then packaging that with a super minimal UI, scrumptious algorithm, and just a tiny hint of the power of the Chinese government. Now it’s infiltrated every corner of modern pop culture and society!
The people that make Tik Tok don’t care about Tik Tok, or social media, or even technology. They care about money. They analyzed the market and then expertly synthesized an opening to leverage demand toward them. This is a simple surface level example, and I know we aren’t as cynical as that- but my point with this one is that we shouldn’t allow the opinions of pop culture or politics or business to define how we assess the value of the information we consume. Why are we outsourcing learning to these agenda-driven people and platforms? It’s called learning for a reason, right? Due diligence of any kind always rewards you well, and with the way the world is looking, it’s going to be necessary.
There’s a lot we don’t know. So let’s try and be sure of what we do know, so we can be confident in the conclusions we draw. Because confident conclusions yield money.
This is how we should approach information, media, and technology.
Equinox (Équinoxe) (1967)
THE EQUINOX — BALTHASAR (SOUL)
This is Balthasar. The name comes from one of the three Magi supercomputers in Neon Genesis. This one represents the persona of Dr. Naoko Akagi, Ritsuko’s mom, as a mother.
The equinox is when the day and the night are roughly the same length (around September 22 and March 20 every year). The sun’s center is directly above the equator, a beautiful visual gift yielded by a very particular mathematical arrangement. For us, you can think of the equinox as the optimum synergistic ratio among all the activities and roles in our lives. Achieving equinox is a matter of properly regulating the attention and effort we expend on a macro level to facilitate efficiency at the micro level. Maintaining it, on the other hand, is hard because nothing is as volatile as life, but being aware of this ratio is the ultimate form of self care.
This point is to literally only reinforce: it’s a mountain range not a mountain. It’s all coming, Kunal. I can feel it. But for us to get there, we need to take care of ourselves. Health is wealth, but don’t discount the effect of friends and family too. I’ve found more often than not it’s usually a meaningful moment with a person rather than a meaningful experience that gets you out of mental downs and creative blocks and the dreaded burnout.
I bring up the equinox to also say this- don’t define successful self care by your fucking habits grind. For example, you may have not brushed your teeth all 30 days in a month or whatever. Maybe you were just tired or passed out drunk or depressed.
But whenever you could brush, did you?
When you felt like you needed to do the self-care task, did you do it?
Did you do the task for the sake of just doing it, or did you do it well?
Did you see the value it brings after you do it?
Do you like how you look?
Do you like what you’re doing?
Do you like how you feel?
When it’s best to put yourself first, do you?
Are you able to stop and take care of yourself when you need it?
Equinox is not nirvana. It’s not a feat, it’s a standard to strive for while navigating the ever changing utilization of being alive. Like I said before, consistency is as difficult as it gets. You may be 40 before you nail all your habits- that’s not cause you suck, that’s just how hard it is to be consistent. We won’t be able to cast magic all the time. We won’t be able to compute everything all the time. But we won’t be able to do neither if we can’t maintain the diamond chariot that is our brown chassis.
This is how we should approach ourselves.
This is the road of the magi. It’s a lonely one, and it may feel like the only one that you have ever known, but even when its darkest, remember… it’s better than the boulevard of broken dreams.
