If you didn’t read this week’s post “The Secret to Creative Longevity: Taste the Remainbow”, I will read it to you in very dramatic fashion, below 👇
Enjoy!
Notes from the Captain
Oui, my shirt was a conscious choice for today’s episode. That’s how you know I know what it says. No, I do not speak French. Have you ever heard me try to pronounce a French word? It’s latrine-worthy.
But I digress.
🫡 Crew, here we go again.
I seem to bang on about today’s theme all the time. In fact, you should never start a sentence with in fact, but I’ve touched lightly on several elements of today’s video in previous episodes1, so if it feels repetitive I apologize. I feel like I’ve finally worked myself into a more coherent throughline on the subject, which is what you’ll get today. Also, as my friend—let’s call him… Chad—once told me when I explained I didn’t like to reuse my witty headlines on marketing emails even though they were months apart:
“D’you think people read every single email?!”
He’s got a point. I’ve said some of the things in this episode in other episodes, but not everyone watches everything and that’s so funny because THAT’S WHAT THE VIDEO IS ABOUT.
Social media—more specifically, analytics and the instant feedback of numbers that tell you nothing you do is getting views—is not good for someone with a brain like mine. I have to trick it into continuing, which I never had to do in the pre-LIKE/SUBSCRIBE/SHARE days. The video above digs into how I am trying my very best to ignore analytics, something I can afford to do because I am not a business with an ROI that depends on it.
My only business is to make stuff. At least it’s not fast fashion!
Do they still call it “Clout chasing”? Yeah, that’s not for me. When I was a kid, Clout was a tick treatment for sheep and cattle. It still is, apparently.
Words. I’ll chase the words. I’ll do the words. And now I’ll make the videos and read the things out loud, too. Clout sounds dirty. I choose to chase minds instead. Janeen, you’ve built your fire, now just keep adding wood. That sounds weird…🪵
Oh, and finally. My dearest, scurvy-free crew (eat more limes!) I want to make absolutely sure that you understand how much I appreciate you. Reading, listening, watching. I’m not sure I got across what an amazing thing it is to have any numbers at all.
What’s that anthropological thing that says the ideal size of a human group is 150?2
Crew, we are the ideal size.3
But I wanted to be real in the video about how I do struggle with motivation. I am only human and you are not alone in your struggles. I wanted to be open about how I am made weak and depressed by numbers. It’s the same phenomenon of when you have 20 comments, 19 of them positive, you’ll focus on the one that is bad. The others will barely register.
Isn’t the human brain HILARIOUS? 🧠
Speaking of numbers, I don’t think I fully jumped up and down in the video about just how great an open rate I get on my emails. I do know it’s lower than that (if you use the Apple email client, it shows all emails as opened whether you open them or not so that skews numbers), but if you think about how the average open rate for a marketing email is 19-21%-ish you guys are absolutely CRUSHING IT.
Persistence and patience, crew. Persistence and patience.
We shout into the void. On some days it shouts back. I love the days when the void says: “You’ve got a nice voice.”
Be brave in your work, be courageous in your belief in it, and use your PewPew finger guns. Until next time we convene, love what you love and I’ll see you out there, making stuff.
Your Captain, Janeen 🫡
Thangs from this episode…
👩✈️ Mustard Skittles
The BoingBoing Article that alerted me to it: “Skittles Launches New Mustard Flavor”
This photo is gross. Why ruin a weiner like that? How do they taste? Here are some thoughts and a quote from those thoughts:
I cannot stress this enough. Whatever flavor combination you've created in your head since hearing the words mustard and Skittles paired together, get rid of it. Nothing can prepare you for this atrocity.
👩✈️ Weird animal combos
I flashed an image of a seal horse in the video. It came from digital artist, Arne Olav Gurvin Fredriksen, who “blends animals” and they’re creepy AND delightful. Read about her work (and see more animals) here.
👩✈️ Skittles Brand Book
If you work in advertising or branding, you should always collect brand books when you find them. Even old ones. It’s good practice.
👩✈️ Vegemite Singles
Here’s an ad from the ‘90s. I get the sense from a YT comment that they maybe did it again ten years ago as another limited run. *sigh* Or to put it another way, no.
👩✈️ Be Undeniable
I found the full quote. It was Steve Martin (though I paraphrased in the video because I didn’t remember it exactly)
“Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, “Be so good they can't ignore you.” If somebody's thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.”- Steve Martin
👩✈️ Songs for Drella
I used a snippet from the live performance of “Work” by John Cale and Lou Reed in this week’s episode. I know I’ve mentioned it before on The Stream, even though it hasn’t made The Stream On Rotation playlist yet. I used it in the video in the context of defining what “is it working” means—I’m saying it’s not what working means in terms of being successful that’s the point, but actually doing work. That’s the important thing.
Anyway, tangent: I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about Songs for Drella, an album by Lou Reed and John Cale described in one Guardian article I read as a ‘spiky album testament to Warhol’, and it’s the album that the song “Work” is from.
It’s sort of like a musical eulogy, I guess. But, warts and all.
The excerpt below is from the Guardian article reviewing the release of the 1990 footage of John and Lou performing the album and the background. The trailer for that is here and here’s a list of places where you can watch it.
The whole thing is about memory and recovery in a very literal sense. The songs themselves, showcased beautifully here, must be some of the most scaldingly honest eulogies in the history of pop music, capturing as they do the many sides of Warhol, not all of them nice. The ambivalence is right there in the title, drawing on the inner circle’s nickname for Warhol (Drella = Dracula + Cinderella). It was a handle Warhol himself disliked but one that captures what frenemies like Cale and Reed considered his vampirish relationship to others. It Wasn’t Me, for instance, implicitly castigates Warhol’s refusal to take any responsibility for those churned up in his Factory’s wake, felled by suicide or overdoses.
Also, if you haven’t watched the Andy Warhol Diaries documentary on Netflix, I can’t recommend it enough. It gave me an admiration for Warhol that I never had before.
Thanks for listening/watching and sharing. If I missed anything you were curious about from the post—or just in general—leave a comment.
On that note, do something great this weekend. Do something great for your whole life if you can.
Do. Make. Be.
🫡
Episode 11, “Make it Up” and Episode 15, “Elements of Style” (which mentions persistence and purpose as elements that make up who you are as an artist)
It’s called Dunbar’s Number
And by we, I mean all my subscribers, not just you special ones in the secret club. You’re a large dinner party. Talk amongst yourselves!
Behind the Streams, Ep 21: "Skittles"