Letting go

The books i’ve never even considered reading. The guitars i’ve barely touched these past few years. The vintage computers i’ve never restored. The fountain pens i’ve hoarded by the drawerful. If i don’t need these things, then why is it so hard to get rid of them? They aren’t useful, they aren’t that pretty, they aren’t even particularly valuable. But they represent a version of myself that could still happen that never came to be and will never come to be.

Each and every object was a promise i’ve made to myself — i’ll be a researcher, a musician, a maker, a writer. The whole collection is a record of which bets i stopped honouring without quite deciding to — i’m all and none of these people. Clearing out the decks wouldn’t mean giving up, it’d mean that i’ve already given up. That requires a strength of character i don’t always have. Keeping things around as a kind of alibi is decidedly simpler.

Each small letting-go is its own rehearsal for bigger (and more permanent) ones. You get better at mourning potentiality, at distinguishing between a closed door and an open one, at understanding what you’re genuinely still becoming. Someone else will read the books. Someone else will play the guitars. Someone else will repair the computers. Someone else will enjoy the pens. C’est la vie.

What i haven’t worked out is what fills the time and space when i stop propping up those futures. Objects are very good at providing the illusion of forward motion. While you’re planning, buying, faffing about, and generally not doing anything substantial, you’re in the cosy realm of potential. Strip all that away and you’re left with the harsh reality of the present. Adulting is hard.

Links

“People are not friction” by Dave Rupert. As i always say, tools have no intention in and of themselves, but shovels were made for digging and guns were made for killing. You could argue that LLMs were made for dispensing with those pesky designers, lawyers, accountants, marketers, and managers that don’t let engineers do exactly what they want exactly when they want to. “Sometimes I feel like there’s a palpable tension in the air as if we’re waiting to see whether AI will replace designers or engineers first”, Dave says, but “it’s a dangerous place to be when we start to consider people as friction”.

“The Shape of Friction” by Matthias Ott. It’s a dangerous place to be because “friction isn’t the enemy of good work”. “What the ‘frictionless’ vision really sells is the removal of dependency on other people’s experience and judgment”, which is verging on crazy when you realize that LLMs offer everything but judgment. People are so accustomed to getting everything with free one-day delivery that they can’t bear even the tiniest shred of inconvenience — and conversations are hugely inconvenient. When everybody acts like a spoiled child, we get “modern politics” and “artificial intelligence”, huge machines that keep saying “yes” to keep you engaged.

Music

Brad Mehldau and Christian McBride in concert. I can’t believe that, after 35 years, Brad Mehldau and Christian McBride had never toured as a duo. They’re the perfect pairing to prove that you don’t need drums to groove: Mehldau’s left-hand technique and McBride’s unique phrasing abolish the distinction between melody, harmony, and rhythm. While they paid homage to Wayne Shorter and Thelonious Monk, including an incredible solo rendition of Blue Monk on the bass, they also ventured into pop and R&B territory. I hope they’re planning on releasing a record.