Mæna 2010

73.
Q-Tip could be a new kind of barbell. Obviously. But I’m
sneaky! I switched these ideas around, so that the corn
flake could become a barbell. The wrong point of departure
creates an epiphany.
It’s true these ideas may not often “succeed.” They may
have no practical application whatsoever! But‚so what? I
feel strongly that many schools focus too much on careers,
anyway. Focus. School is a place to experiment, right?
You have plenty of time to feel trapped and stifled at 41,
but at 21 it‚’s a crime. It’s good to keep in mind that “Web
Design” didn’t exist as a major when I was at school, but
I know a lot of successful web designers. What is the point
in being so vocation-oriented, when the vocations haven’t
yet been invented? All the best musicians went to art
school. The Beatles, the Talking Heads. Among my accomplished
friends, it turns out that Comparative Literature
students make great architects, and the best illustrators
dropped out of law school.
I made a book without a computer. Naturally, it’s called
“How to Make Mistakes on Purpose.” I co-wrote and designed
it with Norman Hathaway.
Everything we did went in the book, no matter how much
I hated Norman’s drawings, or he hated mine. All of it
went in. Every ugly collage. No editing allowed. It’s not
about trying to be bad, like using your left hand if you’re
a rightie. It’s putting oneself in an unusual situation where
chaos and accidents happen, things go wrong, and your
control freak is AWOL. Our watchwords were FAST
and SLOPPY.
In this book we tell some stories. Like the time I left all of
my worldly possessions in a van on the way to the airport
to go live in France, and then went out for a coffee like an
idiot (I’m a native New Yorker!) and of course it was
all stolen. I had my ticket, though, so I flew to Europe
without even a toothbrush, and how that affected everything
else.
I don’t advocate trying to get robbed, but I’m glad that it
happened. Feeling lightheaded, I sat down in first class
and drank free champagne, even though I had an economy
ticket. When I got there I bought strange vintage
clothes I would never ordinarily wear which led to an unwise,
if interesting romance. Love is often a fun mistake.
We describe a magician doing a trick. The audience is
intently focused on his sleight of hand. A card is produced
from where? The place where we weren’t looking.
Misdirection. If we could focus on the real action,the
magic would disappear.
In another story, a woman goes to a party. She is single,
and at once notices an attractive man standing by the bar.
She would like to get to know him. But wait. Why is this
lovely woman single, anyway? Because she’s never had
good luck with men! She’s always attracted to goodlooking
guys who turn out to be selfish, narcissistic
creeps. Fortunately, she’s just seen the “The Opposite”
episode of Seinfeld in which George succeeds wildly
by doing the exact opposite of what he usually does.
A bit from that episode:
Jerry: Well here’s your chance to try the opposite. Instead
of tuna salad and being intimidated by women, chicken
salad and going right up to them.
George then goes right up to a pretty blonde, introducing
himself this way: “My name is George. I’m unemployed
and I live with my parents.”
It works! Back to our single lady. She sees a rather ordinary
looking man, standing just to the left of the handsome
guy. She hadn’t noticed him before. She goes up to the
man and says “Hello.” He’s pleasantly surprised. This
never happens to him! They chat. They flirt. He’s witty,
charming and a good listener.
He turns out to be Mister Right.
I had to draw a canary for my children’s book: “And to
Name but Just a Few‚ Red, Yellow, Green, Blue.” It was
2007, so like everyone else in the world I went to Google
Images and pressed a button and out popped one
thousand canaries. I could easily draw one. After all,
I am a professional illustrator! I’m pretty good! But I
didn’t. I took a piece of black paper on my desk, randomly.
And I stuck an eyeball and a beak on it and some
legs and colored it yellow, and put the word CANARY
in sixhundred point Akzidenz Grotesk Bold next to
it, and you’d better believe it’s a god damn canary!
It didn’t look like the canary I would have drawn. It didn’t
look like any canary you ever saw, but it was clearly recognizable.
I was surprised. It had this power. The power
of the wrong thing.
When I was supposed to do the “Mistakes” workshop on
the radio (!) the producer asked me how my theory would
work for non-visual problem-solvers. I said, “Imagine
you’re a radio interviewer. You could ask somebody, “How
long have you done this?” or “Who are you dating?”or,
most dreadful of all, “Where do you get your ideas?”
But maybe instead, you could try opening a random page
in a book. I picked up a novel on my desk as I said this, and
I’m doing this again right now as I write this essay.The top
right hand page starts with this: “Looking straight at the
blackboard, acutely aware of those sitting.”
So, suppose you asked the person “Can you learn this in
school?” or “Are you self-conscious or confident?” or “Do
you look directly at the audience?” Perhaps they are questions
you might not otherwise have asked.
So try going for the first thing you grab, not the best thing.
The other thing. In other words: “If you can’t be near the
girl you love, then love the girl you’re near.” Not the right
question or T-shirt or material or color or software program
or lipstick or ingredient or paragraph.Read the book you’d
never read but it’s lying there. Start thinking quantity, not
quality. Think anythingbut quality.
If you try to be good, it will probably be bad. If you stop
trying at all, it might be good. Or possibly dreadful. But
if you are surprised, I will be, and that’s very good!