Review & Rating: "Cure for The Desperate"/10

I read this book in 2018. Rereading my marginalia three years later, there are some parts I’ve only come to appreciate now. Some bring out a chuckle at how wrong I was or how life did not go the way I expected. Overall, it was a book I desperately needed then and it was a heartwarming one to read now.

I think Icarus Deception is a book of encouragement. It’s a book for those on a journey where you feel alone. It won’t give you answers or a step-by-step road map. Instead, it’ll help you ask yourself more questions.

To me, it was the cheerleader that told me everything I wanted to hear, needed to hear, and felt to be true. That can sound dangerous for the skeptic or the student of psychology who was told to be wary of confirmation bias. You know what? Confirmation bias isn’t all bad. I don’t care what the engineers or investors like to say from their altar of systems thinking. Making art is fucking hard and I’ll take any kind of confirmation bias I need because I already decided I’m going to go down a certain path and whatever book is going to be a cheerleader for me, I’ll take it.

That’s one utility for this book. Godin does a great job writing as the stern cheerleader. You know, the kind that isn’t just trying to blow smoke up your ass and you actually believe what they say.

It helped me ignore the crowd for a time. It helped me be okay with the journey I was going on. It was the fuel I needed for my journey until I replenished with another author. With that, I’ll leave you with a couple of points I found valuable.

First point. Ask yourself as you grind through whatever you are grinding through—because we all are— whether it’s worth doing. If you genuinely believe so, keep at it. If not, do something else.

Second is a quote I liked from Orwell.

“The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition—in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all—and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives.” - George Orwell

Book Notes:

Art is honest. It’s what touches another.

A painter isn’t an artist if she merely copies. Artists are people who make art.

People want something new, real and important. The artists provides something scare, unexpected and valuable.

What’s scare? Trust, connection and surprise.

Choose to be interesting. Even if it seems the more difficult path. You will experience pain regardless. Might as mell choose the pain to be interesting.

“The opposite of coherent is interesting.”

As Joseph Campbell put it, art is “for the experience of being alive.” That requires embracing the pain that comes from possibility, vulnerability and risk. There is good pain and bad pain. Pain from living an honest and interesting life is good.

Good art takes courage. Criticism is the good kind of pain resulting from that.

“…courage is the willingness to speak the truth about what you see and to own what you say.”

“…almost all people believe they are capable of editing, giving feedback, or merely criticizing. That means that finding people to fix your typos is easy. Finding someone to say “go” is almost impossible.”

The world will evolve regardless of what you do or want. You can growth faster and be ready to greet the world when it catches up to you or always play catch-up by denying changes. The former will require you take risks and look weird until the world catches up. Now, you might be wrong as well. The way to mitigate the error is to at least focus on making something that is the true embodiment of who you are. Something you made for you and the journey of it all. Then, even if the world didn’t evolve the way you thought it would you would have the work.

Everyone has an area of genius. It’s a matter of finding it and executing.

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” - Albert Einstein

Create for someone, not everyone. Commodities are sold to everyone. Connect with someone. Connection compounds in value while commodities get cheaper.

Your customers are the people who will miss you when you are gone. Listen to them.

“It’s not art if there’s no risk.”

“Correct is fine, but it is better to be interesting.”

“For a long time to come the masses will still calmer for cheap and obvious and reliable. But the people you seek to lead, the people who are helping to define the next thing and the interesting frontier, these people want your humanity, not your discounts.”

“This economy is built on art, the art that is created by emotional labor, by bringing risk and joy and fear and love to the table. Emotional labor scales in that a little more emotional labor is often worth a lot.”

When people pick you for opportunities, you end up working to realize their dreams. It’s our instinct to want permission and get picked by the publisher or some “qualified” institution. Give yourself permission to go and contribute already.

“No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.”

“Whenever you feel the pull towards compliance and obedience, feel it for what it is—a reminder of the way you’ve been trained, not a sensible or rational approach to the opportunity in front of you.”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Focus on creating what you would be proud. No one is qualified to judge your work other than you. Relying on applause leads to making something to fit the standards of others. It’s already corrupted at that point.

Myths were made by humans to depict dreams they had but were too afraid to reach. It’s a choice to go after the dreams. Those who separate it out as something that can’t be reached are happy being cogs somewhere. Ignore them. The biggest difference between those who achieve their dreams and those who don’t is the choice to pursue the adventure and the will to persevere. Everything else is a detail the spectators nitpick about.

Ask yourself if you are taking enough risk. Are you connecting? Are you creating a community around you? How can I risk failure? How can I give more? Where is the wilderness? Don’t look for guaranteed success, maps, or money because it might appear to work in the short term but it won’t long term.

External rewards are a means to make better art.

Six daily habits for artists

• Sit alone in quiet

• Learn something new that appears to have no practical benefit

• Ask ‘individuals’ for bold feedback

• Encourage other artists

• Teach with intent of making change

• Ship what you’ve created

Your job is to decide what to do next. Learn to see the world as a series of projects to be built and connected. Not one broken problems to be fixed. How you decide to view the world will impact your actions.

“The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition—in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all—and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives.” - George Orwell

Remember to

• Fly closer to the sun. The Icarus myth was told to install obedience.

• Be naked and vulnerable to those you create for.

• Seek to connect.
  

Critics are always wrong. Look at the one star reviews at your favourite restaurant. Do you care for their criticism? No. Neither should you for your art.

Double down in moments when you say “this might not work.” Seek those out.

Of course it’s hard. The grind is part of it and that’s what you love. It’s what makes the work interesting and worth doing. If you don’t think so, then move onto something else. The world is large with many opportunities. What are you doing grinding at something you don’t think is worth doing?

Remember that every art appreciated by the masses wasn’t made for them. It was for a niche audience. The masses just came around to changing their opinion on the art itself. That’s outside your control. Just remember people will put their own meaning to the art. It’s now what you intended for it to be that matters to them. It’s what the art means to their own interpretation of it. Given that, focus on creating for yourself. Make something you are proud of and hope it connects with the few people you want to connect with. It doesn’t matter if people think it’s weird today.

“If not enough people doubt you, you’re not making a difference.”

Most great artists didn’t live with the fame they have today. It’s not because they were idiots who thought they might the exception and thought they’d become famous during their lifetime. They created despite that. Knowing they would probably not end up famous. It didn’t matter to them. They created amazing works of art because that was work worth doing to them. Them not achieving fame and status during their lifetime wasn’t a bug to their career. It was a feature. It’s the only way you can keep your head down and plough through the work.

Whenever you feel you need to cut something out because it “feels wrong” to say or might be controversial. Stop. Keep it in. That’s popular culture telling you to hide yourself and be mediocre. Honest work should make you feel uncomfortable when you put it out there.

When you feel resistance in your work, it means you’re on the right track.

There is no ‘better’ path. You just need to the courage to change your mind.

We see what we believe so go out and broaden your perspectives. The more you see the easier it is to change your mind.

Make it a habit to write down predictions based on what you see. It’s essential to practice this. Learn to see the world as it is. That means understanding conventions and obtaining domain knowledge.

Find art in everything you do. Focus on making something for a specific person, even yourself. Don’t make for the masses. That makes it a community, not art. Art connects. You can’t connect with everyone.

Failure is an event. Not a person. Embrace it and move on.

You’ll always gain more from creating the art than the people who consume it. So seek out to do something without answers, where it doesn’t appear predictable and safe.

There is no best way, next step or perfect tool. You need to execute and fail over and over again. That’s how you’ll learn what works and what not to do. It takes many iterations.

“You can risk being wrong or you can be boring.”

I wonder if there are businesses that focus on not automating. Businesses that focus on building connections over and over again as they get larger. They would probably need to be hyper decentralized, operate in tiny units, and tackle niches independently. Vertical integration would seem essential to build connection with customers. How can you connect without controlling the value chain? Think Costco, Amazon, Constellation.

There is no writer’s block. Do you have talker’s block? No, you can always come up with opinions about everything and anything in conversations. Merely move that over to writing. Write every day about what you see in the world or want to see. Practice honest writing.

“Write like you talk. Often.” / Maybe that’s why writing feels so normal for me.

Don’t shun all constraints. You need them to thrive.

“Without boundaries, you can’t make art. Art lives on the edge of the boundaries.”

“Pick which rules to break, and embrace the rest."

On taste:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have…And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work…It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.” - Ira Glass

“Complaining is stupid. Either act or forget.” - Stefan Sagmeister

Ignore Jante’s Law.

Independent thought is not whether your idea is original or not. Everyone has been influenced by someone or something. The independence comes in my conviction and belief to form an opinion and stand by it in writing and action.

Pain (and fear of pain) makes art scarce. If it was always easy and fun, it would be everywhere.

In most organizations, it’s more acceptable to fail conventionally than unconventionally. Also, the reward for succeeding unconventionally is less than the risk of failing unconventionally. So no wonder most will choose fail like everyone else than succeed like no one else.

Negotiations are won by people who care less. Don’t beg others to care about what you’ve made. Tell them it’s not for them. They can choose to be part of it if they want. But don’t be desperate. It just pushes people away. Just focus on making choices that will allow you to make your art the way you know best.

“We are playing , not working, and the long way is often the best way to get to where we’re going.”

“Art almost never works as fast as you want it to, and the more you need it to work, the slower it happens.”

No one starts with knowing what they want to say or think needs to be said. Books and songs don’t come in completed forms in the mind before the artist gets to work. Everyone starts with a blank piece of paper.

“You don’t make art after you become an artist. You become an artist by ceaselessly making art.” / most people think it’s the other way around.

“Don’t question the commitment to the mission. It’s not helpful to kindly suggest that the artist might want to think about taking a day job to tide things over or giving up or settling down or lowering the bar. The artist thinks about these things every single day, and she doesn’t need you to remind her that it’s possible to trade in her life and her dream for a better job so she can buy more industrialized luxuries and trinkets.” / a-fucking-men. The decision and struggle is not a bug. It’s a feature of the chosen path.

“…the pain is part of the journey, and that without the pain there really isn’t a journey worth going on.”

“The goal is to keep playing, not to win.”

“Pain is the truth of art. Art is not a hobby or a pastime. It is the result of an internal battle royal, one between the quest for safety and the desire to matter.”