The taxi cabs aren't the only place to keep warm. There's subway steam and one more drink before you have to get outside and freeze your nip nips. I'll tell you what the most frustrating thing about New York City in the winter is (not that it's actually been here yet. We're in some sort of warm/cold purgatory at the moment). The hardest things to deal with in the winter are the damn heaters. If you recall, I recently mentioned that winter hasn't arrived yet. The heaters have. I'm sitting in my living room sweating my balls off because it's 47 degrees outside and my superintendent is in "winter mode" because no one has told him about the purgatory I briefed you on a moment ago. For all of you who would rather be chilly than hot, cry a little baby tear for me. I'll just have to go on humidifying my apartment and opening all the windows.
I've heard rumors that they have snow in New York. Actually, I saw it first hand, along with feeling an earthquake and a hurricane. But I've only had one of each and I've lived here for almost six months. This may sound like complaining to the common reader but I assure you it is a mixture of relief, surprise and complaining. The winter here so far is pretty chilly for the most part. Hanging out in the 30s and dropping down into the teens in moments of rebellion. On the bright side: I'm happy as hell to be going over to Utah for Sundance Film Festival next week and I can assure you they'll have snow. Or at least that's what I've been told.
Creativity is a mysterious thing. I'm reading Steve Jobs' biography right now among a couple other books on the night stand. There are two remarkable things about him that were surprising to me at first but maybe they shouldn't have been.
The first surprise was that he was a regular drug user. He grew up not only smoking marijuana in high school but regularly dropping LSD. Now it makes sense to me that John Lennon and George Harrison were smoking a bowl with Lucy in the sky or Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr were doing a line in the chinese restaurant bathroom, but think about a computer nerd getting down with some drugs. The stereotype I have in my head of a pocket protector wearing engineer goes right out the window. Jobs was serious about computers but he didn't take the typical path. Now some of you are sitting there thinking, "He had Steve Wozniak doing the nitty gritty technical stuff so he didn't have to be so technically saavy." Point taken. Still though, as a leader of people and someone SO incredibly confident in his own opinions, I'm impressed that he was willing to lose control of his senses. It takes trust in oneself to use drugs. To see where your mind goes when most of the train is led by the subconscious. And he wasn't super private about it either. He would pop raunchy interview questions to prospective employees to try to throw them off and see their true colors. "How old were you when you lost your virginity?" he would ask. "How many times have you done LSD." He was perfectly comfortable with his decisions and I think it came from a lot of personal searching and experimentation.
The second quality was that he was intensely critical of people. On more than one occasion he would call the work of his designers and engineers "total shit" for no other reason than to get to the final product. Anything less than the final product being shipped was total shit. It's a very black and white mentality but it caused Apple to produce some intensely cool shit. Criticism is something so scorned these days. People just aren't strong enough to be confronted with the fact that most of the work we do could be way better.
So here's the thing. This isn't about Steve Jobs. He's just the messenger. We're living in a world where few people are strong enough for criticism and there's a ton of mediocrity in the world. I spent half the afternoon looking for bands to play shows with in the areas surrounding New York. Ninety-nine out of one hundred bands were total shit. I'm not saying everyone should do a bunch of drugs and be critical of one another but I think we could use some personal searching and exploration and maybe we shouldn't settle for mediocrity. If you're going to be something, be something great. And if you're going to create something, maybe drugs and criticism aren't the worst tools to get you there.
I've been down and sick with congestion for about a week. It's a lousy feeling but I've got to admit it's getting better. Here is a cover of "Purple Rain" by the artist formerly known as Prince. Thanks to Joshua Watts for the request. Stay warm out there.
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Friday, February 10, 2012 at 12:36AM ;)
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