Today, on Friday, July 21, 2023, the world lost Tony Bennett.
This is a heartbreaking loss for the arts (and for me as a fan), but also an intense reminder of all the color he brought into the world via his singing and his painting.
Continue ReadinGLessons
Selfism: A New Cosmology
This journal entry contains all three parts of my final project for Carnegie Mellon University’s “Designing Narratives Across Media” course, taught by Professor Ahmed Ansari. Sharing it here because I like it and because it could serve as an entry point to anyone interested in world-building or the Alexander Technique.
Continue ReadingLessons from the book The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
How fully I recommend this book: 6.5/10
Lesson 1: Ideas, products, messages, and behaviors are like viruses.
This may be the origin of the usage of “viral” to describe something that becomes very popular. Gladwell uses the virus analogy throughout the book to explore the “tipping point,” the point at which something begins to spread exponentially.
Lesson 2: The three elements of an epidemic.
- The Law of the Few: This is about who spreads the virus. Three types of people are crucial to any epidemic: Connectors (people who are connected to lots of people in different groups), Mavens (people who are experts and are passionate about sharing their expertise), and Salesmen (charismatic people who can affect those around them).
- Stickiness Factor: This is about the virus itself. How “sticky” is it? Can it be made stickier?
- Power of Context: This is about the context inhabited by the virus. Certain contexts are more conducive than others to the spread of a virus. Tiny contextual adjustments can make a huge difference in something reaching a tipping point.
Lesson 3: In relationships, proximity often trumps similarity.
“We’re friends with people we do things with.”
Lesson 4: What word of mouth actually is.
Word of mouth is not everyone telling everyone about something.
What word of mouth actually is: someone telling a Connector.
Then, the Connector tells all the people they know!
So, word of mouth is mostly accelerated by a few key Connectors, rather than by many people.
Lesson 5: Context can trump convictions.
“It’s possible to be a better person on a clean street than in one littered with trash.”
Gladwell’s research shows this, which surprised me!
Behavior and character are often times a function more of context than of convictions.
E.g.; Removing graffiti from the NYC subway system accelerated the precipitous drop in criminality in the city.
Lesson 6: Social channel capacity
Also known as Dunbar’s number, 150 seems to be the maximum number of genuine social relationships our human brains can maintain.
Military subgroups aim to remain smaller than 150. Same with hunter-gatherer villages.
Even a wildly successful corporation found that exceeding 150 people in a division or production plant often led to disorder and friction, so they now cap their groups at 150 and when the number of employees gets close to exceeding, a new group is created, and so on.
Lesson 7: Communication immunity.
The network effect would suggest that the more people participate in a network (social media, email, etc.), the more valuable the network becomes.
This, however, has a limit.
The more frequent the communication in a network, the more likely it is to create “communication immunity,” meaning that the messages in the network begin to lose importance, and traditional forms of communication, like a face-to-face conversation with a friend, gain more value.
E.g.; Email can texting can be overwhelming, so I have become more immune to those communication networks than to phone calls, which are more scarce and usually more important.
Lesson 7: How gossip is born.
Gossip is the result of a three-step distortion of reality:
- Reality is leveled, a process by which all kinds of details that are essential to understanding reality are left out.
- Leveled reality is sharpened, a process by which remaining details are made more specific.
- Leveled and sharpened reality is assimilated, a process by which the new constructed reality is changed so it can make more “sense” to those spreading the rumor.
Next time I hear any gossip, I will be sure to yell out, “Hey, stop spreading that nasty result of a three-step distortion of reality!”
Lessons in Stand-Up Comedy from My First Eurotour
Just finished my first stand-up comedy Eurotour, where I performed 14 shows in 8 cities and 5 countries all over Europe.
One of the greatest experiences of my life.
It was transformative, and it taught me countless lessons about stand-up comedy.
The following two lessons stand out, and I hope they’re useful to you.
Yes, you. You in particular. Yes. Hello.
Lesson 1: The only goal for stand-up comedians is to do our best to make the audience laugh.
This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget.
I knew this lesson intuitively when I started doing stand-up. I had a sense of humor and was emotionally shut down. Perfect for comedy!
Then, after years of emotional maturation (gross!) and focusing more on literature and music (boring!), I lost touch with this lesson.
When I got back into stand-up in Miami in 2022, I wondered why things weren’t working as before.
The explanation came to me during my last few shows before leaving Miami, and I reconfirmed it during my Eurotour in 2023: I had forgotten about the only goal for stand-up comedians.
People don’t go to a comedy show to clap for statements they agree with or to hear the performer “speak their truth.” They’re not there to sympathize with the performer. They’re not their to satisfy the performer’s need for connection. And they’re certainly not there to be the performer’s therapist.
Unlike in literature and music (still boring!), where pathos, i.e., the appeal to emotion (still gross!), is necessary to establish a connection, comedy isn’t about truth, feeling, or vulnerability.
It’s just about laughter!
People go to a comedy show to laugh, have a good time, and forget about the rest of life. That’s it! And that’s awesome, and it’s what makes comedy special.
That’s the only job of a stand-up: To do their best to make the audience laugh. The method of going for the laugh will vary from one comedian to the next, but the goal is the same.
One more perspective: The stand-up comedian takes care of the audience, never the other way around.
It’s not the audience’s job to feel for the performer, or to otherwise make him or her feel heard and okay. The audience’s only job is to be at the show, if they want to.
And our job as performers is singular: To do our best to make the audience laugh!
Lesson 2: Context is a factor in how a stand-up comedy performance goes, and no comedy is for all contexts.
Literature and music don’t really need an audience to exist.
Stand-up comedy cannot exist without an audience.
If it did, it would just be a crazy person rehearsing a joke about farts in front of a bathroom mirror. Though maybe that’s just me.
This Eurotour confirmed my belief that the nature of the audience always influences a stand-up performance, because the comedian and the material are at all moments in a relationship with the audience.
Stand-up comedy is always contextual!
My act has not worked in a loud bar for a local crowd in Miami, and it has also worked very well in a comedy club for an international crowd in Prague, the only variable being the context: audience… and venue.
As all stand-up comedians eventually learn, the venue is almost like an extra audience member that affects the performer and also the rest of the audience.
I’m not saying it’s ever the audience’s or the venue’s fault if a stand-up set doesn’t work, because I don’t think that’s true.
What is true is that context is a factor in how a stand-up comedy performance goes.
And not all audiences will enjoy all stand-up comedy acts, and not all acts will work in all venues, and that’s okay and also kind of funny.
I have friends who can’t stand my favorite comedians. There are some wildly successful comedians who have never made me laugh.
A joke that kills at a dinner table can die a silent death on a stage in a theatre.
It’s all very contextual.
This is just the nature of comedy. No comedy is for all contexts.
It’s better to accept this and have fun while we continue to develop our comedy for ourselves and for the people who will laugh at it and the venues who will embrace it!
Looking forward to doing stand-up! In Europe! Thank you to everyone who made these shows possible and to everyone who showed up and to all the fascinating people I met. Thank you!
The Book of Beautiful Sentences: A Lesson in Writing from Anne Frank
Today, on Monday, May 29, 2023, I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It is one of the saddest experiences of my life thus far; I was holding back tears throughout most of the visit.
It was also, however, one of the most inspiring experiences of my life.
Anne Frank was a true writer, in part because she was a true reader, and she taught me a lesson on how to be more of both writer and reader: Keep a notebook of beautiful sentences.
Since Anne had shared her love of words with her father, he suggested that she keep a notebook where she could write down, word for word, all beautiful sentences that she encountered while reading (and she read a lot).
She named this notebook, aptly: “The book of beautiful sentences.”
At the Anne Frank House, I saw the original “book of beautiful sentences.” It was stunning.
No wonder Anne Frank was such a good writer while being so young!
She had written, by hand, page after page of beautiful sentences that she had encountered while reading.
Sentences from the best writers, her favorites. Word for word.
In doing this exercise, Anne wasn’t just paying tribute to the great writers, nor was she merely memorizing easily-quotable sentences.
She was doing what musical composers do when they transcribe (by ear) a musical work they love: She was internalizing the elements that gave those sentences their beauty.
Word choice, sentence structure, pacing, musicality; by doing this exercise in literary transcription, Anne Frank was internalizing all the elements that would later make her own writing so special.
Thankfully, it’s an exercise we can all do. It can help us develop as the writers and readers we can be.
Keep a notebook of beautiful sentences.
Thank you, Anne!
