SO GODDAMN GREAT

Dear Mike,

That was really great! Great on so many levels:

Congratulations on delivering a really inspiring lecture. I can't imagine how gratifying that must've been. Got me thinking about all the graphic artist lineage I have in my family, and how I'm connected to that even though I can't draw to save my life. There's always a challenge to grasp the inherent value of non-tactile objects, like some kinds of visual art, and I was reminded of how images can transcend just about anything. That power is really blowing my mind right now: the cultural significance that imagery creates and maintains, as well as my own personal connection to my family as a creative entity, my grandfather being the patriarch of both.

I think that even commercial work, which is often given relatively low regard as art, has an effect that is not to be underestimated. It reminds me of the idea that was central to understanding the role of the graphic artist in our culture when I was growing up: that one must simply make work, and sort out what pays the bills and what pushes the envelopes, so to speak.

Everyone involved in the creative process gets hung up on teliological issues, and the challenge always lies in lowering your shoulder to work through things when there's intellectual or emotional controversy within the creator.

What I really enjoyed your lecture for was the reminder that it brought, something that had been central at the onset of our friendship: the shared reverence for understanding one's surroundings through the creative process. Or, making it up as you go along.

Secondly, it was really inspiring as someone who's current social status is most accurately described as "student." To be twenty-seven and a sophomore in college is in many ways analogous to being a newcomer to a big city: you're certainly pushing your own boundaries, and pushing them into territory that isn't always waiting for you with open arms.

Academia, out of due diligence, has little-to-no regard for the sense of entitlement that life experience can bring, though it does respond well to responsibility, organization, and other more practical fruits of maturity. In spite of this, I find my the events leading up to every moment of my life informative and guiding– as does pretty much everyone else. These points are obvious, but worth stating for the sake of being thorough.

But the realization came to me when contemplating your lecture, and analyzing it through the scope of an idea I'm assessing in an ethics class I'm taking (which in itself is quite sophomoric): In Confucian virtue ethics, which deals with the central question of How ought I to live? there is a principle that is one of Confucius' many trademarks called The Rectification of Names. The gist of it deals with linguistics, and how terms and names inform our ideas about what is good or bad or makes something virtuous, etc. A father is a father by fulfilling a culture's definitions of what a father ought to do, a son is a son by adhering to his respective roles, and so on and so forth. It's a simple device that can be used to segue into a much more diverse array of concepts and subtopics relating to a central theme, and, in Confucian form, guides us towards right action.

This relates back to my early description of myself as a student, and the atypical role that I play as an adult student. In contemplating your lecture, I saw the evolution of your "career" as an artist- from child to student, from student to designer, from designer to freelance designer. While I certainly have extremely limited insight into your experience in all of these stages, I have to say what really impressed me, and impresses me about you, is your natural inclination to inhabit these roles, and gracefully move from one onto the next, and carrying the spoils of each along the way.

What I feel like I've gotten so caught up on lately is the task of rectifying both my adulthood and my studentship. I have a lot more practice being (or acting like from time to time) an adult. The student part has been a lot less refined for me, and the cause for a great deal of internal conflict. It requires humbling yourself and maintaining the less gratifying assumption that the collective worth and meaning of life experience is something which need remain open to interpretation and revision, which is a simultaneously rich and often unpleasant state of being.

But such is life: if you grow averse to things like change, surprise, irony, and even mischief you'll find yourself very much outside of reality. What one can do is develop capacities for change, and openness to things completely outside one's imagination, intuition, or anticipation. It's the refusal to develop these strengths that, in short, make people old, in the truly negative sense of the word. Being reminded of this makes being a student seem like a privilege.

I can go on and on, but there was a certain representation of this modality which seemed to be the hallmark of your lecture, and the underlying quality of your personality, as well as our relationship. It's really, really inspiring, because I identify with that ideology so strongly, and to see someone I know also appreciates it being given the opportunity to propagate something so universally valuable made me very, very happy.

cheers,
rs